THE NICOTINE TRAP

A twelve-year-old boy nattily lights a cigarette and inhales the smoke covering his eyes with joy. He holds his breath for a second and begins blowing thin smoke rings. Six of his friends aged 10 to 12 years watch his tricks with admiration and express their delight with friendly cheers. It is the age of active contradictions, protests and "heroic acts" to bolster own image. The age when you want to imitate the adults, defending your right to be independent. A stranger passing by the gang of teenagers says: "Smoking kills not only rabbits, but horses." The response was just an amicable gay laughter, which proves that they did not take his words seriously. I recalled this episode from real life when I imagined the future of these boys while visiting a patient in the clinic.

The Future

I am in a hospital room. He is 39 years old. He cannot get out of his bed or walk on his own, and talks with great difficulty. The excess of nicotine in the body has damaged his brain, locomotion system, senses of perception of the surrounding world and his own personality. What you see is extremely disturbing indeed. He has 25 to 30 cigarettes per day for thirty years since the age of nine! Now his body is so "dilapidated" that doctors could hardly return him back to life. But even in a semi-conscious state, he asked to give him a cigarette making several puffs to relax himself. The most interesting thing happened afterwards, when he asked another patient in the room: "Where are you going to go when you are discharged?". "Home," he answered. "But I will go to the pub! I'll drink a big mug of cold beer and smoke a cigarillo!" said our patient dreamily.

A smoker’s dilemma

Surprisingly, any smoker continues dreaming of a cigarette even when he or she is about to die. But why? I cannot believe that it is only a matter of weak will, addiction to rituals or a mythical theory that the smoking helps solving problems. Never ever has a cigarette helped anybody in solving the problems! Rather, it creates even more problems, which negatively influence both the health and financial status of the smoker and his family. It would seem that it is time for the smokers to stop and to think if the cigarettes are indeed vital? Is it worth shortening your life if makes you a helpless invalid after some period, whatever the lengths might be? The power of tobacco products over the humanity is truly unlimited. Apart from generating lavish incomes for tobacco companies, the cigarettes have taken lives of many men and women. Among them are showbiz celebrities, monarchs and mere mortals such as King of England George IV (57), Muslim Magomayev (66), Anna Samokhina (47), Patrick Swayze (56), Andrei Tarkovsky (54), Alexander Abdulov (54), Vasily Shukshin (45), Andrei Mironov (46), Joseph Brodsky (55), George Harrison (58), Walt Disney (65), Raj Kapur (63), Marcello Mastroiani (72), and Oleg Yankovsky (65). One can continue this list indefinitely. If one puts it on the matrix of the noosphere (the highest stage of biosphere’s evolution), then it will envelop the globe several dozen or even hundreds of times! Just think about it!

The cigarette boom is gaining new momentum these days. Many enlightened states realize the impending problem in many spheres of human society and thus are banning the cigarettes, developing a trend towards a healthy lifestyle. We have also witnessed this trend in our country. Many cafes and restaurants have separate sections or tables for smokers. In May 2017, the government introduced restrictions on the use of tobacco products in public places as part of the law "On restricting the use of tobacco products". The bill specifies places where the smoking is prohibited. It also prohibits the broadcasting of children's programs, films and TV shows where the smoking of tobacco products is demonstrated explicitly. Stage performances, films and TV shows for the adults must be accompanied by social advertising about the dangers of smoking.

But the people continue smoking, despite all the measures taken to combat smoking. Moreover, the number of smokers is growing faster than the number of people who quit smoking.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), smoking provokes such diseases as cancer and emphysema, diseases of the cardiovascular system. Also, in the twentieth century, smoking caused premature death of 100 million people around the world, and in the twenty-first century their number will increase to a billion.

Blitz-talk

We conducted a blitz poll among the smokers in one of the popular cafes of Baku, where the regulars are often younger than 30 years old. We asked four smoking guys waiting for their order. They have politely agreed to answer our questions but asked not to shoot them on the camera. Realizing that we were going to ask them about their addition to cigarettes, they cheered up and relaxed. It turned out that Anton (22) has smoked since 19; Mehdi (24) - since 12, Behbud (22) - since 16, and Rasul (23) did not smoke at all, actually being a passive smoker among his friends.

Do not you think that the cigarettes kill quietly and seriously damage both your physical health and personality?

No, we do not.

Mehdi: My grandfather has smoked since he was eight years old. He has smoked not only the regular cigarettes, but also the homemade ones, without filters. He has lived up to 90 years. He had good memory and did not complain about his health.

Behbud: Everyone in my family is smoking. It's like a ritual - every morning begins with a cigarette.

What do you feel when you smoke: a pleasure, joy, or a burst of energy?

Anton: I feel like a recharged battery!

Behbud: I do not feel anything like that. I simply like the taste of a cigarette on my tongue.

And how often do you feel so?

