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I do not think that, today, anyone doubts the direct involvement of tobacco in the development of numerous serious diseases and, derived from these, in the death of a huge number of people around the world.
Suffice it to comment that, according to the Ministry of Health, In Spain, the annual average number of deaths attributable to its consumption is around 52,000 people. (7 million worldwide). There is no smoker who does not know that tobacco kills, but despite all the information that is available, millions of people continue to buy their daily pack.
Smoking kills you, but you keep smoking
From the government and the media, trying to raise awareness of the serious public health problem that supposes tobacco, which is presented (and rightly so) as a terrible enemy that must be fought against to get smokers to give up the habit.
To sensitize the population about the disastrous effects of its consumption, millions of euros are invested in massive advertising campaigns that we can see on billboards, newspapers, Internet advertisements, and even on the same packets that, by law, carry warning messages such as “Smoking can kill” or shocking photos of damaged organs.
However, andThe effect of these messages on reducing consumption is almost nil and not a day goes by without us seeing a large number of men and women, young and old, smoking in the street, in front of bars, shops, schools, in the car or (even if it is prohibited) in the bathrooms of their center of work.
The smoke doesn’t let you see the cause
On the other hand, for people who want to quit smoking, the task is very complex, and it is not easy to quit. Despite the fact that patches, gum, electronic cigarettes or even brief hypnosis to quit smoking are available to them, theyNone of these methods is 100% effective..
Although it must be recognized that these techniques may have some short-term effectI know many people who have followed them who, sooner or later, have turned to cigarettes again when life has confronted them with highly stressful situations that they did not know how to handle and that was generating enormous anxiety (a death, an illness , a job change or a breakup, for example).
In consultation I have had many of them. Other times, smokers actually succeed in quitting, but they end up falling into any other type of hook like candies or sunflower seeds. In these cases, what happens is that these people substitute one addiction for another.
Surely many people still remember the image of Johan Cruyff with a lollipop in his mouth after quitting smoking.
Neither advertising campaigns nor techniques that promise miraculous results are successful in the medium or long term because they are not addressing the real problem behind tobacco addictionanxiety, or rather, the few tools to manage anxiety and stress.
Anxiety is the fuse of your addiction
People smoke because when they feel anxious and stressedthe stimulus produced by the adrenaline discharge from nicotine in the body supposedly helps them to calm their anxiety, that is, to get rid of the intense feeling of anguish, fear, and lack of control that they feel in a situation that for them They find it highly stressful.
However, in reality, tobacco does not help to calm anxiety, quite the contrary, and as some scientific study has already shown, smoking causes increased anxiety and it is only when people quit the habit that this sensation really diminishes in them.
When someone comes to my office to quit smoking, I always explain that the fundamental work we must do is to reduce anxiety and learn new healthy ways to cope with stressful situations.
Of course, for a time, we can turn to the substitutes offered by the industry to reduce our physical dependence on nicotine, but we cannot allow them to become a new addiction to act as a substitute for the old one.
Before you quit smoking, leave your anxiety behind
My objective with these people is not focused on reducing consumption from day one, but rather We start doing relaxation exercises and working on stressful situations from their past, from their personal history, analyzing how they have felt emotionally, how they have reacted and looking for healthier and more assertive alternatives to be able to apply in similar moments of their present.
I do not think it is advisable to force a reduction in the number of cigarettes from the beginning, since there is a risk of having to resort to a substitute that helps calm anxiety.
Sometimes, as a result of a positive side effect When we work on the true origin of addiction to tobacco (as we already discussed anxiety), we even managed to reduce cigarette consumption without doing any specific work for it.
Angel’s case
This was what happened to Ángel, who He went to therapy for a sleep problem derived from various stressful situations that he was facing both at work and in his love life. In the second or third session, he told me that he was a smoker, but that, at that stage of his life, he was not considering quitting.
His concern was centered on his difficulty sleeping and this was what we worked on in subsequent sessions. However, after a few weeks, Ángel told me, pleasantly surprised, that I had noticed that I was smoking much less.
He no longer felt that agonizing need to smoke when he got up in the morning, nor did he suddenly find himself holding a lit cigarette in his hand, not remembering how he got there. Simply, she felt that she did not like him and had reduced consumption naturally up to 5 or 6 cigarettes a day.
After noticing the change in his relationship with tobacco, the young man seriously considered quitting. A specific session on the subject in question was enough to leave it definitively.
Ángel had already advanced a lot in his personal history and in his work managing anxiety and he only had to realize that he no longer needed tobacco to calm down, but could do it himself.
That same night, Ángel sent me a message to tell me that he hadhe had thrown away his last pack of tobaccoHe also wrote to tell me that he would never buy one again.