By Suzanna Pillay

THE next time you reach out for that cigarette, ask yourself: Am I feeling stressed?

According to Stop Smoking Now (SSN) trainer Sean Walshe, that's exactly why you reach for your cigarette pack and lighter, not because of your nicotine addiction. "Smokers often confuse pleasure with relief. They actually de-stress by smoking. It is impossible to derive any pleasure from smoking.

"Do you know what cigarettes contain? Very minute traces of arsenic and carbon monoxide. How can that possibly evoke pleasure in anyone?"

He said if smokers were to examine the times when they felt the need for a cigarette it would probably be when they are stressed.

"The fact is that they are just as stressed with nicotine as they are without. The nicotine is just an emotional crutch. Half the time smokers don't realise that they have a cigarette in hand."

Instead of reaching for that cigarette, they need to be vigilant of the times they feel the need for a smoke as it is critical in working out when they are stressed and what is making them frazzled.

The SSN workshop hopes to help smokers organise their thinking and cope with stress in a logical manner. The workshop also hopes to help them see how happy they can be if they are free from the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal.

"Nicotine isn't as powerful as we are led to believe. Every time smokers don't have nicotine, the addiction becomes weaker and weaker. We need the smokers to identify this.

"Do smokers ever stop to question how during the eight hours of sleep a day, they manage to do without nicotine? A heroin addict, on the other hand, needs a kick every four hours."

But while nicotine is not highly addictive, he said the difference was that people could get addicted very quickly.

The SSN workshop also hopes to dispel other myths about smoking being glamorous as portrayed by tobacco companies in their advertising and promotions.

Another "magnificent con" the workshop hopes to deal with is the use of nicotine patches to help smokers kick the habit.

"Where's the scientific data that says you have to take small doses of nicotine to wean yourself off the same thing? With nicotine patches you still have nicotine in you. It is like keeping topped up with a mobile prepaid card."

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This story was first published in The New Straits Times.