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Smoking: A quitter's tale The power of suggestion, plus $39 and a little willpower, help our intrepid reporter kick the habit Tuesday, July 07, 1998 By Robert Dvorchak, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
It's easy to quit smoking," Rodney Dangerfield says in his stand-up comedy routine. "I've done it lots of times."
Like a whole lot of poor souls who got hooked on nicotine, I've quit lots of times myself - only to fire up a cigarette again when the cravings, oh, those addictive cravings, overwhelmed all rational thought.
But now I'm smoke-free, and have been for more than three weeks, thanks to my own iron willpower and a guaranteed, habit-busting program that involves hypnosis.
I have to say it's been a breeze. And if anybody wants to make something of it, watch out, 'cause I'll rip your head off and stuff something down your neck and . . . Oops. Sorry. It's never easy.
And I'm glad this money-back program is working because I called the people who guaranteed it - Optima Health Care Services of Waltham, Mass. - and get nothing but a malfunctioning recording. So I can't tell you their success rate and I wonder if anybody who didn't quit smoking got their money back.
This whole episode started when Health Editor Virginia Linn circulated an electronic message through the newsroom looking for guinea pigs, I mean volunteers, to check out an ad for a stop smoking program. The $39 fee was paid by the paper, so I had nothing to lose but about two hours of my time. Besides, I wanted to quit. I had promised myself I was going to quit after I wrote my last book - six years ago. I just kept putting it off.
The ad guaranteed I would stop smoking in two hours or I'd get my money back, and if I wasn't completely satisfied at the end of 60 days, they promised to send back another 25 percent. (I would feel better, though, if the phone number they gave us worked.)
Anyhow, I showed up in the Westinghouse Room at the Pittsburgh Green Tree Marriott. I could tell right away it was the stop-smoking room because a lot of people who wanted to quit smoking were outside puffing away before the program started. Such is the grip nicotine has on the body and mind.
Inside the room, a tape recorded voice said over and over and over: "Cigarette smoking is a poison to my body. I need my body. Therefore, I owe it to myself to take care of my body. And the best way I can do that right now is to choose not to smoke."
(There's no question it's a poison. In one of its forms, nicotine is used as an insecticide. Maybe they should put that on the outside of each pack.)
Anyway, about 80 of us plunked down our $39, stubbed out our last - or what we thought was our last - cigarette and sat in on the session. It was a mix of older, middle-aged and younger people, with more women than men.
Everybody in that room wanted to quit, God bless 'em. Because most smokers know the habit will probably kill them, and they've always thought they were going to quit eventually, but somehow they just never quite do it. I even denied I was a smoker. I just didn't want to admit I was hooked.
The class gave all the classic reasons for quitting. Some were ordered to stop by their doctors. Some wanted to live to see their grandkids grow up. Some wanted to kick an addiction. Others were tired of being social pariahs. Others wanted to be free of smelly clothes and offensive breath. And others wanted to save money.
Now to be honest, the whole thing was a little hokey. I mean, I know smoking is bad and all, and yet I had to sit with a room full of strangers and be reminded that a cigarette is merely a device to administer a drug.
I almost got up and asked for my, I mean the newspaper's, money back when the host explained the treatment was patterned after est, which stands for Erhard Seminars Training, a self-awareness movement that became trendy with yuppies and self-absorbed baby boomers back in the Seventies. The guy who started it was a Philadelphia car salesman who made a bundle and skipped the country to evade the tax man. But I sat through the exercise anyway. Besides, I had to write a story about it.
Most of the first hour was taken up with weight gain, and I was getting bored, which is why I started smoking in the first place. And then we were all told to take a break, which meant everybody went outside and had a cigarette or two or three.
Then it was time to get down to business.
We all had five unfiltered cigarettes and a drinking glass with a small amount of water to serve as an ashtray.
The session involved all the senses - sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. And at its heart is a series of questions and answers we repeated again and again. They went something like this:
What time is it?
It's time to quit.
What does smoking do to your lungs?
Kills them.
What does smoking do to your heart?
Kills it.
What's the enemy?
Cigarettes.
What's good about smoking?
Nothing.
What's bad about smoking?
Everything.
What are you?
A natural non-smoker.
What's it like to quit smoking?
It doesn't matter.
How did you stop smoking?
I just quit.
Why?
Because I want to live.
What would you say if someone offers you a cigarette?
No, thank you.
Just one?
No, thank you.
(The contract stipulates that you can't take photographs or record any portion of the session, and I think that's a blessing, because that Q. and A. must've sounded really funny.)
Anyway, now came the hypnosis. Or maybe I was already in a trace after that sing-song sequence. And I'm still not sure that people can be hypnotized if they don't want to be, but it was time to breathe and relax under a spell.
We were told to light up a cigarette - and with 80 smokers all puffing away, the host put on a gas mask and a spouse who was there for moral support had to leave the room before he gagged from the fumes.
While holding a puff of smoke in our mouths, sound tracks of heavy metal and rap music were played. Because the music sounds awful, and the smoke tastes awful, you equate smoking with an awful sound.
And then while we were still under hypnosis, cigarettes were equated to human waste. We were told to picture an outhouse, to conjure up the smell of an outhouse, to envision what it would be like to pull out a cigarette floating in a stream of human waste.
This was starting to make some of us sick.
"I didn't say it was going to be fun," said the man wearing the gas mask.
So any time I wanted a cigarette in the future, I would subliminally equate the smell, taste, sight and touch to human waste while hearing heavy metal or rap music.
ARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!
Then came the command to take a last drag from an unfiltered cigarette, and then drop the butt into the water glass.
"Kill the enemy," came the command.
And to combat the urge to smoke, we were instructed to take three deep breaths until the craving passed.
After being brought out of the hypnotic trance, we were told to shake hands with four strangers around us and wish them luck.
Then we left our cigarettes and lighters behind on the chair and walked away.
The physical addiction to nicotine lasts for about 48 hours. The psychological craving never goes away, because nicotine is a drug that triggers impulses in the brain that say, "This feels good. Do it again." Some say that nicotine is harder to kick than heroin.
The key is deciding to quit. Everybody knows it's the right decision. And the hypnosis technique, with the habit-blasting suggestions, helps reinforce all the negatives about smoking.
But any method still requires tons of self-control.
The urge to smoke still grips me. Just a couple of days ago, I picked a whole cigarette from the ground with the fever of a prospector who had just found gold. It took a lot of deep breaths, but the itch subsided before I inhaled any smoke. And I tossed the thing into the gutter.
So far, so good.
We'll check back in late August to see if reporter Bob Dvorchak makes it through the summer smoke-free. You can e-mail him at health@post-gazette.com.
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