- What is it and what can we do about it?
When we smoke a cigarette we activate two major experiences within us.
The first is from the Nicotine.
Nicotine is very fast acting and if it were not as fast acting as it is no one would ever smoke! After inhaling cigarette smoke the Nicotine passes through the lung wall and into the blood stream. It then delivers a message straight to the brain. The message of course is always the same… 'This is a calming and relaxing thing to do!’
However we call and classify Nicotine a psychoactive narcotic, which in plain language means it is a drug that acts upon the mind! The mind of course can only do one thing… think! Every experience anyone has ever had to Nicotine has been a thought! We think we are calm and relaxed! The mind responds in the only way it can to Nicotine by thinking! We think we are calm and relaxed!
However when the mind is deep within this illusion (deep within the thought of calm and relaxation) and we monitor the body (which we are very good at doing these days), the body tells us quite clearly there is no calm and relaxation going on anywhere in the body at all. The body tells us our heart rate has increased, our blood pressure has increased and the body has gone into stress!
The body of course is reacting in the only way that it can (physically) to the fact that when we inhaled the cigarette smoke, yes we inhaled some Nicotine but we also inhaled over 4,000 toxins straight into the blood stream. Some of these toxins are rather nasty! So the body responds by cleaning up the mess!
During our youthful years the body’s ability to clean up the mess is quite remarkable, however as we age the body’s ability to do the work slowly declines to a point where it can no longer do enough housekeeping to keep us clean. We then become toxic and eventually we become ill!
So for the average smoker (generally speaking) the illusion of calm and relaxation all smokers know so well, lasts for about 13 minutes and then it begins to wear off! >> So what are we left with?
