Smoking and vaping are both habits, and like most habits, they started somewhere and for some reason. Even if that habit began as an act of rebellion, or something to do in order to fit in, there was a motivation for it. And now, it’s just a habit. Or is it?
For many clients, smoking and vaping is perpetuating an emotional need. It either provides comfort, time out, stress reduction or some other benefit, just like a reliable friend. Except that we’re talking about poison here. Once that need can be resolved and/or satisfied in a healthy way, the need for the smoking or vaping drops off, and you are then left with the habit.
To break the habit requires you to replace it with another, more healthy habit. It also required you to break association with that friend status, and it requires you to get used to seeing yourself as being in control, because when you are dependant on a habit, that is not the case.
Why are Smoking and Vaping that Bad?
As for cigarettes, there are more than 7,000 chemicals in tobacco! Of these, 250 are said to be harmful and 69 said to be carcinogenic. Some friend you’ve got there!
And I’m sure that you are aware that, according to The Australian Department of Health:
The chemicals in tobacco smoke can damage your body in many ways. For example:
- Nicotine narrows your veins and arteries. This can
- damage your heart by forcing it to work faster and harder
- slow your blood and reduce oxygen to your feet and hands.
- Carbon monoxide deprives your heart of the oxygen it needs to pump blood around your body. Over time, your airways swell up and let less air into your lungs.
- Tar is a sticky substance that coats your lungs like soot in a chimney.
- Phenols paralyse and kill the hair-like cells in your airways. These cells sweep clean the lining of your airways and protect them against infections.
- Tiny particles in tobacco smoke irritate your throat and lungs and cause ‘smoker’s cough’. This makes you produce more mucus and damages lung tissue.
- Ammonia and formaldehyde irritate your eyes, nose and throat.
- Cancer-causing chemicals make your cells grow too fast or abnormally. This can result in cancer cells.
I’m sure that you are also aware that vaping is just as harmful as smoking. Johns Hopkins University state that the following components of the vape are most concerning:
Diacetyl: This food additive, used to deepen e-cigarette flavors, is known to damage small passageways in the lungs. Formaldehyde: This toxic chemical can cause lung disease and contribute to heart disease. Acrolein: Most often used as a weed killer, this chemical can also damage lungs.
Added to this is the actual poisonous nicotine, if that’s what you’re inhaling, and the vitamin e which, when inhaled, acts as an irritant to the lungs.
So how much nicotine does it take to kill an adult? 30-60 milligrams or about 0.006087 tsp – 0.012173 tsp, OR about one drop people!!!
What Have You Got to Lose?
Only the cost, the worry of disease, the sensation of having the life sucked out of you, the feeling of being controlled by a stupid habit, possibly the unhealthy impact upon your children, feeling like an outcast, the stink on your cloths and hair, the filthy ashtrays, the yellow teeth, and much, much more!
Isn’t it time you ditched that ‘friend’? If you are ready, let’s talk. Horizons Clinical Hypnotherapy Sunshine Coast