Thirteen people sit around in a group telling the untellable about their habit. If it wasn’t the Education and Research centre in St. Vincent’s Hospital, we would probably all be smoking.

Like tar to tissues, the participants on this course bond immediately, admitting things about themselves that they wouldn’t confess to a priest.

We are about to use the powerful group method to get to the problem of what can sometimes be a thirty-year addiction. Apparently a simple pleasure, from the outside, smoking can look terrible to others, losing you their respect. Each person’s smoking habit has the complexity of each individual.

St Vincent’s Hospital has decided to tackle this problem head-on, with this six-week course and a total ban, bringing in expert counsellors to facilitate the process of change, and that of restoring our self-esteem.

Smoking also attacks your confidence and messes with your personal energy. It can interfere with experiences and you can be excluded, by not being able to get a flat or a job position.

It might be that employers start to ban smoking breaks, as it takes time and is eating into their productivity and profit, not to mention the sick days. Smoking is insidious because it is endless and you continue to do it despite the symptoms, and because it stops you from doing other things.

Your habit can be meshed into your very identity. It affects the way you feel about yourself. There are also contradictions: You can’t stop, yet you can’t continue. Then there’s the black shadow, which makes you nervous while you’re doing it, the sure knowledge that you’re doing harm to the body. Bluer skies and sharper senses restored after successfully quitting, that’s the relief.

The understanding nurse, with twelve years experience of smoking cessation counselling reassures us that she will help set us free. I think they’ve got it covered on this course, as addiction will be explored, goals set and one of the biggest problems, the relapse, will be discussed.

There are tactics, such as Delay, Distract, Drink water and be Determined. This is a battle you will fight alone, as it is a drug you take on your own. How will you cope when you are suddenly deprived of the comfort from the way you take the drug in through the mouth, like food, plus something to do with your hands?

Smoking is a habit with image and associations. There are times and places when you smoke, so you’ve got to watch that, and the reasons– to help you concentrate, instead that lit cigarette is distracting you from what you’re doing, as it is in itself an occupation.

Smoking is done with other drugs such as tea, coffee, alcohol. So you might have to give them up as well as the situations in which you smoke, including outside pubs and clubs when you have more opportunity to meet people. This has been called ‘smirting’, meaning smoking and flirting.

The smoking ban has gone a long way to help curb public smoking, but there is still a core of long-term smokers who can’t seem to get away from the habit. Other consequences are that the cost can make your lifeunmanageable, somehow separating you from the true value of money. For younger smokers, it is starting to be seen as the gateway to harder drugs.

Nicotine Replacement Therapies are employed on this course as it is based on a medical model, and there are a lot of experts on hand as well as each other to help you through the first stages. So set a quit date, and read the next issue of the paper to see how it went.

Venue: Education and Research Centre, St Vincent’s Hospital, Elm Park, Dublin 4. Time: 6.45 pm to 8.15 pm. Next Course is 4th November 2008. For more information contact Department of Preventive Medicine (2774958) or email preventive.med@st-vincents.ie