Siemens

Social Benefits of Smoking

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We asked hundreds of habitual smokers what they like about smoking. The most frequent answers were:

* It relieves stress.

* It tastes good.

* It makes you look cool (sexually attractive).

Relieving Stress

Smoking cigarettes relieves stress. We know this because hundreds of smokers that we interviewed told us so. Stress causes:

* Heart Disease

* Ulcers

* High Blood Pressure

* Poor General Health

* Low Immunity

* Menstrual Problems

* Diabetes

* Skin Problems

* Cancer

The key question here is: does the smoking cause the disease, or is the smoking something that people are doing to relieve the stress that is the true cause? Gathering mountains of tatistics do show coincidence but can not tell anything about cause and effect.

People who are subjected to a great deal of stress get all of the above listed diseases, whether they smoke or not. Some of these diseases are fatal. Epidemiological studies of people who have these diseases show that smokers who get them statistically live about two years longer than non-smokers who get them. For instance, non-smokers who develop lung cancer die at an average age of 75 years. Smokers who develop lung cancer die at an average age of 77 years.

People who experience more stress tend to smoke more than people who experience less stress. Some people who smoke cigarettes begin chain smoking during periods of high stress. Corporate executives, who experience more stress every day than most of us would care to imagine, are often depicted continually puffing large cigars. Could such men achieve such success in highly competitive businesses without the stress relief of a good tasting cigar? Many women have told us that one of their strongest urges to smoke occurs immediately after childbirth. Sexual intercourse and orgasm are stressful and often followed by a good cigarette break.

The short term symptoms of stress are:

* Headaches

* Backaches

* Muscle Tension

* Diarrhea

* Nausea

* Digestive Problems

* Heart Palpitations

* Dizziness

* Anxiety (excessive worry)

The symptoms of anxiety are:

* Racing Heart

* Tightness or Pain in Chest

* Shortness of Breath

* Headache

* Tingling in Finger Tips

*

* Muscle Pains

*

* Muscle Weakness

*

* Dizziness

*

* Difficulty in Swallowing

*

* Abdominal Discomfort

*

* Diarrhea

*

* Frequent Urination

*

There are several medications that relieve stress. Among them are:

* Diazepam (Valium)

* Lorazepam (Ativan)

* Barbiturates (sleeping pills)

* Ethanol (liquor, alcohol)

All of these are addictive, which means that you will require a continually higher dose to get the same relief the longer you take them, that you will die from a fatal overdose if this goes on long enough, and that you will probably die from the withdrawl symptoms if you stop taking them once you are addicted. All of these, except alcohol, require a doctor's prescription. All of them are a lot more deadly and dangerous than cigarettes. Any one of them can kill you in less than ten minutes if you overdose. When a person goes into a bar to "unwind" after a stressful day, the intake of alcohol is usally accompanied by several cigarettes.

You can not die from an accidental overdose of cigarettes. You can not die from withdrawl symptoms if you stop smoking cigarettes. When you quit smoking, you will experience the stress that you were trying to relieve by smoking, but you will not die unless that stress gives you a heart attack. You will not experience a never ending need to increase your dose of cigarettes to get the same stress relief. Every smoker reaches a certain level, such as a pack a day, two packs a day, etc., and will not increase their smoking beyond that level unless external stress increases.

Smoking is an associative habit. This means that you get the urge to light up whenever you do a certain thing. For instance, some people always light a cigarette when they get in a car and start to drive. Some people always smoke a cigarette when they drink coffee. Some people only smoke when they are drinking in bars. Some people always smoke after sex. If you are a smoker, try paying attention to the times at which you light up each day. Write down what activity you were doing right before the urge to smoke came on. You will see very specific patterns after three or four days of this. If you want to quit smoking, you must break these associations. If you can not break these mental associations, then you will never quit smoking. There is no such thing as nicotine addiction. Forget that nonsense. You can't even get nicotine from smoking a cigarette because the nicotine burns at a temperature far lower than the tobacco leaf.

There is no doubt that people who smoke cigarettes tend to die of stress symptoms at a younger age than people who do not smoke. However, is smoking the cause or the effect? Could it be possible that smoking is just a marginally