How To Help Someone Quit Smoking
Before you offer help to someone to quit smoking, you should understand the harmfulness of cigarette smoking.
Nicotine, carbon monoxide, tar, ammonia, arsenic, formaldehyde, DDT and hydrogen cyanide are some of few harmful chemicals found in cigarette smoking. Nicotine is an addictive substance. Most of these risky chemicals remain in the lungs for long time, even for months and years.
When someone smokes, nicotine is inhaled into the lungs and their brain is affected in less than 6 seconds. If used in small doses, nicotine functions like a brain stimulator, while a large dose may act as a depressant and even larger doses may turn out to be fatal, affecting lungs, blood vessels, and hormonal production as well. The more someone smokes, the better he feels, the greater the damages are caused to health.
Offer Enough Encouragement
As a rational being, quite obviously you want to help people quit smoking, especially if the person is your loved one. In fact, when a smoker decides to quit smoking, his friends and family members can offer the best help to quit smoking by offering him wise moral support. Even when an individual is not enough prepared to quit smoking, it is his near ones who can motivate him to do so. If you are serious about helping your friend to quit his smoking habits, the first step you can take is to offer him your empathy and treat him as a respectable individual. You should always keep in mind that there is great individual difference in quitting behavior for each smoker.
First of all, discuss the issue of smoking with the individual you want to help to quit smoking and why he should quit. It also reveals your care for him. You must tell him to act with a positive attitude. It doesn’t really matter how many times he failed before, but assure him that this attempt must bring success to him. After quitting, the first few days he may like to talk much, almost throughout the day and he may need extra support when tough situations come up, such as tea or coffee break or post-meal period.
While offering your help to quit smoking, it may not be possible to stay around with the person, but at least call daily to ask about him. While asking, it is not necessary that you should only ask whether or not he is off from his habit, but you can ask about his feelings and how he is spending time, etc. Some of us practice nagging, scolding or preaching. The fact is, these things never work. Instead, you should let him understand how much you respect him for his attempt to quit. You should let him understand that you care him a lot irrespective of his smoking habit.
Praise And Rewards
When you offer your help someone to quit smoking, you should set up your mind to celebrate his attempt to quit smoking. You should offer lots of praise and rewards to make an event of celebration. The rewards can be simple, say, a card or a flower. This encourages the person who is trying hard to quit his smoking habit. You can make him surprised by throwing a special dinner party for celebrating the attempted goal, say, staying away from smoking for one month. You can also take him to a movie or for an evening walk to spend some quality time together.