Nicotine addiction can make quitting smoking tough
By Terry Rindfleisch of the Tribune staff
Bill Reisner knew he had to quit smoking.
Reisner tried to quit many times and knew how bad nicotine addiction was because he coordinated drug and alcohol programs for La Crosse County Human Services for 16 years.
He worked many years with people who had addictions.
Reisner, who will turn 70 years old on Nov. 24, quit smoking for good 17 years ago -- but still five years after he had open-heart bypass surgery.
“No matter how much I knew, I just couldn’t quit even after heart surgery and doctors telling me that I’d be dead in two years if I didn’t quit,” Reisner said. “Nicotine is the most addictive thing after crack cocaine.
“I knew what I was doing, but the addiction was so bad, and I wasn’t serious enough about quitting,” he said.
After angioplasty cleaned up three arteries that closed up, Reisner decided this was the time to quit. “After a while I knew smoking was killing me, and it was about time I quit,” Reisner said.
“I had five bypasses the first time,” he said. “I knew this time I would be in the hospital for five days, so it was a good time to go through withdrawal.”
He hasn’t had a cigarette since, but his struggle to stay smoke-free was difficult at first, Reisner said.
“I had a terrible time, but what did it for me was I took things one day at a time,” he said. “I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to smoke this morning, and then I’d go about my day with a lot of support and prayers.”
Almost two decades later, Reisner has not had any more major health problems. Three times a week Reisner walks three miles, lifts weights, runs on a treadmill and plays volleyball in the La Crosse Exercise and Health Program at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
“I’d be dead today if I hadn’t quit,” Reisner said. “I feel wonderful. I wish I had never started to smoke.”
Bill Bakalars has counseled a few teens for nicotine addiction over the past 23 years as a clinical mental health therapist at Franciscan Skemp Healthcare Behavioral Health Services.
“Nicotine addiction develops very fast, and it’s so subtle compared to other addictions,” Bakalars said.
Bakalars started smoking himself when he was 15 years old whenc igarettes were 50 cents a pack and La Crosse Central High School had a smoking area outside the school. He smoked a couple cigarettes to a pack a day when he started, and just before he quit, he was smoking up to two packs a day.
He joined the Franciscan Skemp smoking cessation program.
“Some people are motivated to quit for their family or health reasons,” Bakalars said. “But for me, I was 29 and going to be 30, and I realized I had smoked for half of my life. It haunted me.”
Nicotine strikes the brain three to seven seconds from the first puff, changing the cell structure of the brain and releasing hormones that give pleasure and a relaxing effect throughout the body.
Harold Doweiko, a Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center clinical psychologist who has written a college textbook on chemical dependency, said the body quickly develops a tolerance to the poisonous drug so that more nicotine is needed to produce the same effect. Nioctine is a great drug for coping with anxiety, he said.
“If I were to design a drug to be addictive, I’d choose nicotine,” Doweiko said. “It’s six times as addictive as crack cocaine. That’s why it is very difficult to back away from cigarettes.”
Actually, he said his designer drug from scratch would be 90 percent nicotine and 10 percent cocaine. Doweiko said many people will be addicted to nicotine after their first 50 cigarettes.
“We must remember there are 4,000 poisons in cigarettes, and there’s nothing in cigarettes that a body needs,” he said.
Terry Rindfleisch can be reached at trindfleisch@lacrossetribune.com or (608) 791-8227.
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