Ad filmmaker Niranjan Kaushik, 50, takes a break from playing tennis and corrects you from calling him an ex-smoker. “I am a non-smoker. There’s no residual relationship. The toxicity is out of my life forever,” says the man who once couldn’t do without 40 puffs a day till 2016. He’s now a tennis buff, having started playing at 44 after he gave up smoking. Regular sessions have helped him decrease body fat and lower bad cholesterol, something he had to battle with as a smoker.
“Growing up in Juhu, Mumbai, in the 1980s, I never thought smoking was a risk factor. Nobody did. It was the done thing, a sort of a recreational activity. I began by picking up dad’s unfinished cigarette and by the time I was in class XII, I was smoking three to four cigarettes a day. Once I took up advertising, it became my creative tool,” says Niranjan.
TURNING POINT AND REBOOTING THE MIND
His turning point happened during the demonetisation announcement in 2016, when he realised he had Rs 20,000 of unusable notes and bought eight cartons of Marlboros from the nearest vendor for Rs 16,000. “Since I led a fairly active lifestyle, I didn’t have any noticeable health impacts like other smokers, except for elevated levels of cholesterol. But I thought I was really mentally sick to blow up my money during a crisis on cigarettes and justifying the act in my mind as an advance purchase for the months ahead. That twisted thinking did it,” says Niranjan.
So his rehabilitation followed the psychological route called neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), which basically resets and retrains your mind to delink the image of cigarettes from everyday activity. “I always associated smoking with me writing a storyboard or a punchline. Much of my ideas developed during smoking breaks and I wrongly attributed my creativity to it. Nicotine is a stimulant that excites the brain by releasing adrenaline. When you’re bored, sleepy, or tired, nicotine can perk you up. It can even relax you temporarily because it encourages the release of endorphins and dopamine, which can improve mood and create feelings of pleasure. Truth is this is an illusion,” says Niranjan, who changed the imagery associated with his work.
“The existing positive associations with smoking can be replaced easily with other images. I switched over to tea from coffee and took up some other activity during work breaks, so I could dissociate my thinking from smoking. In fact, NLP can help you visualise the perils of smoking in such detail, that giving up smoking may seem like a relief,” he says. Niranjan did three months of this protocol and has not been remotely tempted by smoke since. He stayed away from nicotine replacement pills and patches because he didn’t want to be dependent on them.
He now eats clean and has corrected his lifestyle. “Of course, I didn’t attempt everything together. While I was quitting smoking, I continued having my red meat. This gradual withdrawal prevented a relapse,” he says.
HOW TO PREVENT RELAPSE
Relapse is something that 53-year-old Madhav Kolhatkar had been dealing with before he finally gave up smoking on February 4, 2017. “I am nicotine-free.” This is the SMS that he has been sending daily since that day to Mukta Puntambekar, director at Pune’s Muktangan De-Addiction Centre, who helped him give up smoking. That was quite a zigzag journey of promises kept and broken, of burning himself in bed, blood pressure and finally a liver abscess. Now, the former smoker is a counsellor himself, helping young people kick the habit.
What began as a Class IX student’s “post-dinner thrill” quickly changed into addiction as Madhav saw many of his peers do that in South Mumbai. “By the age of 21, I was smoking at least 10 cigarettes a day. I even stole money from my dad’s wallet to buy a pack of cigarettes and then got attracted to alcohol. I became an addict of both, puffing up 15 cigarettes with 360 ml of rum and beer. Sessions with a psychiatrist failed and when my parents visited my older sister in the US, I stayed back, smoking and drinking at home. Once the mattress on my bed almost caught fire,” he says.
He lost weight, his blood pressure soared, he had jaundice and typhoid. But it took a liver abscess to press the pause button and sign up for a rehabilitation programme. “For a while I was fine but my craving for tobacco remained unaddressed. I gave up midway and replaced cigarettes with gutkha or paan masala. Then I focussed on giving up alcohol first. That made it easier for me to give up cigarettes as I usually smoked and drank simultaneously,” says Madhav as he battled withdrawal symptoms like restlessness and sleeplessness.
Mukta devised a personalised module of deaddiction. “We followed a graded action plan, bringing down his cigarettes from 10 to 2 in the initial days. Then I asked Madhav to call me the moment he had a craving. I would immediately remind him that his lung problems could only worsen and that he could have lung failure or cancer. We planned his meals and filled his waking hours with different activities. We used the HALT and HOW methods. HALT refers to Hunger, Anger, Loneliness and Tiredness which are triggers for smoking. We distracted him during these phases. HOW refers to Honesty, Open-mindedness and Willingness, which helped Madhav build trust. I would conduct surprise urine tests, which can identify nicotine even if the person had smoked ten days ago. So Madhav started feeling accountable and got serious about quitting,” she says.
Initially, Madhav was put on nicotine replacement chewables called Nicogum, which mimic the effects of nicotine and tricks the brain. It can help reduce cravings and irritable feelings that occur when someone stops smoking. “I took to journalling, writing down how each day passed without nicotine. As I read every page, I realised my life was getting fuller and I was becoming more meaningful to others than feeling sick all the time,” says Madhav. He has now completed his graduation and earned a diploma in Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy. He thinks his practical experience will make him a better counsellor.
Niranjan Kaushik's (left) rehabilitation followed the psychological route called neuro-linguistic programming while relapse is something that Madhav Kolhatkar had been dealing with before he finally gave up smoking. 
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