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Fighting the Fix
Huy Huynh is scared. The senior marketing major is frightened by how he loses his breath when he walks up the stairs. He notices that it is getting worse. He is terrified of what may happen if he doesn’t quit. Huynh has been smoking for four years. He has spent half of that time trying to quit. “I have to fight with myself mentally,” Huynh said. “Every minute, every hour, you have to fight with yourself.” Like most smokers who have tried to quit, this isn’t Huynh’s first attempt. Huhyn is on his third try. “It’s the hardest thing I have ever done,” Huynh said. “I have tried everything. I have tried nicotine patches, nicotine gum. I tried cold turkey and it didn’t work either.” Huynh faces tough odds. According to the Center for Tobacco Research, 40 percent of smokers try to quit every year. Only 5 percent of them are successful. “I would blame most of (the failures) on the addictive power of nicotine,” said Angie Taylor, director of the Alcohol and Drug Education Center. “It is easy to become addicted to cigarettes very quickly, before you even realize it.” Taylor said she has experienced “limited success” in persuading smokers on campus to quit. According to a 1999 survey conducted by the center, only 28 percent of TCU students smoke. Since 1994, the number of students who have admitted to using tobacco in the past month has dropped from 57 percent to 46.9 percent in 1999-2000. But misperceptions over the amount of students who actually smoke have hindered the center’s efforts, Taylor said. “People think that everybody is doing it, and so they are more likely to engage in that behavior,” she said. “When you walk through campus, it is a very visible thing. You see people on the Reed-Sadler lawn, and a lot of them are smoking. You see people standing in front of the building, and a lot of them are smoking. So it looks like more people are smoking than there actually are. “What we fail to recognize is that they are the same people that we see over and over again. Yes, we have too many people smoking. Is everybody doing it? Absolutely not.” Taylor said many students who do smoke have no intentions of quitting
anytime soon, despite possible health risks. “I figured you only live once,” Van Orne said. “There are so many things in the world that are bad for you. One or two toxins isn’t as bad as drugs or something like that.” Angel Villalba, a senior finance and e-business major, enjoys smoking. Although she admits to being scared of possible health risks, she doesn’t plan on quitting until she gets married or has children. “I am aware of what nicotine does to my body,” Villalba said. “But it feels great. Smoking is great, and I am not quitting anytime soon.” Van Orne said he smokes socially. Smokers have a special bond, he said. “It’s just like a fraternity,” Van Orne said. “You can meet people and be accepted. You can just come up and talk to them. You can start the coolest conversations that way. “You get the feeling around people that smoke that lets you know you are with people that feel the same way about smoking (as) you.” Van Orne’s reason is common for college-aged smokers, said Yvette Jones, Great American Smoke Out chairwoman of the American Cancer Society’s Tarrant County chapter. “I have found that a lot of youths, even though they know the health risks, use (tobacco) because of peer pressure, their environment and because they feel it is a way to cope with stress,” she said. “They use it as a way to fit in. But there are other healthier activities they can participate in.” Most people who start using cigarettes as a means of socializing eventually become addicted, Taylor said. “Most people don’t go out and say, ‘I am going to become addicted,’” she said. “They don’t do that. It’s a gradual thing.” Van Orne said he plans to quit smoking after he is finished with college and doesn’t foresee any problems in quitting. “I’ve done it once, so I don’t think I should have a problem doing it again,” Van Orne said. Around 70 percent of smokers want to quit, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1988, the Surgeon General declared nicotine to be as addictive as heroin and cocaine. Yet many people believe quitting smoking is easy, Taylor said. “They know people who have quit and they think, ‘well, if that person did it, I can do it,’” she said. “Some of the products on the market make it seem less painful to quit. I think it misleads people into thinking that it is easy to quit.” Taylor said she has to perform a juggling act when it comes to convincing students to quit. She said she wants to get the word out that smoking is harmful and students should quit immediately, but at the same time has to be careful in doing so. If she is dogmatic in her approach, smokers will tune her out and her efforts will prove futile. “Part of the balance we do try to achieve is not judging people and not saying, ‘You’re a bad person because you smoke,’” Taylor said. “Nobody is a bad person because they smoke. We want people to understand we don’t want you to smoke because it is hurting you.” Van Orne said he hates to be judged because he smokes. “I don’t like people who feel they are holier than thou,” Van Orne said. “They have the attitude that they can judge me because I do something they don’t agree with. It’s my body, my decision. “I don’t feel they have any justification for trying to control my life.” Smokers who successfully quit usually come to the decision on their own, Taylor said. Outside influences urging them to quit are often useless, she said. “People try to quit from the outside in (and fail,)” she said. “Their family is giving them hell, their family is complaining or friends are urging them to quit for their health. It’s not them wanting to quit, it is them wanting to quit for an outside reason. “Really, truly that person inside them has to make that decision.” It is usually something big that motivates a smoker to quit for good, she said. “Usually it’s something that happens to them personally that triggers them to say, ‘I am going to quit,’” Taylor said. “That’s what’s tough in getting young people to quit smoking. The accumulation of tar and crud takes a long time. By the time that stuff shows up, there has been a long time for that person to become addicted.” Taylor said she recommends getting the Texas Quit Smoking Kit, which can be picked up at the Alcohol and Drug Education Center in the Rickel Building. In the kit, there is information on nicotine replacements, proven and unproven methods to help smokers quit, helpful tips, relaxation exercises and a self-help book. Huynh’s fear is what motivates him to quit smoking. He lacked that fear in his previous two attempts at quitting. “I wasn’t really scared enough,” Huynh said. “But this time I am really scared.” Despite the fear, the craving still remains. Huynh regrets picking up that first cigarette as a 17-year-old, but he still enjoyed it, he said. “I regret it because my health is going down,” Huynh said. “Other than that, I don’t really regret it, because it helped me out through a lot of tough times. When you get stressed, you pick up a cigarette. “All your problems just smoke up into the air.” But Huynh said he eventually needs to quit. He has to do a better job
of resisting the urge to smoke, he said. Brandon Ortiz
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