My My My Tobacco Is Hard To Detach From
Wounded Tobacco Bird
Many questions
circle the wounded bird
angel delight or
hounds from hell
only your heart
can really tell, cause
you’re the living proof
Prof. Kelly (2012)
Read MoreWinter Revelation
Time Is On Our Side
The raven is black
The snow is white
The children play with the dogs till night
The wind is high
The elders wise
The mother cries
Her children have been taken away
The school is dark
Education a hollow shell
Without our language we live in hell
The man steals our innocence
No more playing on the land
Feels like we’ve slipped from God’s Hand
But then one day
Healing comes to our community
We see our way back to unity
Our Walk has begun
We grieve our losses
We put our sorrow leg down
And find our balance once again
It is then we see the raven free
As we cry our healing tears
We remember they have been
Playing with the wind
For a million years
Thank You Dene Nation
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Don’t Give Up Trying!
Dear Smokers of the world wide web.
We know you are frustrated by the attempts to quit smoking that ended in lighting up.
Have mercy on yourselves. This is the most powerful brain addiction ever measured. More attractive to the human brain than heroin or cocaine. Now that is a strong drug.
Know that you will eventually make it to freedom. Begin with the attitude that you are
‘Fighting for your life’
..and the life of your children and grandchildren because this addiction is intergenerationally infective.
Build a recovery plan, get your NRT in place. Ask two people who love you but are not family to support you for 90 days. Pick a transition day and begin.
Remember relapse is just another lesson learned. It is not a failure event. Something to build upon.
Reset and get back on the horse. Ride. Ride. Ride.
Prof. Kelly on 50th. Ave. Yellowknife
Tobacco In Schools Recovery Project
The Tobacco in Schools Recovery Project has just completed it’s second year of field research at the Elizabeth Wynn Wood Alternate School in Ottawa Canada.
This is a wonderful school for students who do not function well in the regular school system.
On The Way To Fort Simpson
-80 students applied to get into the tobacco recovery program (after a all school presentation in the gym)
-25 students were accepted (they wrote a short essay on why they wanted to join)
-the tobacco group was given a full credit status with 20 lessons on tobacco addiction (see curriculum attached)
-followed by 20 recovery sessions with two meetings a week
-two addiction counselors for each group (one male, one female)
-each student completed a comprehensive recovery plan before quitting
-the whole experience was seen as school wide project (teachers were briefed and many attended training sessions)
-the course is offered on a semester basis
-at some point all 25 students quit smoking
-11 relapsed and of those 4 are back in recovery
-so 17 students are smoke free at semester end
-plus an additional 20 students quit smoking in conjunction with the program from the general student body
-the principal provided patches and inhalers (with parents permission)
-and these students could come to group for support if they were serious about recovery from tobacco addiction.
-a wave of recovery hit the school as it became the ‘In-thing’ to do.
-the non-smoking student gathering spot became the place to be.
-the staff used several new refined recovery techniques to help achieve these amazing results
-including peer mentoring, group action plans, free patches, gum, and inhalers, field trips
-the paint-ball and snowboard field trips were a big hit and group bonding experiences
-teachers reported that attention span, marks, participation rates for these students were way up
-the principal reported that disciplinary problems were dramatically reduced
-students reported a big drop in alcohol and pot consumption
-parents were so happy and wanted to meet the recovery team
-next year the students in recovery will mentor two newcomers each
-mentors never smoke again.
Read MoreThe Three Questions
The Three Questions.
These are designed to provide you or your counselor with enough information to structure a nicotine withdrawal approach, which will give you a ‘steady state’ of nicotine levels and keep you out of acute withdrawal while you learn how to live tobacco free.
1. How old where you when you started smoking?
-If you started before 16 you may have a loss issue in childhood that needs attending to and tobacco is part of your survival strategy. Be alert to this and grieve your losses.
2. How long after rising do you need a smoke?
-If you smoke within 20 minutes after rising it may be skillful to awaken with high nicotine levels so you will not relapse in the morning. Put a patch on at 4:00 a.m. Go back to sleep.
3. How many cigarettes do you smoke on a rough day?
-If you smoke 15 or more on tough days then you may find it helpful to use a self dosing strategy to self regulate your tension and anxiety build up.
Self-Dosing
It has proven very useful to have a means of self-dosing with nicotine when under stress to prevent a build up leading to relapse. We suggest an inhaler, 4 mg. nicotine gum, or the nicotine lozenges. Simply dose until you feel relaxed and the stress build up has passed.
Together this works wonders for most. The patch provides the steady release of nicotine and the self-dosing devices allow for self-regulating under stressful conditions until we learn how to do this on our own without medicating. Good Luck Dear Smokers Trying To Quit.
The Tobacco Healing Centre!
The Tobacco Healing Community is now LIVE!!! Please Visit us here and Join us!
I would like to thank everyone for their patience as putting together something as important as this Community is no small task.
We are proud to introduce to you the NEW Tobaccohealingcentre.com – This is your website and your Community…
Here you will find that no matter where in the world you are or how you are feeling you are never alone.
Here you have a place to heal…with us, together.
Live Chat, Streaming Video Groups, Friends, Support, Sharing of Experience, Personal Profiles, Blogs, Daily Readings, One on One Video Counselling Sessions, News, Events, Poetry, Information and so much more!!!!
Welcome, and thank you for your loving kindness, patience and support.
