Great American Smokeout Today

If you awoke today, conveniently forgot that Thursday was 27th Great American Smokeout and have already put more nicotine back into your body, don't allow yet another denial rationalization to deprive you from tasting freedom. Whether you start your journey at lunch, dinner, bedtime or before that next puff, the Smokeout is an all day invitation to take one small step towards home.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(PRWEB) November 20 2003 -- "One day, one moment, one simple decision was all it took to change my life forever" says Marty, a London ex-smoker of three years. A member of the internet's oldest cold turkey quitting forum - WhyQuit - Marty is just one of thousands of online ex-smokers waiting to reach-out and help at scores of online peer support forums.

Alyson, an eighteen month ex-smoker from Brooklyn, asks smokers to reflect upon whether "you smoke because you want to or because you have to?" "Try not smoking for a day to find out," suggests Alyson. If you are one of those who "have" to smoke, what is nicotine addiction and how did you become dependent upon it?

Nicotine is the tobacco plant's natural protection from insects. Drop for drop it's more lethal than strychnine and three times deadlier than arsenic. Yet, amazingly, by chance, this insecticide's chemical structure is so similar to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine that once inside the brain it fits a host of chemical locks permitting it control of more than 200 neurochemicals.

According to WhyQuit, within eight seconds of that first-ever inhaled puff, nicotine arrived at the brain's reward pathways where it generated a flood of dopamine resulting in an immediate "aaahhh" satisfaction sensation. It would cause most first-time inhalers to soon return for more. Nicotine also fit the adrenaline locks releasing a host of flight or flight neurochemicals and select serotonin locks impacting mood.

A toxic poison, the brain's defenses fought back but in doing so it had no choice but to also alter sensitivity to acetylcholine, the body's conductor of an entire orchestra of neurochemicals.

In some neuro-circuits the brain diminished the number of receptors available to receive nicotine, in others it diminished the number of available transporters and in still other regions it grew millions of extra neurons, almost as if trying to protect itself by more widely disbursing the insecticide.

There was only one problem. All the physical changes engineered a new tailored neurochemical sense of normal, built entirely upon the presence of nicotine. Now, any attempt to quit using it would come with a risk of hurtful anxieties and powerful mood shifts. An addiction was born.

The brain's protective adjustments insured that any attempt to stop would leave the quitter temporarily desensitized. Their dopamine reward system would briefly offer-up few rewards, their nervous system would grow anxious over the status quo being altered, and mood circuitry might briefly find it difficult to climb beyond depression.

"Successful nicotine dependency recovery is developing the patience to allow the mind the time needed to readjust to functioning normally, and the recovering addict time to both readjust to their brain's adjustments and to again comfortably engaging all aspects of life without wanting to smoke nicotine," says John R. Polito, WhyQuit's founder.

"The body's nicotine reserves decline by about half every two hours," says Polito. "It's not only the basic chemical half-life clock which determines mandatory nicotine feeding times, when quitting it's also the clock that determines how long it takes before the brain begins bathing in nicotine free blood-serum, the moment that real healing begins."

According to WhyQuit it can take up to 72 hours for the blood-serum to become nicotine-free and 90% of nicotine's metabolites to exit the body via the quitter's urine. It's then that the anxieties associated with readjustment normally peak in intensity and begin to gradually decline.

"But just one powerful puff of nicotine and the quitter faces another 72 hours of detox anxieties," says Polito. "It's why the one puff survival rate is almost zero."

"Most people succeed by coming to grips with the idea that to stay smoke-free they cannot take a puff on a cigarette," says Spitzer, a 26-year Chicago clinics director and WhyQuit's director of education. "Try to find one person who once had quit but are now smokers again who didn't take a puff. Finding one such person is going to take you the rest of your life."

"Contrary to the bill of goods being sold to smokers, most quitters are still quitting cold turkey and more importantly the vast majority of successful quitters also quit by going cold turkey," says Spitzer.

According to the American Cancer Society's Cancer Facts & Figures 2003 report, 81% of current quitters and 91.2% of former successful quitters quit entirely on their own without any resort to any quitting aids.

"Save your hard earned money," says Spitzer, "quitting should cost you nothing."

Is time distortion a normal recovery symptom? Do subconscious crave episodes last less than three minutes? Does the number of episodes peak at an average of six on day three? Does nicotine really double the rate at which caffeine is metabolized? Can difficulty concentrating during recovery often be easily corrected?

These are a few of the hundreds of nicotine dependency recovery issues explored in detail at WhyQuit and other cessation education forums across the internet. But what's the bottom line when it comes to successful recovery?

According to Spitzer, "our members and the vast majority of long-term ex-smokers have learned what they need to do to successfully stay smoke-free which is simply knowing to never take another puff!"

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