Wednesday, January 19, 2000 THE OAKVILLE BEAVER B1 YOU WOULDN'T TRUST JUST ANYONE TO DRIVE YOUR CAR, SO W HY TRUST JUST ANY COM PANY TO INSURE in Wayne McGill 2345 W^ooft Rd. #21, Oakville 847-5671 OFFICIAL MEDIA SPONSOR O F TH E OAKVILLE WATERFRONT FESTIVAL Focus % *£££S2v j i! Ml Save 30 - 65% off our entire inventory, from January 17th to February 19th, Designer Labels.. Finally A ffordable!! This is one Sale ydu don't w ant I d m iss!! Y bu'll never spend so little fo r so m uch! By Consignment Upscale Resale Ladies Wear 1 1 5 T r a fa l g a r R d . (just N . cf Lakeshare) Oakville Beaver Focus Editor: WILMA BLOKHUIS Email: blokhuis@haltonsearch.com 1 3 3 8 -3 4 7 4 % Halton joins Quit Smoking 2000 Contest Today is Weedless Wednesday, mid point of National Non-Smoking Week. Would you like to quit smoking and win a Caribbean cruise for two, including airfare? This is one of the six prizes offered by Quit Smoking 2000, a new province wide contest to help smokers kick the habit. Other prizes include a $2,500 dia mond necklace, three Sony TV/VCR sets, a weekend getaway at a Sheraton Hotel in Montreal, Ottawa or Toronto, plus $500 spending money. In addition to the six prizes to be won province-wide, 12 Sony Discman players will be award ed in Halton. The Quit Smoking 2000 Contest hopes to attract more than 20,000 entrants from across Ontario, including about 2,000 from Halton. Halton's Quit Smoking 2000 Contest will be launched at Thursday's opening of the new QuitCare Clinic at Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital at 2 p.m., in the lobby. To qualify for prizes, people must quit and remain smoke-free for the month of March. Participants must submit their entry forms, by Feb. 29th, to the Halton Council on Smoking and Health, 1151 Bronte Rd., Oakville, ON, L6M 3L1; or by fax to 825-8588. Information and entry forms can be picked up at the Halton Regional Health Department, Halton Healthcare Services (OTMH), Oakville office of the Canadian Cancer Society, QuitCare, and the Halton Lung Association office. Participants can also enter online through the Council For a Tobacco-Free Ontario (CTFO) at: www.opc.on.ca/ctfo Entry forms must include the names and addresses of two non-smoking `sup port buddies.' Part of the contest require ment is to have the support of two bud dies, because research shows this type of support system improves a sm oker's suc cess at quitting. The celebration for all contest partici pants, their buddies, and local prize win ners, will be held on World No-Tobacco Day, May 31 st. For more information about quitting smoking, contest details, and supports to help people become smoke-free, call the Quit Smoking 2000 Contest Line, 8256179, or call Tanya Kulnies at the Halton Regional Health Department at 825-6060 Ext. 7525, or TTY 827-9833. After 50 years o fsmoking, one woman ftnds it' s hard to quit By Barb Joy SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER |^ ^ W h e cravings were supposed to W * go away after six weeks but they're still lurking around, ready to pounce. Still, people say I've done pretty well at this quit-smoking business. I could do better. After all, I'm supposed to be off ciga rettes entirely - and I'm not. I confess to sneaking a few of my son's Rothmans on weekends. It's making him feel guilty that he smokes, and me, that I'm snitching. Although he closes the door to his room, the window, flicks on the `air purifier' and offers to smoke outside, I know those cigarettes are available no matter where he is. All I have to do is take one. And I do. They say a woman who smoked a pack a day before quitting has to resist at least 20 urges to smoke each day after quitting. It feels as though my resistance has to be called upon every minute of the day. As I try to concentrate on writing this column, my mind is crying "Cigarette!" Popping hard candy, chewing gum, gulp ing water, avoiding alcohol and gnawing raw carrots help, but they aren't the same as a nicotine fix. Yes, I've slipped! The how-to booklet defines a `slip' as regularly having a few cigarettes. A `relapse' is smoking more than half as many cigarettes as you used to. I guess I'm a weekend `slipper.' So far not a relapser. To backtrack. I've been smoking for 50 years. Very little at first, but gradually increasing with the stresses of life until I was a pack-a-day puffer. An hour at a social event was all I could manage before checking out the smoking section, usually somewhere outside. The morning and afternoon cigarette break at work didn't come . _around fast enough, even though I realized I was depriving the company of 20 minutes of productivity daily. Still, the thought of tackling the problem of quitting was brewing in my brain. Practically every morning for the past 10 years, I'd resolve to smoke only when the craving got the better of me which, I reasoned, should cut me down to four or five a day. If I could stick to that regime, I told myself I really didn't have to cut it out altogether. And every night, I'd guiltily light up the 20th one before going to bed - just to help me sleep bet ter. You could call it procrastination to the nth degree. Part of the reason I put off quitting for so long was the memory of a former attempt on `the patch' that lasted for nine days. During that time, my per sonality changed. From a pleasant enough lady I became an ogre. I barked at people, got upset over small things and couldn't concentrate on my work. I didn't want to repeat the process -- not that way, at any rate. A couple of other little jabs at quitting produced no better results. One involved lying on the floor in a room at the Holiday Inn with some 400 other people who had paid $40 each to be there. In our uncom fortable positions (we weren't told to bring pillows) we listened to a hypnotist droning out about the evils of smoking and how we could overcome it if we tried (or something to that effect.) I stifled my laughter, went home and smoked four cig arettes in a row. Another reason I put off quitting was due to my own stubborn personality. I hated all the yammering from the anti smoking league about how I'd better q u it. . . or else. I looked at their leaders as fanatics who had probably never smoked in their lives and knew nothing about addictions. It was downright scary watch ing these groups as they gorged them selves on self-righteousness and grew stronger as they gleefully attacked their scapegoats, the quarter of the population that still smoked. I laughed at their naivete of putting warning signs on cigarettes to turn young people away from the weed. To para phrase something someone once said: "Nothing is so sweet to the young as something forbidden." Instead of dwelling ad nauseum about the evils of tobacco (after all, most people are knowledgeable enough to know it's harmful) I wondered why the anti-smok ing groups weren't concentrating on help ing people quit. For instance, why weren't they front and centre at establishing Smokers Anonymous groups all over the country to make buddies available when the quitter needed support? If it worked for alcoholics it should work for smokers, I reasoned. In my current struggle with cigarettes, such a group would be most helpful. Yet, there's still none here. (S e e `S m o k e r . . . ' p a g e B 6 ) A LL Floor Model Sofa Suites ON SALE.. Sale Prices T· ANIJARY SALE FURS SIIFTFJ'SKIN C U O fH C O A T S Include the GST1 · I · It Limited time only! on A LL Floor Model Suites including Quality Brand Names such as · Sklar-Peppler · Brunetti · Huntington House · Sterling · Leathercraft · and more! 25-50% O F ] FINE OUTERWEAR SINCE 1815 S lp I S S IN T E R IO R S 217 Lakeshore Rd. 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