Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic Tradition

Stopping Smoking

 
Introduction | Stopping Smoking through Faith and Prayer | Visualization and Prayer Technique | Coping with Cravings

Introduction

Most persons start smoking during a stage of identity formation or crisis in which they feel psychologically empty within themselves and want some way to make themselves feel accepted by the world around them. For example, adolescents who feel angry at their parents’ hypocrisy and lack of true love can get caught in the illusion that if they start smoking then they, too, can be as powerful as the adults who mistreat them.

But once nicotine gets into your body, it enslaves you to a continuous need for it. Like a deadly parasite, nicotine takes over your body so that you value this deadly chemical more than anything else in life, more even than life itself. So there you are, helpless and cowering in a cold doorway, damp with rain, desperately sucking the illusion of strength and power out of a reeking cigarette. And all the while you’re thinking to yourself, in your bleak emptiness, “This is life?” And all the while you fear that, without smoking, life will be bleak and empty.

Well, there’s more to life than slavery to illusions.

Now, no one can argue that simply smoking one cigarette is a sin. Yet consider the following:

•	Smoking pollutes the environment with toxic smoke and with the noxious poisons from millions and thousands of millions of discarded cigarette butts.
•	Smoking offends your neighbor with the stench of stale smoke that you carry on your body and with the poison of second-hand smoke that you force your neighbor to breathe.
•	Smoking scandalizes children with the bad example of a filthy, deadly habit.
•	Smoking defiles your own body, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, with filthy, deadly poisons.
•	When you smoke a cigarette to make yourself “feel good,” you reject and defile divine grace, the only source of goodness.

And so, knowing all of this, and yet stubbornly continuing to believe in cigarettes more than you believe in Christ, is a sin.

How often were you criticized and humiliated as a child by your parents? How often did you then condemn yourself for being worthless and inadequate? And how often do you reach for a cigarette out of unconscious anger as a secret wish to carry out that condemnation?  Isn’t it time to give yourself a break?

Smoking Cessation Through Faith and Prayer

Anyone addicted to any substance “loves” the addiction more than he loves God, so how can he love God as Christ commanded us: You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind (Matthew 22:37)? Remember, any addiction can be cured, if only you love God more than you love the addiction.

To stop smoking, therefore, you must do two things: overcome the addiction to nicotine, and overcome the habit of reaching for a cigarette (either as as a behavioral reward or as a means to relieve anxiety) instead of always turning to God in prayer.

To overcome the addiction to nicotine, you have three choices. You can gradually reduce the number of cigarettes that you smoke. Or you can use nicotine patches to put nicotine into your system (while you refrain from smoking) as you gradually reduce the dosage of the patches. Or you can just quit “cold turkey”—nicotine withdrawal is unpleasant, but short-lived.

To overcome the habit of constantly reaching for a cigarette, you must teach yourself to act in new ways. This takes some conscious effort. You have to recognize the urge to reach for a cigarette, and then you have to tell yourself to do something different. Some people will carry around a cinnamon stick, for example, and put it in their mouth in place of a cigarette.

While you are making all these changes, it can help greatly to use some sort of relaxation technique. For more information about relaxation techniques, see my webpages called Progressive Muscle Relaxation and Autogenics Training on A Guide to Psychology and its Practice. A free relaxation recording (true to the Catholic faith) from the present website can help you experience relaxation as well.  Download an MP3 Catholic relaxation recording

The Catholic Church also offers a centuries-old form of relaxation and emotional support: prayer. After all, what keeps you chained to your addiction? Fear. Fear that life will be bleak and empty without smoking. And what is the most effective way to overcome fear? To love—to be filled with all the fullness of God.

Accordingly, I offer below two ways to use prayer to help you stop smoking. The first way should be practiced at least two times a day (morning and night). The second way is a small card that you can print and carry with you; whenever you feel the urge to smoke a cigarette, pull out the card and say the prayer. By the time you have finished, the craving for a cigarette will have dissipated.

 
Visualization and Prayer Technique

In general, changing unwanted behavior involves three basic steps:

1.	You must know how ugly the behavior is and how much damage it causes to yourself and to others.
2.	You must regret the damage caused by the behavior.
3.	You must know the benefits of new and different behavior.

It isn’t sufficient, however, that you “know” these things intellectually; you must know them by feeling them in the depths of your heart.

So here’s how to do it.

First, enter a state of relaxation. Here, you can simply sit (or kneel) quietly and say a couple of your favorite prayers. This is important because the next two steps (if done properly) will arouse considerable anxiety, and you need to be able to reduce that anxiety again.

Second, create a negative mood state in which you visualize the harmful and disgusting effects of the unwanted behavior. Instead of defending your behavior—to yourself, to others, and to God—see the smoking addiction for what it is in all its gruesome reality. For example, smell the stench of the smoke on your clothes and body; see the stains on your fingers and teeth; notice your shortness of breath and coughing; visualize the poisons coating your lungs and other internal organs. Then say a Hail Mary.

Third, contemplate how miserable and wretched your life will be if you do not change your behavior. For example, see yourself wheezing for breath and dying of cancer. Imagine your children suffering from their own addictions because of your negative influence. Then say a Hail Mary.

Fourth, create a positive mood state in which you visualize the beneficial effects of new, healthy behavior, all the while your anxiety from the previous step begins to dissolve. For example, see yourself as calm and confident in your faith, relaxed and able to concentrate, free of frustration and tension, a positive influence on others. Then say a Hail Mary.

Fifth, reinforce your positive mood with prayers of supplication. Repeat them several times. Create your own, or select from the following examples.

•	When I trust in You, Lord, I do not need to soothe myself cigarettes. Through Your grace, I am no longer a slave to impulses and addiction.
•	Lord, when grounded in prayer, I work calmly and confidently. Give me the grace to not let my self-confidence be bothered by small mistakes. In You I can overcome all obstacles with total confidence.
•	Give me the grace, Lord, to respect my own body as a temple of the Holy Spirit and to present myself to others with respect and dignity.
•	Give me the grace, Lord, to remain calm, relaxed, and composed in any situation.
•	Lord, let Your calmness and patience reflect through me to shine upon others as compassion and sensitive understanding.
•	You, Lord, give me an experience of peace and calm that cannot be threatened by anything outside myself. I thank you, Lord; I refuse to be jealous or envious, and I wish peace and good to all.
•	Lord, help me to remember that in You there are no “good” days or “bad” days; there is only love.

Sixth, conclude with a simple closure to the session. Say the following prayers:

•	The Hail, Holy Queen (Salve Regina). HAIL, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy; hail, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us; and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.   V. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God. R. That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen.
•	The prayer to St. Michael the Archangel. SAINT Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle; be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray: and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the wicked spirits, who roam through the world, seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
•	The following invocation, thrice repeated:   V. Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, R. Have mercy upon us.

 
Coping With Cravings

Copy the following prayer card, and whenever you feel a craving for a cigarette, pull out the card and say the prayers:

PRAYER FOR STOPPING SMOKING
O MARY, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. Through the grace of your purity, may this unclean habit cease.
FROM the stench of smoke, the foul taste in my mouth, the stains on my hands and teeth, pray for my release. Hail Mary . . .
FROM coughing and phlegm, from polluted blood, from heart and lung disease, pray for my release. Hail Mary . . .
FROM habit and slavery, pray for my release. Hail Mary . . .
FROM tension, fear, and anxiety, pray for my release. Hail Mary . . .
FOR health and calm and peace, pray for me. Hail Mary . . .
Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that, by Christ redeemed, we will choose to live in purity. Amen.

 

Download the information on this page in the form of a pamphlet you can print yourself