Paddy Ireland
Read MoreNew Year Tobacco Free
My dear friends of the tobacco persuasion. You are important here at the Tobacco Healing Centre On Line Community. We are here to assist you and your family in recovering from tobacco addiction and we believe your chances are very good if you commit to doing what it takes and we are in turn committed to being there for you as long as you need us. We once smoked and had no real idea how we could break free. But we did. So can you. Now we know how to help a smoker. Have faith and join the team. Together we can get this job done. Welcome to 2012 fellow travellers. Prof. Kelly
Read MoreThe Addiction Glossary
The Addiction Glossary
Multi-phasic
Several parts/stages/states Addiction is said to be multi-phasic. It affects you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It affects more than one part of a person’s life.
Euphoria
A sense of well being. A feeling of being high on life.
Hard wired
Habituated, hooked. The concept that the brain develops neural pathways that become embedded in the thought process of the addicted person.
Cilia
Small, fine hair that lines the nose, throat and lungs that filter and collect smoke, dust, dirt and other foreign substances.
Paradigm
A patterned thought, belief, or perspective. The way we look at the world and the way we function within that understanding.
Dysfunctional family system
Many families do not work well. Since families are systems this means every member of the family is at risk. If dad is alcoholic then the whole family suffers.
Co-dependency
Co-dependency is the underlying condition, which produces addiction. Co-dependence is a by-product of abuse and loss of identity. When children live with people who are not dependable, they never learn to depend or trust themselves or others in healthy ways. They depend on things outside of themselves and inappropriate people. They allow people to depend on them or they isolate but appear independent.
Primary ego defense system
“The difficulty lies in the fact that the denial system that has to be broken is the primary ego defense system” John Bradshaw is describing here the dilemma facing the addicted person. Every person has an ego defense mechanism which allows us to function and protects our identity from threats and confusion. Denial is a core function of this protective process. This is problematic because unless we can move beyond denial we will not recover.
Culturally Induced Disease. (Dis-ease)
Addiction can be traced to the culture in which someone lives. If the culture you live in provides tobacco you will employ this drug in your survival strategy.
Addiction is not only a physical disease, it is the absence of ease, in one’s life.
Core transference device is the traumatization of the child
When a child suffers a trauma in the family or elsewhere it often triggers the need to medicate the emotional pain. This causes the child to pick up tobacco and thus the transference from one generation to the next occurs.
Denial is the bottleneck in the recovery process
While denial is often a survival tool for the child it holds us back from recovery as an adult.
The Integrated Addiction Model
IAM incorporates into one whole experience the process of how we became addicted and how we recover from tobacco addiction.
Core Attachments
What are the primary areas of our life directly linked or dependent upon the smoking of tobacco.
Psychic Lethargy
A lack of interest and energy. Feeling down or depressed.
Core Identity
As we develop from childhood to teens we build a core identity which refers to the main way we see ourselves and as others may see us as well. Often this is the underlying reason we smoke. Our identity becomes rooted in the fact that we are smokers.
Integral Role
Tobacco becomes a necessary part of the whole of a smoker’s life. When we accept that, we understand that addiction and recovery has many parts.
Recidivist Rate
Relapse. The rate at which people return to smoking.
Support Matrix Chart
Assemble all the supports information into one chart to establish an overall sense of what areas of your life might support or endanger you recovery
Model and Bond
Family therapists suggest that we model the parent of the same gender and bond with the parent of the opposite gender.
Decommission the success/failure dynamic
Remove the pressure that the success/failure approach to stopping smoking has over your clients.
Debrief
The review of what happened in the counseling session. This allows any issues that remain unsettled to be addressed so that clients will leave feeling grounded and complete.
Unconscious cross-transference
A counselor is affected unknowingly by the nature of a personal disclosure of a client. The fear or trauma that the client expresses is absorbed by the counselor on an unconscious level. If left unresolved it can lead to burn out.
Recovery continuum
The process of recovery is seen as a continuing unfolding event. This helps unhook from the idea that we are either successful or failures.
Issue identification
We bring to our immediate awareness the issues that are most important to focus upon in our recovery.
Reframe
Reframing is a counseling technique that looks at a situation in a new way so that a client can learn from their situation and move forward.
Neurobiological Effects
Primarily anchored in the brain but also refers to effects the drug has on the on the nervous system as well.
Epidemiology
This is the scientific study of factors affecting the health and illness of individuals and populations. This branch of medicine studies the causes, distribution and control of diseases within and between different population groups.
Pharmacological interventions
Prescription and non-prescription medications used to aid smoking cessation such as nicotine patches, inhalers, lozenges, and gum.
Transference
In the context of addiction, it is the switching of one addiction to another. For example, from tobacco to food. This is referred to as changing the medication for your emotional pain and implies that a true recovery is not functioning.
Intergenerational Transference
In the context of addiction, it is the passing on to the next generation the need to medicate one’s emotions. The emergence of addiction from one generation to the next.
Copyright, PSI, Murray Kelly, 2011 psi@igs.net
All My Relations
All My Relations
Hot coffee transition from the further shore
Happy to be back from whence I come
The fabric of the reality matrix I play
Drunk like cold water on a very hot day
With the gift of understanding and more
I overcame my doubt, fear and shame
I give it a name, I give it a face
Ancestor village of the human race
We wait for seven generations to relate
As we gather along the river of life
Near the fires of love which pre-date
The incarnation of the childhood of nations
And as the smoke of existence rises
We celebrate the Maker of all that is
And settle in for another day in paradise.
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