CASE STUDY
Sick and tired of smoking myself to death
On March 5th 1984, I went into treatment
for my addiction to alcohol and drugs. The next day I went to my first AA meeting
(or was it NA?) and after a long struggle with sobriety I finally recovered and
got my life back. It’s a good life and I owe it to the fellowship and everyone who
helped me in those early days.
But the one thing I didn’t give up was smoking. I
didn’t think I could and I certainly didn’t want to. “Surely they will leave me
this” I thought, and anyway, I did not see cigarettes in the same light as alcohol
and cocaine. I smoked, was fit physically, and active, a keen cyclist, so why give
up smoking? It seemed that for years I got away with it. And then I didn’t. Winter
after winter the bronchitis got worse, every cold turned into weeks on antibiotics.
I started to get breathless doing the things I loved and those long happy cycle
rides in the countryside got shorter and shorter. Quite apart from the increasing
social difficulty of smoking, I started to lose respect from friends and family
as successive attempts to quit failed – often in recrimination and anger, and always
with me feeling bad about myself.
Even when the doctors pronounced an early death
sentence – Chronis Obstructive Pulmonary Disease – I still wouldn’t stop. It wasn’t
that I didn’t want to stop, more a case of being terrified of facing life without
cigarettes.
I finally realised that I couldn’t stop on my own, all efforts of will
power had failed, I was powerless over nicotine and I needed help.
A friend told
me of the new Smoking Cessation Programme that he was setting up at Life Works in
London. One day, as I was sitting on the steps of the Marsden Hospital having a
cigarette while my beloved daughter was inside being treated for breast cancer,
I decided that enough was enough. I enrolled on the first Smoking Cessation Programme.
We met as a group for the first time on June 7th. It was wonderful to be with a
bunch of people who shared the same fears and feelings around smoking. I felt amongst
friends. I was not alone anymore. The group gave me new hope, perhaps I could do
this, maybe there was a way out.
The course itself was comprehensive in approach
and beautifully organised. Above all we had Marge, our facilitator – knowledgeable
and wise in the ways of smokers and techniques of giving up. She was our rock, although
I’m not sure she was keen on her title! No stone was left unturned, Marge guided
us through a detailed analysis of our smoking history, our attitude to smoking,
the psychology of why we smoked, our motivation to quit and most important – practical
ways to achieve the objective of becoming a non smoker. We experienced acupuncture
and hypnotherapy met with dieticians and homeopathic doctors. We got special rates
at a top London gymnasium, and above all – we bonded as a group and felt absolutely
supported in our effort to quit finally.
The course represented a serious commitment
to stop smoking, both in terms of time and effort, and I don’t think that anything
less than this would have worked for me. I had tried every other quit method on
the market and failed every time.
The programme helped me want to quit and then
showed me how to do it. I haven’t smoked since Quit Day on June 24th and today I
feel free. I am no longer a slave of cigarettes. My health has improved enormously,
I have won the respect and admiration of my loved ones, and I’m currently planning
a 700 kilometre cycling our in Northern Spain next spring. My life has been given
back to me again. Thank you.
Anon
