The smoking dilemma; Types of Smokers

Well maybe some people just need what cigarette supply. If so it might be better for them to keep on smoking. I'm Dr. Ralph Grundy professor of health education at San Diego State College and this is one of a series of programs on the smoking dilemma. In the next few minutes we'll be talking about so-called types of smokers. Our guest is Mr. Charles all day for Project Director for smoking research San Diego. Mr. all safer are there identifiable types of smokers. You know certain types. I did you know on this personality business a little bit. I mean most of the work is shown towards personnel and still there are really strongly discernible differences. Phyllis Silvan Tomkins. From the City College of New York has come up with a pretty interesting theory on this being tested I don't know. And on this and there excuse me there's a series that really differentiates psychologically smokers from non smokers are does it differentiate one kind of smoker from another one kind of smoker from another. I say OK

well what kind of category do they come up with. Well Tompkins in the course horn of the Public Health Service now works with a sample of about 5000 people on how they type out as to what they really use a cigarette for almost everyone starts smoking for the standard batch of reasons that is building and Asian kids want to appear older more sexually mature. Quite a variety of reasons but all the Reeks of this bridging the gap between adolescence and adulthood. We were in a couple years after that they find out that these they're using cigarettes for entirely different batch of reasons. So you start with one set and then after you smoke awhile yet suddenly find you have a different set of reasons why you keep going right. You know are you ok. You tend to use wood cigarettes on her either an oral gratification or in the heat effects of nicotine on a central nervous system is a. Way of coping with life.

This does Thompkins really lend support for the very that the use of a cigarette is represents a regression to the nipple in infancy or so you deal with that at all. Not really that I know most psychologists I know discount this ACS So what I mean if you do have the need for gratification you start from this point you try to answer in other ways rather than going back and trying to break up something that happened for you. Now we sort of got off the track there. What were those categories that time going says identified smokers again. Well Tompkins finds that people fall into one of four basic brackets after they develop the. Use for cigarettes about eight or nine percent of the average of the smokers are what they call habit smokers and in this way the pure pristine habit cigarettes really do nothing for them psychologically or physiologically they get no satisfaction from drawing on a cigarette or they don't get any. Well why do they keep smoking then if they don't get anything out of it.

Well see acquired skills like shaving they started for the same batch of reasons maybe they're using cigarettes as communication systems like the girl who's saying that she's not bad but just a little bit bad you know and the cigarettes will send this message. But one of these people because of group pressure maybe you know will pick up cigarettes and. We never really get that much involved with them and even you can quit very easily just like turning off a light bulb no nervousness no way you know her ability because like I always put my left leg into my pants before the right leg. That's right I can change that without too much trouble. It's like shaving or crossing the street about the same significance to another group of people who are close to this or what. Tompkins calls the positive half ex-smokers or I prefer the idea of pleasure smaller These are people who tend to smoke in moderation but they really love the cigarettes they smoke but they tend to distinguished by the fact that they tend to smoke mostly when they're feeling good. Cigarettes heighten her sense of feeling good

and they smoke for a bonafide relaxation like a cup of coffee or evening meal with the kids in bed. The bills are paid. Everything is really going pretty good for him. When you're tired they have a sense of satisfaction or they don't have this cup of coffee and a cigarette and do they really like the taste. For example we like a lot of things about it. And it's pleasure oriented just pleasure and you have it and they like this so-called pleasure really are tasting of the laryngeal and tracheal sensory branches of the new world gastric nerve. It had pleasure that they pulled him over he gets what he inhales is I think they call it help pulmonary eroticism. OK. But. Well yes we relax and smokers know they are tightening the manipulator. This is a person who likes to be doing something with their hands something we put in a dark room with the lights off and give him a cigarette. Don't light up and he gets a very unhappy experience. The they all smoke like crazy when they're in you know light room and watch the smoke

come off their lips like this but when a dark room there's something missing and so they need some visual stimuli accompanying the act they now learn that when they watch a small curlicue up and I'd like to see the fire come up which raises questions about latent pyromania maybe. Well another group is what they call a stimulant smoker and this is a I think typified by the gal who never smokes except when she goes to a cocktail party and you'll smell the packer so just in one evening this sense of social interchange you know. It turns around and you smoke a lot but all of these now the habit smoker in these three brackets of the positive ex-smokers are what we loosely call pleasure smokers and as a group these people can quit with relative ease. They can hear us. It's relatively easy for these people to quit if they want to or the difficulty is they don't want to and you

give them a fear Laden message for example that you're so coarsely during her soul's intelligence these people don't read easily because you're not talking and you're talking about a heavy smoker. And there are ways to motivate these people but they're not maybe tied with health as we'd like to see. Maybe they're way more the midis people be to say you want your kids to smoke and this would be more provocative and more linked with their normal these people are pleasure smokers and they get something positive out of it and if they stop there something will be missing in their lives won't it. Well not really these tend to be also happy people and socially gregarious people they have many interests in life and this is another way the nicer typify they can jump to something else but I don't need a substitute. Very strongly right. OK we got two categories now big categories the heavy smoker and the so-called pleasure smoker. Are there any others. Next group Aziza so-called negative ads ex-smoker these are people who smoke cigarettes so they won't feel so bad. And

