Video discusses why we discourage the use of quit site euphemisms such as nicodemon or hell week at our stop smoking support groups.

I originally wrote the following in the The Teaching of Conventional Wisdom at Freedom, but think it deserves a string of its own. It seems not a day goes by that the “Hell Week” term is not used by members, new and old alike. For over two years here at Freedom I watched this term used over and over again and basically ignored it. I don’t really believe in the idea of “Hell Week.” This is another one of those conventional wisdoms that are big elsewhere but do not necessarily play out to be true in the real world.

Do some people go through rough times the first seven days of quitting? Yes, some people do. But there are people who toss them on day one, have no real major complaints and basically never look back. I have one man in my current clinic who came in day one and said this is it, he is done with smoking and that is all there is to it. He wasn’t planning on having any trouble. I tried to warn him that it may not go as easily as he was anticipating, although at times for some people it does go this easily. Well it turned out that in his case he was right. Usually I will get a few people in a group who quit with relative ease, although it is not always the people who think it is going to go this way. If I were to perpetuate the idea of “hell week,” most people would experience tough times even if they were not actually destined to have a hard time this time around, and those who didn’t have a hard time would think that there was something wrong with them.

The other problem I have with the term “hell week” is the fact that while the first three days pose a real threat of causing physical withdrawal symptoms–by the fourth day, if these effects have occurred, they will usually now be subsiding. By the fourth day most people will really start to feel good. The term “Hell Week” is giving the impression that times are still “hellish” on days four through seven.

I am about to graduate a group tonight who have been off smoking for just 13 days. If they are like the majority of other groups, most will be coming in happy, feeling healthier and quite shocked that they have actually pulled off a quit. But even when I saw them last Monday, when they were all only off 6 days, it was quite evident to all in the room that nobody was going through “hell” at that point. All of them all ready were having noticeable physical improvements over when they smoked, most were already calmer and had more energy, most were already experiencing only a fraction of the thoughts for cigarettes that they normally experienced while they were still smoking.

One week that the term “Hell Week” is a more accurate description surrounding smoking is the week that a person finds out they have lung cancer, or ends up in a hospital after a heart attack, or ends up partially paralyzed or unable to speak from a stroke, or the day a person starts on oxygen, or the day a person ends up on a burn ward from a fire they started with their own cigarette, or the day a person dies suddenly or unexpectedly from a smoking induced incident.

Even in these cases though the term “Hell Week” is an inaccurate assessment of time. These people may end up going though weeks or months of what they consider hellish experiences and still sometimes end up losing the battle to save their lives. In the case of sudden death, “Hell Week” doesn’t apply either, at least not for the deceased individual himself or herself but likely for the family and friends left behind. The suffering and sadness of these family members and friends will not likely end on day eight either, they will be facing the sadness of the smokers premature loss for a long time to come.

I guess the closest a week may be considered “Hell Week” in regards to smoking is the week a person relapses. That is the week they have to admit failure to everyone they know, unless they start their new lives living the lie of being closet smokers, which creates it own problems that last a whole lot longer than a week. This is the week that they start to smell like hell again, and possibly start to experience perceivable detrimental effects again. This is the week that they start paying exorbitant prices for a product that is attacking their heart, lungs, self-respect, self-esteem, start to make them question their own intelligence or their own common sense, and affect the ways other people view them. In the case of the closet smokers who eventually gets caught, it also threatens their basic honesty and integrity for they are living a lie now and are always afraid of being exposed.

The week a person relapses may be hellish but the problems posed by smoking will not end in seven days for them either, but rather get perpetually worse as the days, months and years pass while maintaining the active addiction to nicotine. To end the hellish experience of being a smoker is as simple as knowing not for seven days, but for the rest of your life to never take another puff!

Joel

 

There is no “Nicodemon”

 

The in-depth view of why we don’t embrace the term of “Nicodemon.”

Nicodemon seems to give the impression of an evil persona associated with the chemical nicotine. Nicotine is no more evil than arsenic or carbon monoxide or hydrogen cyanide–all chemicals found in tobacco smoke. Although nicotine is unique among the thousands of other chemicals that comprise tobacco smoke because it is the addictive chemical in tobacco.

Even so, the idea that nicotine is somehow calling to a smoker who is off smoking for weeks or months is quite inaccurate. It is the person himself or herself whose own mind is creating the desire from triggers that he or she is experiencing. Those triggers are also not evil, they are just life events being experienced for the first time.

I think the problems I have with the terms is they make nicotine seem to have more power than it actually does. The personification given to it can make an individual feel that nicotine has the potential of tricking him or her into smoking. An inanimate object such as a chemical has no such power. As John has said often nicotine has an IQ of zero. People do not overcome the grip of chemical addictions by being stronger than the drug but rather by being smarter than the drug.

Lets not give nicotine more credit than it is due. Lets not make it some cute and cuddly or evil and plotting entity–it is a chemical that alters brain chemistry. It is no different than heroin, cocaine or alcohol. These drugs don’t have cute names given to them either and giving them to nicotine can start to make it seem different than these other substance–more trivial or less serious in a way. Nicotine is not more trivial than other drugs of addiction and in fact kills more people than all other drugs of addiction combined.

I think the only place where I think I have ever appreciated the term "Nicodemon" is in the one article "Nicodemon Lies?" Because in this one post the lies that people make up in order to secure their continued use of a deadly drug are all dispelled in one quick swoop. It has a short, simple and catchy title that seems to fit the logic used in this piece very well–Nicodemon Lies. But anyone reading this whole article and the associated links quickly will realize that these are not the lies of a demon, these are the lies made up by an addict rationalizing, legitimizing, defending and protecting his or her drug use. They are the lies that people make up and tell themselves to defend the otherwise un-defendable.

People cannot rationalize the reason that they smoke with truths; they can only do it with lies. More important for people here though is that a person cannot secure his or her quit by telling himself or herself lies either, but he or she can secure his or her quit by telling himself or herself the truth. The truth is that the only way to keep yourself smoke free is to simply accept the truth that to stay smoke free you must never take another puff!

Joel