Special Drug Tricks Your Brain Out Of Liking Tobacco
Here is an article I read just this morning, and it really made my morning and set me up for a happy day. I hope it will have the same effect on you - it really should, because it is a good article, and we both deserve a little happiness in life, especially during the morning. Some folks just do it right; this doctor Hogan is one of them. How many people, doctors or otherwise, can wake up in the morning and say, I saved lives today? There are probably few folks on this planet who have done as much for humanity as has this doctor Hogan. We must all be inspired and glad to read of such a man, a truly holy brother to his brothers in the human race.
Forty thousand graduates of this program! That's forty thousand lives lengthened, forty thousand more men and women who will live into old age now, and be with their grandchildren. The articlecorrectly points out that the health of these forty-thousand folks will save society and the country enormous sums of money, which can then be spent on education and on enriching the lives of others. How must Doctor Hogan feel, knowing he has done so much for humanity?49,000 people free from tobacco, thanks to him
A legal drug that tricks the brain into letting it attack the body offends Dr. Patrick Hogan III. It offends the Tacoma doctor so much that he’s volunteered the last 20 years, dragging its victims back from addiction.
He got his thank-you note last weekend. It came complete with scrollwork, the state seal and a fancy typeface.
Gov. Chris Gregoire proclaimed May 19 Franciscan Health System Freedom from Tobacco Day. Gregoire cited the 49,000-some people who have gone through the four-week class and stuck with the support group Hogan founded in 1992. These thousands are, without exception, happy they got the help to quit.
We should be, too. They have saved us millions in health costs we’d otherwise help pay through our insurance premiums and taxes.
Hogan shares the honor with colleagues and volunteers at St. Joseph Medical Center, St. Anthony, St. Francis and St. Clare hospitals. Franciscan takes smoking cessation seriously, so much so that last year it adopted a policy requiring all new employees to have a tobacco-free lifestyle.
“Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of disease and death in our country,” Hogan said last week at the office where he practices neurology.
Neurology, by the way, is not one of the fields in which docs fight the damage smoking does to the body. But a neurologist is the right person to explain to smokers how they’ve been suckered by the tobacco industry.
“Nicotine binds with the brain, which releases dopamine, which makes you feel really good,” he said. “Initially, you get the buzz from dopamine.”
That buzz is addictive, he said – addictive, short-lived and stingy. “After a while, you’re not getting the dopamine. You’re getting the discomfort of withdrawal. You have a very powerful urge to get that return of the dopamine level.”
Steve and Diana Anderson had smoked for 27 years when Steve’s brother bugged them to see what the Hogan’s Freedom from Tobacco Support Group at St. Joseph Hospital was all about.
“We went for a month or a month and a half before we set our quit date,” Steve Anderson said.
As with manyof the best preachers and the greatest teachers, they had been there themselves, and they worked their system on themselves. He and his wife, his God-given helpmeet, worked on their problem together. How's that for setting an example, both for their own children and for the community, and indeed for the whole world. They understood the suffering that it could cause to quit, but they undertook that suffering voluntarily and for themselves.
They founded Freedom From Tobacco and saw real results from their work.
Thanks to them, if there were a cake with 20 candles, there are many thousands of people in Pierce County with enough breath to blow them out.
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