Читать книгу F*ck tobacco! - Артём Овечкин, Николай Косенков - Страница 3

You’ll probably never find a person who doesn’t know that smoking is harmful, even if he or she doesn’t use to speak to experts and physicians. Nevertheless, not everyone can answer the more important question: what harm is it? Surprisingly, sometimes a piece of expert advice helps quit smoking. People quit and do not smoke for a year or longer. Many people admit that even though this information could be a powerful motivator to quit smoking, no more than half of the smokers had got it.

Hence, the potential effectiveness of informing a person about the specific threats of smoking for his health by any counseling psychologist becomes quite obvious since it increases the probability of successful quitting. For this reason, every counseling psychologist, every person who is about to quit, must know the information presented in this chapter.

I am going to provide a somewhat detailed description of the harmful effects of smoking on human health in this book, and I consider it justified and necessary. Knowledge of the dangers of tobacco is a powerful tool; it should be successfully applied in everyday life and counseling.

Cigarettes cause a lot of physical and emotional pain both to smokers and their relatives. Therefore, sometimes when I look at thousands of people with a smoking cigarette on the streets of my city, and at thousands of people who relatively indifferent look at these smokers, I begin to wonder if the people are in their right mind and aware of what they are doing. I used to be like this for eighteen years. Sometimes I hated myself for not being able to stop smoking, but then I managed to quit smoking for a short while. But then I returned to smoking because I did not have the knowledge that I have now. To emphasize once again the importance of this chapter, I’ll quote here the words of the famous tobacco addiction counselor Allen Carr: “Just for a moment take your head out of the sand and ask yourself, if you knew for certain that the next cigarette would be the one to trigger off cancer in your body, whether you would smoke it. The thing is that any cigarette can trigger it off! It’s a sort of Russian roulette! What is going to happen to your family and loved ones, your plans, and your dreams? I often see the people that it happens to. They didn’t think it would happen to them either, and the worst thing about it isn’t the disease itself but the knowledge they have brought it on themselves.

They then see the “habit” as it is and spend the remainder of their lives thinking, “Why did I kid myself I needed to smoke? If only I had the chance to go back!” (my comments are written in italic. – А. Ovechkin)”4.

We’ll talk about the feeling of guilt and regret in the second chapter, and now I turn directly to the dangers of smoking and its effect on human health.

Eva, 40

I started smoking in high school, and by the age of 30, I had been dying to quit. I got tired of this nasty addiction. I got tired of the need to hide it from my loved ones. Even being an adult, an independent person, I used to hide from my grandparents to smoke because they would never understand it. I never smoked when my little daughter was around. At work, I also had to look for time and place to smoke a cigarette. My boss did not smoke, and I was embarrassed to ask him for a smoke break. I decided that I should quit smoking before health issues started. The idea had been brewing in my mind for a while. I went to bed and woke up, thinking about it. But I just couldn’t quit cold turkey. Eventually, I pulled myself together and did it. I haven’t smoked for 5 years. I wish I had done this earlier.

Any smoker can quit smoking! FUCK TOBACCO!

☺ Sergeant: “Why shouldn’t a soldier march across a parade ground with a burning cigarette?”

Rookie: “Quite right, sir! I can’t realize it too! Why shouldn’t he?”