Common withdrawal effects include:
- Irritability
- Difficulty in concentrating
- Craving for another cigarette
Fortunately, by stopping smoking you can improve your health and live a longer life. Cigarettes cost you a lot of money and its all for nothing: a 20-a-day smoker now spends over £2,000 a year on cigarettes. Also, if you’re a person who wants to have a healthy skin, well, with smoking there is no chance as smoking causes wrinkled and damaged skin, so it is better to quit. So despite all the challenges smokers have to face to quit, it can be done. Between year 1988 and 2004 there are 1.2 million less smokers in England only.
Nicotine is very addictive making us struggle to quit smoking. But there are many different ways of giving up. Some are more effective than others and some are much more expensive than others. The most important thing is always how much you want to give up. Each smoker has to find the method that suits them best and helps them become a non-smoker because everyone respond and behave in different ways.
Three examples of ways to stop smoking:
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Smoke aversion therapy (25% effectiveness of method) -Aversion therapy is a type of behaviour modification relying on punishment or negative reinforcement. An individual learns that by doing something or behaving in a certain way, an unpleasant consequence can be avoided.
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Group withdrawal clinics (24% effectiveness of method) - a clinic that provides advice by nurses or people who have experienced smoking with a group of smokers.
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Education (18% effectiveness of method) - providing information to pupils about diseases or causes of smoking.
The most effective method out of the three is the smoke aversion therapy because it has shown that 25% of smokers if useful to them in this way. It is quite obvious that if you help a smoker to identify where they weaken to have a cigarette then they will be able to realise that they should do something at that moment to prevent themselves from smoking. That is exactly what they advice you in a smoke aversion therapy as this helps the smoker to take more control of themselves approaching their way of habits whereas in the other two methods it does not approach the mind in the same manner but you could say that the group withdrawal clinic is quite close but because it does not deal with where the smoker begins to smoke and why, it drops it’s effectiveness although the percentages between the two are only 1% so both methods are valuable.
The group withdrawal clinics are better to attend for a smoker than education. The reasons for this could be because it is a ‘group clinic’ it helps smokers to gain support from people and also learn and compare themselves with each other. Unlike having an education you don’t get as much people who have had the same experience as you, which brings the confidence level down, but also it does not affect the way you think because it’s the same with cigarette packages. Although they provide warnings of health risks, people still buy them in millions!
The least effective method out of the three is education. Education only informs the people but they do not tackle the psychological matters in smokers because giving up smoking is only easier when you use a method that includes you knowing your habits and psychological matters and ‘education’ for smokers does not provide a lot of that information.
I think that smoke aversion therapy is a very good way to make smokers non-smokers, as the smoker can gain a lot of support and with the help of behaviour modification and individual learns it will make it easier for the smoker to fight against the nicotine. However, I don’t think that a smoker can really become a non-smoker if he or she does not wish it sincerely because a smoker can become a non-smoker without even using the effective method. It’s because that person really wants to give up on cigarettes and unlike most smokers they don’t try to put the effort in. Some people are peer pressured and some just give up because of their difficulties in life so it varies quite a lot. Quitting is difficult for smokers but I believe that a smoker will not be able to stop unless they set there mind to it. That is why there is no method that is 100% effective because it relies on that person and his or her decision.
LOCAL AUTHORITIES
The local authorities are taking action on cigarette littering sending out Street Litter Control Notice to keep Britain tidy. They will provide more smoking shelters especially in places like hospitals and hotels to keep other people safe and away from passive smoking. They shall provide more education for teenagers to lower the amount of teenage smokers in the UK and more notices will be around for teenagers to help them quit smoking with the help of a smoker who has become a non-smoker. As education increases, there will also be more clinics to help smokers with classes around the UK.
