Essay Instructions: Each week keep a journal about your heal behavioral change experience.
The journal is an opportunity for you to express and process your personal reactions to this experience.
Your entry should include four components each week: An OBJECTIVE measure of your progress.
Your stage of readiness according to the Transtheoretical and the ratio of pros to cons for your behavior using the forms at:
In addution to writing about your personal experience during the intervention, please respond to the following questions each week:
Week 1: What obstacles do you anticipate you will encounter while making this behavioral change?
Week 2: Review ONE recent research article you did not include in your original search. Your review need to to be more than 1-2 paragraphs of this week'd journal entry
Week 3: An analysis of how you acquired the undesired behavior and what has fostered it in your life.
Week 4: How has this change influenced your self image?
Week 5: How has this behavioral change changed your social interactions?
Week 6: How do you perceive your perfomance during this intervention and int the future how might you modify your intervention to enhance success?
Your jurnal entries shoud be 1 single-spaced page.
Quit smoking is what I want to change.
Please read my proposal below before you start writing!
Research Proposal to Quit Smoking over the Next Eight Weeks
Smoking is one of America’s largest silent killers behind heart problems. The American people, once glamorized through the thick wall of smoke, are now realizing how serious the complications related to smoking actually are. The 2005 National Health Survey (NHIS, 2005), reported staggering numbers of Americans, 29.5 million males and 20.7 million females, were smoking and thus considered themselves as smokers. Having been a smoker for a decade now, I see the need to drop the habit in hopes of preventing serious disease and pain in my future years. I no longer have much of a decision in the act of quitting, it’s either I quit, or I give myself a death sentence. With that in mind, I am proposing to change my dangerous habit, and over the course of the next eight weeks completely eliminate smoking from my daily life.
Quitting smoking is much more difficult than most might imagine. Of the thousands of people who try to quit each year, only a few remain successful in their fight against nicotine. Most smokers quit for a period of time, only to regain their habit after a brief separation. In fact, it is the first few months which prove the most critical, “Most patients relapse within the first six to 12 months of a smoking cessation attempt,” (Mallin, 2002). Through other people’s failures, physicians have also discovered that quitting without any plan of action leads to an even higher percentage rate of ex-smokers succumbing to their old habits. An overwhelming 95% of smokers who quit without implementing any sort of program to assist in their endeavors, actually stay smoke free, (Reynolds, 2002). These drastic figures attest to the importance of formulating a plan unique to one’s position as the most efficient way to quit smoking. More important to creating that plan, is the eventual follow through.
The adverse health affects are a justifiable reason to quit smoking. An astounding 90% of lung cancer is directly associated with long term smoking, (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2008). Other adverse health risks include cardiovascular disease, and other respiratory diseases. These haunting reminders of the adverse affects of smoking only increase as the user smokes for a longer period of time. Both lung and heart disease rates for smokers explode as smokers continue smoking throughout their lives. The risks just get higher as the years continue to pile up, “If you smoke for a lifetime, there is a 50% chance that your eventual death will be smoking-related - half of all these deaths will be in middle age,” (BBC News 2003).
I am now almost thirty years of age, and have been smoking for at least ten years. As I have continued to smoke over the years, I have added to my risk of being forced to endure the harmful affects related to cigarettes. Rather than continuing such a harmful habit, I have decided to change my behavior and lifestyle and so erase nicotine and tobacco from my life. I now realizing through assessing my need for change, (DiClemente, 1991) that I don’t have much of a choice if I want to prevent myself becoming one of those terrifying statistics. I have found myself in the passing through the contemplation stage and now in the preparation phase of my desired change, (Mallin 2003). I no longer believe that the affects of smoking are overrated or that they will never extend to disrupt my life, which is associated with the precontemplation stage.
