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How Come We Ever Start Smoking?
Evolution of a smoker
How does a killer habit like sucking in tobacco smoke ever come into being?
Despite the fact that absolutely everyone knows that smoking is bad for your health, most smokers still choose to continue smoking.
But "choose" is the wrong word!
Many smokers would like to quit. Indeed almost all smokers who do want to quit go to enormous length in their attempts to stop smoking.
Since you're reading this article, perhaps you smoke or perhaps you want to encourage a friend or loved one to stop smoking.
Perhaps, like my 29-year-old son, you have made many attempts to stop smoking and failed. Why does this happen?
Whether you want to cut back on your own smoking or to help a loved one to quit the habit, the most important single step in successfully giving up the habit is recognizing that this is not going to be an easy thing to do.
Most smokers would readily agree that smoking is not a sensible habit. Perhaps they become discouraged when loved ones complain of the smell. Perhaps they're worried about the health effects.
A few, like my mother, who smoked heavily for 50 years, insist that nothing gives them greater pleasure than a cigarette and that the money which cigarettes cost is money well spent.
But most smokers would rather not see their money go up in smoke !
The average tobacco hound can see quite clearly that s/he is absolutely literally burning up their cash.
Few people like to come right out and use the words, but the evidence is overwhelming that cigarette smoking is addictive, which means that smokers are hooked on their fix and will experience extremely unspleasant physical symptoms when they try to stop.
Some would say, that tobacco is more addictive than cocaine.
Whatever your view on the question of why it's so difficult to give up smoking, everyone agrees that it cannot be an easy thing to do.
For many years now, the focus of the medical community with regard to smoking has been to try to create an anbience which encourages quitting.
But there would be no need to to encourage smokers to give up their habit, if they hadn't developed a habit in the first place.
What makes a person begin to smoke, despite of the negative press that smoking has received for so many years?
Only very rarely will you come across a smoker who found the first cigarette pleasurable.
For as long as I can remember, a standard joke has been the tale of a young boy stealing his father's cigars, trying to smoke one, going green, and suffering horribly as a result of his folly.
How the father responds to this escapade is often shown in print and on screen as a measure of the nature of the man and of the depth and closeness (or otherwise) of the relationship between father and son.
Many teenagers start smoking because of peer group pressure. The desire to be one of the crowd is much stronger in teens. A lot of teens start to smoke because they want to look cool. If their friends are smokers then there's a lot pressure on them to take up tobacco.
Some teens feel that smoking makes them more 'grown up'. And perhaps some begin to smoke because they're rebelling against influence in the home, or at school. Most youngsters know that smoking is dangerous, so lecturing them about the harm they're doing their health is not going to do any good at all. Quite the reverse!!
If you're reading this because you're the concerned parent of a teen whom you've just discovered has taken up the tobacco habit, help is at hand.
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