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Smoking has often been described as suicide in slow motion or even derogatively described as a fire on one end, and a fool on the other and yet thousands of young people continue to take up the activity while thousands more of their older compatriots continue smoking seemingly unwilling or unable to give up this destructive habit.

So why is it with all the apparent information which abounds on the deleterious effecst of smoking do we still have people taking up or continuing to smoke? This, to, in the face of irrefutable evidence that smoking is extremely bad for your health.

This could be partly due to ignorance by the general populace on the actual dangers of tobacco. This is not as far fetched as it might seem for even though I smoked cigarettes for 27 years, fnally stopping on October 17, 2000, it was only then that I started learning about what happens to your innards when you smoke. How you affect even those around you when you smoke.

Yet for years I had continued to say that I would quit and indeed many times I did do so only to resume after one week, or even 24 hours. I could feel I was often short of breath and got winded easily after hardly any exertion, I knew my clothes smelled, my teeth were stained and so were some of my fingernails but still I smoked.

Some mornings I woke coughing so badly that I thought I was dying. yet I still smoked. Studies indicate thjat this persistence in continuing to smoke are partly due to the effective early learning which is subsequently reinforced many thousands of times over by each puff the smoker takes and partly due to the nicotine addiction.

People also rationalise away their irrational (smoking) behaviour and it is not uncommon to hear statements such as my grandfather live to 100 years and he smoked filte-less cigarettes. maybe he he would have live to be 120 if he had not smoked. Others reason that "there will be a cure for cancer before they die" or "since I have never felt sick Im perfectly OK so why should I quit?"

A lot of this rationalisation is also based on the fact that a lot of harm caused by cigarettes is not immediate but long term. They thus appear remote and are filled away in the subconcious 'in' tray to be dealt with in that hazy time called the future. If cigarettes caused immediate harm smoking would die a natural death.

But given that most smokers start in their teenage years, an age which many feel invincible and are also prone to taking risks and making uninfomred choices usually by the time one realises the danger, they are tightly hooked.

yet smoking is a learned behaviour as no one is born a smoker. The Tomkins-Horn-Waingrow (Silvan S. Tomkins, daniel Horn, Selwyn M. Waingrow) have classified smokers according to their charesteristics and the reasons why they continue smoking.

Stimulation. According to these reasearchers ahigh score on this means you are as smoker that gets a lift from smoking, that it perhaps helps you wake up or keep going. But the perking-up effect is from nictotine's temporary stimulation which gives brief relief from fatigue. For this kind of smoker who wants to quit a safe substitute like brisk walking or exercise whenever one feels like smoking.

Handling - Oral Gratification. Looked at from a Freudian perspective, smoking can be seen as the satisffaction of infantile need to suck or chew or what is seen as a fixation of the libidinal energy at the oral or mouth level.

They go on to define two-thirds of all smokers smoke for pleasurable relaxation. This is the tyupe of smoker who smokes for positive feelings of achievement or after a meal or a job well done. yet it is this group who get real pleasure out of smoking who find it easiest to quit when they relaise the harm smoking causes them.

Crutch-tension reduction. If you are this kind of smoker, you use smoking to manage negative effects from feelings of anger or fear or even anxiety. So when the going gets tough you turn to the cigarette. If you are this type of smoker you will find it easy to quit when everything is going well but when the going gets rough or there is a crisis are easily tempted to start again.

If you are the kind of smoker who smokes because of craving-psychological and physical addiction quitting is much more difficult for immediately you extinguish one cigarette the desire for the next one starts to build up. According to an article The Chemistry of Smoking in Time magazine of February 21, 1977 smoking does not contrary to popular belief reduce anxiety or calm nerves.

What actually occurs is tha under stress, your body depletes the body's nicotine, making you smoke more under stress to maintain your usual nicotine level. For this kind of smoker, quitting cannor be attempted by tapering off, but by going "cold turkey" or stopping cold.

Habit. Here is where as a smoker you have involuntarily established a pattern and whenever you recieve a cue like a cup of coffeee or you are near an ashtray, you light up. if you are this kind of smoker, you no longer feel the satisfaction, relaxation, security or whatever else you used to get from smoking.

In fact you no longer get a lot of statisfaction from cigarettes and if you can find a way to break these patterns you have developed you cannot only easily quit but stay off. The key to sucess is also becoming aware of each cigarette you smoke. Every time you feel like smoking, ask yourself, do I really need this cigarette? Often the answer will suprise you - 'I do not!'

David Ogot is a journalist/producer and the programmes director of the goinghomedotcom Trust, a media NGO involved in drug absue awareness. A receovering alcoholic, he can be reached at goinghomedotcom@yahoo.com website:www.goingomekenya.org

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