Growing up in smoke

‘You gotta quit smoking!’ Now that’s easy to say when you’re a non-smoker, right? There are a lot of practical guides to help smokers get off the habit though. But I happen to give advice from a personal experience perspective. The Good Book says in Job 32:8 ‘It is the spirit in a person, the breath of the Almighty, that gives them understanding.’ A couple of years ago my heart broke when I lost my only and dear sister (in her mid-late fifties) very swiftly to lung cancer, and there was nothing I could do to save her life.       

Although we take it for granted that cigarette smoking is part of our western culture, smoking tobacco only started around the 1400’s with Native Americans. They superstitiously believed that ‘Tobacco is a gift from the Creator, and that the exhaled tobacco smoke carries one’s thoughts and prayers to heaven.’ and history Smoking was later introduced to Europeans in the form of pipes en later also cigars. Cigarette is the French word for ‘small cigar’. Cigarette smoking became a recreational drug use in the late 18th century bourgeoisie. During the 1930’s cigarette smoking became popular among women, as they were taught ‘smoking etiquette’ at women’s gatherings and clubs, promoted by the tobacco industry. Back then smoking cigarettes was a sophisticated thing to do. Only because of scientific revelations in the mid-20th century, did tobacco become recognized as a cause for cancer, as well as for other diseases. Since that time it has been confirmed that the inhalation of tobacco smoke carries a serious health risk. Nicotine, the primary psychoactive chemical in tobacco, is addictive.

At my parents’ and grandparents home in the mid 1950‘s, people always used to smoke. As a small child I remember getting acquainted to the smell of cigarettes and ashes at home. This always went with drinking coffee or liquor of some kind in a room full of visitors. Some younger and older women would smoke cigarettes with a filtered tip (or using a white plastic mouthpiece) as I sat on their laps. As a three-year-old I would be obsessed with the red lipstick stains on some cigarettes in the ashtrays. Even though I hated the smoke hurting my eyes, I fantasized about holding a cigarette between my lips like my father and other grown-ups did.

Lucky Strike

Later when I started to attend school, we sometimes used to get these chocolate cigarettes as little presents. Famous brands like Lucky Strike and Pall Mall would bring these mini boxes with imitation chocolate cigarettes for sale on the market, to stimulate smoking at an early age. Can you imagine? They would even advertise images of children playfully ‘smoking’ their chocolate imitations. Advertising campaigns to sell these chocolate ‘cigarettes’ actually stimulated the urge of young kids to pick up smoking real cigarettes later in life. 

So, when I became a teenager in the Sixties, smoking a cigarette was one of the first things I wanted to do. My parents who smoked themselves were harsh on me though, so I could never try smoking near our home. But at school at the age of fourteen, my school friends and I started to read the papers, go to the cinema to watch movies and sometimes roam around the city streets. We would see cigarette advertising campaigns with slogans like: ‘Let Your Throat Enjoy Smooth Smoking‘ and ‘Reward Yourself With The Pleasure of Smooth Smoking’. In those days our movie star heroes would smoke in the films, and we wanted to be as tough and rugged as they were.

Many movie actors and pop singers became our role models and of course we wanted to smoke like they did. At the age of twenty-seven I was in the middle of a divorce and a custody fight, smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. It took a life crisis and a declining health for me to come to terms with the fact that my life needed a complete make-over. 

Hippie Culture

Because of what I went through as a smoker, I know how it feels when you are in it. I know how it tastes and I also know the downside of smoking. One morning I became very aware how bound I was to these chains of nicotine, and how smoking became a habit that almost ruined my body. With the Sixties and the Seventies the Hippie culture came and smoking cigarettes (tobacco) became a step up to smoking Marijuana and other Cannabis sativa-like plants that originate in Central Asia. This was promoted by many young people who went searching for the meaning of life and were drawn to Eastern Transcendental meditation experiences. As a young man, smoking cigarettes became a drug habit like any other. It kept my immune system weak and gave my lungs little room to breathe.

At first smoking tobacco was introduced and welcomed as pleasurable, until it quickly developed into a horrific habit destroying millions of lives in the western world. Today you may enjoy some of the moments lighting up a cigarette, like I did back then. Still, perhaps you are seeking a way to get rid of your smoking habit. The first thing you have to know is that you are loved and created as a unique person, worthy of living a happy and fulfilled life. Even in this imperfect world. If healthy and fit, your body is a perfectly working ‘machine’ intended to be well maintained and protected. But that is not an end in itself. Your body is just a ‘vehicle’ or a ‘tent’ for the real spirit person that you are within. Like an astronaut who needs a special space suit to be able to survive in space, you need your earthly body to live and move on earth. So therefore you should care for your body and keep it fit, otherwise you will leave your ‘suit’ prematurely. 

Many among us have such great potential, but we never seem able to reach our goal and purpose in life, because something is holding us back or we hurt ourselves by poisoning our system. I have experienced the road from failure to hopelessness to a balanced and fulfilled lifestyle. New adventures and positive changes are within your reach, if you learn to be in control of your thoughts, senses and actions. Cigarette smoking is the same as taking drugs. It hurts your lungs and blood system, and therefore it also has a negative effect on your sex life. Alcohol and energy drinks stimulate the behavior of smoking. Nicotine stimulates your brains at the beginning, but its effect is gone after a very short while. So then you want another cigarette. As you repeat this pattern though, your body requires more and more of that killing stuff. Then it becomes a vicious circle with no escape.

Every bad habit and the struggle to quit that habit, is a battle largely fought in the area between your ears.   

Passive smoking
In other words, just like the moment you deliberately started smoking, you can make the decision today to deliberately quit smoking. And the injection to do it, is your will. Common fatal diseases related to smoking include lung cancer, asthma, cancer of the larynx or esophagus and heart disease. Check out what the smokers death rate is in your country. You will find out that even nonsmokers can get sick by inhaling the smoke of others. We call this ‘passive smoking’. Can you as a smoker bear the responsibility of poisoning the nonsmokers around you with the same toxins you are inhaling? Especially children are the victims of this, because their fragile internal organs are still growing. Therefore many children develop asthma, bronchitis and other infections as a result of being around smokers. Unborn children with a smoking parent often develop little resistance and the chances are serious that they themselves grow up smoking or taking drugs.

How many reasons do you need to quit smoking? As a loving parent you do want the best for your child, right? Such motivation must give you wings to change your life for good. You can stop smoking today and offer yourself and your children a better future. 

Thank you, I appreciate your upvote!

[Historical data and quotations from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.]

If you want to quit smoking effectively, the best thing would be to go cold turkey. But if you need a more indepth inspiration and steps to walk through, you can get the Kindle eBook at Amazon: ‘How To Quit Smoking - A Christian Motivational Guide’ by Jack Portimer. Condensed and very inspiring.