=Towards Living a Healthier Life=

Just like any other habitual action, people go through a series of stages before finally become a smoking person.  It’s interesting thing to learn since each stage is influenced by different factors.  So each stage will require different preventive action to be applied to stop it.  Bear in mind that this is not a one way process but rather the stages are fluid and may reverse and restart several time.

Precontemplation - At this stage a person is not yet smoking.  They don’t even now what smoking is, yet they start to receive massage about it.  This massage can come from many source such as TV, role model, other people, advertisement, and films.

Contemplation - This is the stage where a person already receive enoguh message about smoking and start to receive images and peer influence.  The curiosity and consideration to try smoking is build up at this stage.

Initiation - This is the time when a person does actually smoking.  Many people who was in this stage does not become a regular smoker though those who continue to the next stage and become a regular smoking person  is also in a considerable amount.  Friends are usually the strongest influence in this stage.

Experimentation - Without any counter massage and influence in the initiation stage, people will come into the experimentation stage.  In this stage people will try a serial attempt of smoking. Addiction usually starts in this stage since there’ll be enough nicotine from a series of smoking to start an addiction.  At this stage, peer-bonding is still the strongest influence.

Regular smoking - At this stage smoking has already had enough efficacy to keep people smoking in a regular basis. People will start to have self perception about smoking.  They start to believe that smoking did bring benefits to them.  Societal factors including price and availability, and interpersonal factors such as school policy, will provide a background.

Maintenance - This is the continuation of regular smoking.  In this stage all the self perception about smoking that develop in the regular smoking stage will become a delusion/strong belief.  I mean in this stage smoking person is totally convince that smoking is beneficial to them, and this belief will be hard to break. This is the stage where we will hear smoking person says "smoking makes me vigor", "I can’t concentrate without smoking", "I can’t work without smoking", or "I need smoking to relieve my stress" and many other things like that.

Quitting - Occurs when there’s counter massage to smoking that hardly drive a person’s perception about smoking to a different direction. Also when there are change in situation that restrict the possibility of a smoking person to smoke.  For example a new non-smoking partner, steep price of cigarettes, decreases in spending money, suffered from a disease that is said to be caused by smoking, and beginning to work or study where smoking is strictly prohibited can all trigger a decision to stop smoking.

The higher the stages someone has already in to, the higher the effort and the cost needed to stop the smoking habit.  Also the greater the damage a person would already being suffered because of smoking.  So doing a preventove measure as early as possible is an important way to fight smoking.  It’s not only mean lessening the cost and the effort, but also minimizing the possible damage caused by smoking.