Research has shown than quitting without treatment usually has grim hopes of success. Quitting cold turkey will most likely just delay my cigarette smoking rather than abolishing it. Therefore, I need a strategic plan of action as a way to fully ensure my success in the attempt to kick the butt. Consulting with a physician alone can improve the chance to remain smoke free, (Mallin, 2002). Therefore I have decided to follow researcher’s advice and blend a combination of life style choices and proper medical care as a road to success.
Robert Mallin, in his 2002 work “Smoking Cessation: Integration of Behavioral and Drug Therapies,” expresses the importance of implementing a blended strategy. This change needs to be a conscious choice, but heavily backed up by medical help. Therefore, I will plan to implement a strategy in several steps with aid from a physician if the need for such help arises. Without either of the two, my endeavor would most likely end in failure.
The first crucial step is thorough preparation for the drastic life style change which is about to take place. The first step is planning a pre-determined date in the near future to quit, which I have chosen to be March 1, 2008. Now, I must attend to other preparation necessities, such as involving family and friends. Several studies have shown that with the support of loved ones, smokers are less inclined to cheat in their attempt to quit. Therefore, I have begun telling friends and family members that I plan to quit, and that I will be my attempt on March 1st of this year. Now that the idea has begun to saturate in my mind, I have to begin the task of removing objects which either remind me or encourage me to smoke. I have to rid my environment slowly of lighters, ash trays, matches, empty cigarette cartons, and any cellophane. All these items, even if encountered randomly might trigger an urge to smoke; therefore I need to try and remove as much as possible to lower the risk of encountering an object which might trigger a craving. Along with removing objects, I must slowly recognize what images, sounds, or smells remind me of smoking. Identifying these occurrences now may help prevent the risk of temptation and relapse when encountered later.
The next stage is moving out of preparation and entering into action. On February 29, 2008 I will smoke my last cigarette. It is truly my luck that this year is a leap year, and I get one extra day of February to enjoy smoking before my quit date. During this stage, support is key so I will rely on my family and friends to keep me going. If my cravings get too bad, I plan to visit support groups for further encouragement, and will resort to nicotine replacement drugs as prescribed through a physician if absolutely necessary. Hopefully, this will not be the case and I will be able to quit without the use of further medication. During this time period, I also plan to switch my smoking with a healthier substitute, (Mallin, 2003). I am planning on running in the mornings when I know I will crave the most as a deterrent for a cigarette. Running will give me an adrenaline rush and prevent laziness after not waking up with the first cigarette of the day, which normally wakes me up.
Using preparation, support, and replacement, I believe that I will be successful in my attempt to quit smoking. This research paper will document my endeavor through the preparation stage into the action stage. By adhering strictly to my plan and relying on support from outside in my network of family and friends, I hope to ensure myself success.
References
BBC News. “Smoking is a greater cause of death and disability than any single disease,
says the World Health Organization.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/medical_notes/473673.stm. 2003.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Health Affects of Cigarette Smoking.”
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/Factsheets/health_effects.htm. 2008.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Annual Smoking-Attributable Mortality,
Years of Potential Life Lost, and Economic Costs --- United States, 1995—1999.” Morbidity and mortality Weekly Report. April 2002.
DiClemente, C.C., Prochaska, J.O., Fairhurst, S., Velicer, W.F., Rossi J.S., & Velasquez,
M. (1991). The process of smoking cessation: An analysis of precontemplation, contemplation and contemplation/action. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 59, 295-304. Cancer Prevention research Center. http://www.uri.edu/research/cprc/Measures/Smoking11.htm.
Mallin, Robert. “Smoking Cessation: Integration of Behavioral and Drug Therapies.”
American Academy of Family Physicians. http://www.aafp.org/afp/20020315/1107.html. 2002.
National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). National Center for Health Statistics. 2005.
www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4559.
Reynolds, Patrick. PRI & The Foundation For a Smokefree America.
www.tobaccofree.org. 2002.
Smokefree.gov (http://www.smokefree.gov ). 2008.
