NICODEMON’S LIES Part Five
REPOST from ClearColors (Nancy) Date Unknown
This article helped me from WhyQuit.com… Some numbers may be off - outdated - but the info is spot on. Nancy
Nicodemon's Lies? (Continued) By John R. Polito, Nicotine Cessation Educator
Our Lie: It's too late now to heal these lungs.
The Truth: Nonsense! While true that each and every puff destroyed more of each lung's roughly 300 million air sacs (alveoli), we were each blessed with millions more than needed, to live a full and complete life. It's amazing how much damaged lungs can repair themselves, unless disease or cancer has already arrived. Even with emphysema, although destroyed air sacks will never again function, quitting now will immediately halt the needless destruction of additional sacs.
You only have two options - decay or heal, including the possibility of experiencing up to a 30 percent increase in overall lung function, within 90 days of quitting. If continuing assault, by the 81 cancer-causing chemicals so far identified in cigarette smoke, which cigarette in which pack, contains the spark that gives birth to that first cancerous cell?
Our Lie: I'd quit but withdrawal never ends!
The Truth: Hogwash! If you remain 100% nicotine free, for just 72 hours, your blood will become nicotine free, your withdrawal anxieties will peak in intensity, and the number of psychological craves will peak in number. The greatest challenge will be over. Actual physical withdrawal will be complete within 2-3 weeks, as the brain re-sensitizes dopamine pathway receptors, and down-regulates their numbers to levels seen in non-smokers.
During that time you'll encounter and recondition (extinguish) all, but remote or seasonal psychological habit crave triggers, and begin to witness the gradually diminishing influence of thousands of nicotine replenishment memories… memories that belonged to an actively feeding addict, who once again was in need of a fix. If you focus on taking recovery, just one-hour challenge and day at a time, before you know it you'll experience your first day of total comfort, where never once do you think about wanting to smoke nicotine. I call it a silent celebration because you probably won't even realize that it happened, until the next day. After the first such day, they grow more and more frequent, until they become your new sense of normal.
If just starting out, the rich and deep sense of comfort and calm that awaits you, is beyond your enslaved mind's ability to comprehend. Why? Because your dopamine pathways, your mind's priorities teacher, were hijacked, making that next nicotine fix as important as eating food… Food craves… nicotine craves, are similar, but there is one critical difference. Without food we die. Without nicotine we thrive.
It's why, although as real as your name, you cannot trust the nicotine wanting message that pounds inside your head... It is false... and was destroying you.
Our Lie: But the craves last for hours!
The Truth: Just like the lingering thought of a nice juicy steak, lobster in butter sauce, or fresh baked hot apple pie, you can make yourself "think" about having a cigarette all day long… if that's what you really want to do. Unlike fixating on a conscious thought about smoking, subconsciously cue triggered crave anxiety attacks, almost always last for less than 3 minutes.
But it's important that you look at a clock, and time the crave episode as cessation time distortion (a normal and expected recovery symptom) can make minutes feel like hours. The good news is that most of the anxiety surrounding crave episodes are self-induced, and thus controllable. The key is in not trying to hide, or run, from your mind's junkie thinking, but exposing it to honest analysis and positive thinking. Strip away all the self-inflicted anxiety, and at worst, what remains on quitting day 3 for the "average" quitter is just 18 minutes of true crave anxiety (an average of six craves, each less than three minutes in duration).
Our Lie: I'll quit after the next pack, next carton, next month, my next birthday or New Years.
The Truth: Oh really? Can you count on both hands, and all your toes, how many times you've lied to yourself with such nonsense? And which pack, carton, month or birthday will give you the best chance for success? Forget buying nicotine-laden cigarettes by the pack or carton. A case is even cheaper! With the way that cigarette prices are shooting through the roof, you might as well calculate how many it will take to keep you in nicotine for life and buy them all now.
The only problem with that is in determining how long you have left to live. How many more pack, carton, birthday and New Year's lies will you tell to yourself? When will they stop? If you continue on your present path, many Birthdays will likely be canceled, by a rather early “Deathday”. You are a true drug addict, in every sense, and the "wanting" inside your brain is as real as the greatest truth you know.
What isn't true is the message, that that next fix is important. Truth is, everything now done under nicotine's influence can be done, as well as, or better without it.
Our Lie: I like to smoke when I drink, and I find myself smoking even more.
The Truth: The effects of drinking and stress upon our body's nicotine level are nearly the same. You smoke more when you drink, not because you "like" to, but because you MUST. Like stress, alcohol is an acid-producing event that causes urine to become more acidic. The greater the acid level of urine, the quicker our kidneys remove and eliminate nicotine reserves from the bloodstream. Thus, the more you drink, the more nicotine you'll need, to smoke or ingest, in order to avoid sensing the onset of the anxiety of early withdrawal.
Although early alcohol use contributes to destroying a great many quit attempts, understanding the nicotine-acid relationship can be of benefit in accelerating physical nicotine withdrawal, so that quitters can begin feeling relief sooner. Acidic fruit juices, such as cranberry, may help reduce the normal 72 hours of withdrawal required to remove all nicotine from the blood. In that roughly 50% of all relapses are associated with alcohol use, if at all possible, don't drink during the first few days of recovery. When you do decide to drink, consider drinking at home first, without cigarettes around, before testing your resolve around smokers. By doing so, you'll help to break your mind's psychological links, between smoking and drinking, with as little risk as possible.
As millions of ex-smokers can attest, your beer or drink will taste better than ever, once your taste buds are allowed an opportunity to heal.