Behbud: Well, I smoke almost a pack each day. Sometimes a pack.

Mehdi: I smoke two or two and a half packs per day. I usually smoke when I have the jeebies.

Do you feel relaxed when you smoke? Does it help to solve your problems?

No, not at all. But we cannot do without a cigarette. We smoke outside, at home, at work, in a cafe.

Rasul, you are the only one who does not smoke. How do you stand the smell of smoke?

Rasul: I tried smoking when I was 9 or 10. I do not remember exactly. My father does not smoke. But he did with me what his father had done with him. When he caught me with a cigarette, he took me to the store. There he bought a pack of cigarettes, and we returned home. He put the pack and a box of matches on the table in front of me and asked me to start smoking in his presence. We were counting each one I smoked. I think I gave up on the twelfth. I felt sick, my head going round, and I had a disgusting taste in my mouth. I remember that I vomited afterwards. I felt really bad for another two days. Since then, I cannot even think about a cigarette.

Why?

Psychologists believe that most of the reasons why people cannot get rid of the cigarettes and continue smoking are purely psychological, not physiological. Smoking is more of a psychological dependence. And the key element of psychological dependence on smoking (not nicotine!) is our habits. It is similar to other habits such as biting the nails, using parasite words, brushing the teeth or drinking green tea in the morning. And like any habit, it often works automatically - we want to smoke another cigarette contrary to our will and consciousness.

You feel nervous? - You need to smoke. Finished your job? - Let’s have another one. You have to think? - What about a cigarette? You feel boring? A cigarette again! Need to talk? – Give me more! In fact, all these events are loosely associated with the level of nicotine in our blood. It is just a habit of reacting to anything with a cigarette.

The habit of smoking has its own will and its own strength, which we gave it. Or rather, thanks to regular smoking, we have cigarettes as a response to various internal and external stimuli. When we “pull out” this habit from our life, we immediately have a lot of empty space, which our psyche tries to fill. And then the lifelong habit of smoking starts filling this emptiness obsessively trying to structure our time and activities.

A doubtful pleasure

Allen Carr, a British author of books about quitting smoking and the founder of the international network of Easyway clinics operating based on the methods described in his books, was very accurate and meaningful about the habit of smoking. Carr's method is based on the self-analysis of a smoker and his personal thirty-years-old smoking experience. He asserts that the whole point of enjoying a cigarette is the sense of relief from discomfort caused by the drop of nicotine concentration in the blood.

In other words, the frequent smoking makes our body to get accustomed to the increased concentration of nicotine in the blood. Rather, we get accustomed to a certain physical and psychological condition associated with this increased concentration. The absence of this sense is experienced as discomfort, and the next cigarette helps to reduce it for a short time. What we readily accept as joy is in fact just an insignificant and short easing of our suffering caused by nicotine starvation. That's all the fun!

Alan Carr offers evaluating one’s feelings when smoking and honestly answer to the following question: "Do I really feel well and enjoy smoking?" Interestingly, the answer will be negative in most cases. Carr also suggests imagining the action of smoking (the smell of smoke, physical sensations from inhaling and exhaling tobacco smoke) every time one wishes to smoke. And again, you are requested to carefully analyze your feelings and to answer the same question. The answer should be negative again.

As one of the quitters put it: "You feel stupid. You enjoy almost nothing, but then there is a very tangible deterioration in health." The joy of smoking is fictitious, and the sooner you understand this, the easier you quit. After all, it is foolish and senseless to do things that do not give you pleasure, yet make you sacrifice your health.

Carr also says that most of all we want to smoke when we have an excess of a certain kind of energy and we do not know how to spend it effectively! Cigarettes sort of help solving this difficult task. Due to its harmful effect (virtually all substances contained in cigarette smoke, including nicotine, are extremely toxic), they compensate for this excess of energy at physiological level. Every time you want to smoke when facing an influx of energy is the same as pressing the throttle and brake in the car simultaneously. You will not move, will waste the gasoline and will break your car.

Therefore, when the next time your hand reaches for a cigarette or you catch yourself thinking that you need to go for a smoke, just ask yourself: "Why am I doing this? Will I enjoy this? Will smoking help me now to solve my vital problems? Or is it going to support and strengthen my physical and psychological dependence on her? I will not enjoy it, nor will I benefit from smoking. Nothing!"

And if you ask these questions and try to answer them, then our efforts put into writing this article were not in vain.

The doctors helped him to get up. He had to seek the support of his old mother when he was leaving the hospital room. She has been right next to him for all these days, always awake and crying.

- Son, you are my only one. I do not have anyone but you. What can I do without you? The doctors say you may not smoke more than two cigarettes every day. And you have to quit smoking completely after two months. Promise me! Promise!

- I want to see my grandchildren. I want to marry you. But if you do not quit, your wife will be your cigarette.

Her son was silent. What will happen to him when he leaves the hospital?

That we will never know…