Anyone who smokes a packet of cigarettes a day can tell you that it's a very expensive habit. The average packet of 20 cigarettes costs over A$25, so a pack-a-day habit will set you back around A$190 per week. Over a year, that costs out to A$9880, the price of two round-the-world air tickets, a week of four-star luxury in Vanuatu, or the fishing trip of a lifetime.
Source: news.com.au
However, the real concern about the effects of smoking are the hidden costs, including associated diseases such as pulmonary disease, chronic bronchitis and emphysema, heart disease and cancer, along with intangible costs, such as premature deaths and increased health risks, for family members due to secondhand smoke exposure.
Governments around the world impose hefty taxes on cigarettes because tobacco-related health problems are an economic burden. When you add it all up, the cost of cigarettes is higher than anyone can afford, let alone the medical costs associated with treating coronary heart disease, lung cancer, or any other smoking-related disease.
If that is the case, why would anyone pay so much to make themselves and their loved ones so sick? Addiction: what starts as an indulgence quickly forms into a habit, underpinned by powerful chemical addictions.
So, why is it that some people can just quit, while others struggle?
Why Quitting Cigarette Smoking is Difficult
There's no doubt that the impact of smoking and nicotine addiction are too tough to overcome, inducing cravings that gradually increase the level of smoking and make it harder and harder to quit.
In addition to nicotine addiction, the habit of smoking tends to become compulsive. The mind becomes habituated to lighting up first thing in the morning, when you start the car, on the way to the bus stop, before you start work, at your coffee break, after lunch, over a drink after work, after dinner, while you watch TV, last thing before you go to bed. Smoking insinuates itself into every aspect of your daily routine.
For daily smokers, smoking also has a powerful social aspect. Perhaps your partner smokes? You catch up on office gossip sharing a smoke with your colleagues? Your mates all light up over a beer? Many people find it easier to strike up a conversation within the camaraderie of smoking, using this common ground as a way to break the ice. When your social life revolves around smoking, quitting can be really tough.
On a deeper level, the tobacco epidemic, like other addictions, is often driven by powerful inner conflicts. Until these are acknowledged and resolved, no amount of nicotine replacement therapy will make a difference.
No wonder so many people find quitting an up-hill battle.
Smoking Cessation Assistance From Natural Therapists
Tobacco-dependent smokers, as well as electronic cigarette users, can achieve a better quality of life at any age by giving up smoking. Many adult cigarette smokers, especially heavy smokers, think they are a hopeless case, which is far from the truth. Natural therapies offer a range of holistic approaches to help current smokers quit the habit. In particular, many people are turning to hypnotherapy, a type of mental health intervention that works with the subconscious mind, to overcome their need for all forms of tobacco and maintain motivation in the face of powerful nicotine cravings, everyday stress and social pressure.
Applied in a clinical setting, hypnotherapy offers powerful support for people who are determined to quit smoking and its accompanying health risks. A hypnotherapist is a mental health professional who uses a range of effective methods to guide the exploration and resolution of inner conflict. They work with each individual to identify habitual triggers and social drivers in order to find solutions that are more beneficial than any smoking cessation aid.
As well as helping you to quit smoking and dealing with the direct costs associated with it, the resolution of inner conflict provides major health benefits as you develop a new perspective on tobacco products. Even if the costs of smoking continue to rise as a result of additional excise taxes, you will be unaffected because you will be too busy living a healthy life, away from the risks of any chronic disease attributable to smoking. Moreover, you will no longer be bothered by the costs of health care since the burden of disease has finally been lifted.
The process of hypnotherapy is empowering, with lasting benefits in confidence and self-esteem.
The Financial Benefits of Quitting
In addition to its wide range of health benefits, quitting smoking will significantly lower the annual costs of current smokers. Saving money that you would normally spend on two or four sticks of cigarettes per day will enable you to afford the things you've long been wanting to buy but couldn't because of the high costs of tobacco use.
If you had not smoked for a month, you would've saved roughly $200 to $275, which is enough to treat yourself and your loved ones to an expensive dinner. Imagine the amount of money you can save, not to mention a much better quality of life, if you've managed to smoke for one whole year. If you can give up smoking for a year, the amount of money you'll save and the quality of life you'll enjoy would be enormous.
Contrary to popular belief, smoking has social costs that go beyond the cost of a pack of cigarettes. If you continue paying the current price of cigarettes, $36 a pack, you will be paying more than the actual cost of smoking in the near future. In terms of hospital admissions, you may end up spending between $50,000 and $200,000 per year due to lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases or oesophageal cancer, to name just a few smoking-attributable diseases.
The health impacts of smoking affect not only a smoker but their family as well, especially if the first succumbs to a preventable death that was caused by a preventable disease after smoking for some time. As long as the cost and habit of smoking continues to be supported, there will be more deaths among smokers and more families with lost loved ones.
Effective Strategies for Improving Your Financial costs
To eliminate the costs of tobacco use from their monthly budget and lower their societal costs, current smokers who are looking to quit in order to achieve a healthy life can start by taking into account the economic costs of smoking in comparison to the amount that they can save. Here below are some helpful tips to get started:
- Calculate the cost of your cigarettes per day
- Calculate the indirect cost of tobacco, including electronic cigarettes. Doctor visits and medicines for respiratory tract infections, such as coughs and colds, as well as hospitalisation for other smoking-attributable diseases count as indirect costs.
- Calculate your average expenditure on upholstery and cleaning services, which also fall into the indirect costs category, to get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke in your house
- Find out how often your children or others in your household suffer respiratory congestion as a result of inhaling secondhand smoke, as well as how much they pay for medical care. The money you spend for these are indirect costs as well
Find out how much you can save in a day, week, month and year by crunching your numbers. Additionally, you will gain a better understanding of the harmful effects of smoking on your own body and those around you who have to put up with involuntary passive smoking.
Due to the enormous economic output of the tobacco industry, tobacco products are highly profitable and, of course, a health burden as well. Consumer expenditure on tobacco products is all that companies need to recover their tangible costs on tobacco production. Smokers are unfazed by sky high tobacco taxes, unmindful of the massive health care costs they are bound to incur.
If you're ready to quit for good and preserve your life, hypnotherapy and other complementary therapies like counselling and acupuncture can help you find your way back to health, free from all the costs of tobacco use and the burden of smoking.
So, quit your pack-a-day habit and save a packet. With what you save in a year, you can treat yourself to the holiday of a lifetime!
Originally published on Mar 04, 2011