I think we used to you know stigmatize a whole group with this moniker you know these are the people who need a crutch. But in actuality. Comprise 30 35 percent of the smoking population. One of these people smoke now when under tension we don't feel good realities when things are going good for Mr. consumption will go down and things are going bad for him and the cigarette consumption goes up. But they have a fight with the wife or have a deadline pressure in the in the job. Yes they've lost the race at the track are these kinds of things the cigarette is be used as a tranquilizer e in effect what does the social smoker ever use smoking for a negative effect that is to ease the tension of a social situation. To help him feel more at ease. Yeah if I follow you what you're asking me is Do these are these lines clean between Eason or not you will have my times positive f x smokers I'm

sure that will drop into this behavior pattern when realities it will give me small. Is there a progression here. D a move from one type of smoker to the other. Are these categories independent in that respect. If you are a pleasure smoker DSK a pleasure smokers know you can move around on this you can go to the negative effect on a guest. Now can you go beyond that. Yes the final category we call is the psychologically addicted smoker. And these are people who are constantly aware of when or not smoking. Psychologically addicted you know they are constantly were not smoking each cigarette they smoke starts to build up negative feelings the only way to get positive feelings of my having the succeeding cigarette. So this puts them like the hamster in a cage and around and around they go. And when this guy is nonsmoking you say he's aware of his not smoke that's right and he's uncomfortable until he lights up his next cigarette.

These people have their phone without cigarettes you know. If they're caught maybe five miles out of town Hillary immediately the closest gas station to get something that does this person have a nicotine craving is this what it is. Well there's some evidence to indicate that yes. But this is a smaller part of it. We feel most of the psychological. It sounds like a lot like a person who says he's in love. And when his loved one is not here he's you know wishing for her presence is it like that. You know for these people who thought of giving up smoking often is like we look forward to seeing a loved one die. Of course with a when a loved one dies you have to adjust. Some people of course don't but most people do they realize that they're gone and they will come back but when our society was cigarettes so easy to obtain. They don't have to face it innocently the addictive smoker has a lot of support for his addiction and in the culture you know right now you said that the pleasure smoker in the habit smoker

can stop if he sees what he's doing and if he understands it and really wants to. What about the negative Aphex smoker. And what about this addicted smoker. But by and large they really help when they do want to they want to quit Yes and if you put up a sign smoking cessation clinic here that people would enter a new year high negative effect and psychologically addicted smokers. But the problem is they are much more difficult including the high negative effects motor goes like a roller coaster. They will quit but they don't have too much problem in quitting for a while then six months later you think GM got a cigarette case with a cup of coffee in the oven I just have one of them in the back and apparently these people who quit many times you know they're really quite make it. It's like a person moderately overweight will lose down to what they think is a sensible weight never right back up again. Take the addicted smoker maybe you could equate him with a guy who is 400 pounds overweight and when he quits he goes through hell. Fig. Hello. I mean quit eating. He shrinks down a hundred eighty pounds and he probably won't go back up

again because you never want to go through that. Trauma and shock to do so if he really suffers to stop then he he might not pick it up again. You know the number of times truly Zindagi a feeling of real accomplishment to him too. He's going through hell and now he's not going to go through it again. That's right. What about some of these other notions about personality characteristics that smoking would be thrown around a lot. I remember reading in something some time ago indicating that the smoker tended to be more visceral tonic that is he was more interested in hedonistic immediate satisfaction of his pleasure needs whereas the nonsmoker is more likely to be Cerebro tonic that is he would think about it and would take his pleasure and satisfactions in life in other ways other than the immediate gratification of pleasure and he did nothing about that. Does that fit into Tompkins model. Well Thomas of course is talking about people who are already smoking and inspiring in these categories.

There has been some work done on what they call the personality types related to heart disease. Most has been done with executives in the San Francisco areas. But here they find most people who are dying of coronaries are a personality types or people who think fast and hard and live very stressful lives and they tend almost all the smoke cigarettes for control of the study that I'm referring to the U.S. EPA Zizi is the aggressive smoke cigarette smoking types. We had high death rates from heart disease high stress jobs and then for him personally using bombers I mean were more of a conic you know. If they smoke the smoke pipes and cigars and didn't live stressful lives and actually had a very low rate of heart disease are smokers likely to be more conformist or less that we don't hear about that. I don't think so. I don't know I'm not familiar with. So they may be individual are conformist.

Well they're not sheep and you know the stereotype is if you smoke you use one of the sheep following along with it. Smoking used to be typified as a low 25 percent kids who didn't do well in school didn't do well academically or you know what are you smoking for them an earlier stage was a form of spitting in the face of society. But it's changed now so I know there's an old rule. You have been listening to the smoking dilemma with Dr. Ralph grounder professor of health education at San Diego State College and Charles I'll take project coordinator of smoking research San Diego. This program was produced by Katy B S FM at the Radio Television Center at San Diego State College this is the national educational radio network.