The United States Army Marksmanship Unit Training Manual

(6) Think back to the time many years ago when you smoked your first cigarette. How did it taste? Gaseous, strong, biting, wasn’t it? This is the experience that you may give your system 30 to 60 times a day. You are able to do it because the human mechanism is a marvelously adjustable piece of machinery which can get used to almost anything.

b. What can you do about it? You have already taken one big step toward giving up smoking: you have been thinking about the detrimental effects of smoking and about giving it up. If you want to stop smoking, think about giving it up at one fell swoop. Think of it cooly and calmly, without fear or hopelessness. Think of what it would be like to never have to smoke. Giving up smoking isn’t all self-denial; there are compensations. There are so many good things to enjoy more when you give yourself a chance to fully appreciate them. You will never want to go back to smoking.

(1) When you give up smoking, your food will taste much better. Your nose and throat and lungs will not be continuously permeated with smoke. You will begin to smell the world around you. When you walk into a garden you will smell as well as see the flowers. When you get up in the morning, you won’t find your throat clogged with phlegm, and you won’t cough or clear your throat so often.

(2) You will actually feel far less nervous. That is hard to believe — for during the first days of non-smoking you will be nervous. The depressant effect smoking has exerted on your body for years suddenly ends, and the unfamiliar effect is almost overwhelming. You will possibly be more emotional; you may laugh at trivial things and, for a while, be tense, jumpy. But gradually the nervousness diminishes. You will be calmer, more poised. For when you stop slowing down your body and cutting your energy with tobacco you will find that you have much more energy. There will be more time to get things done.

(3) A word of caution here. It is generally believed that a reformed smoker gains weight. If you have trouble with your waistline, remember this: when you stop smoking, you will not gain more than a few pounds. When you stop smoking, you will have a great increase in energy. In using up that energy, you will burn away a lot of the weight that you would otherwise put on.

(4) If you have read this far, you probably think you are about ready to swear off. Don’t do it yet.

c. To stop smoking, follow these rules:

(1) Watch and wait until some time when your life is on a fairly even keel. Don’t try it when you are leaving on an important trip, or preparing to give a big party, or when you are facing some personal emergency. Don’t postpone it too long, either, or you will lose the momentum you are gradually building up.

(2) But some sunny morning — maybe on a weekend — you will wake up feeling especially good. You will have had a good night’s sleep; you will feel fit for anything. The idea of stopping smoking will pop into your head. Why foul up a wonderful day with the noxious fumes of burning tar and nicotine? Decide, then and there quietly and firmly, that you are through with smoking! This is the moment, intelligently selected and properly prepared for, when you can get off with a running start.

(3) After you have started yourself off with as much momentum as you can, tell your friends that you have given up smoking. Don’t be smug or complacent or boastful, but let people know what you are doing. Then, at some point when you are seriously tempted to smoke, the thought of all the derisive laughter you will get for giving in may well carry you over the crisis.

(4) Most smokers have fixed ideas about the occasions when a smoke tastes best. The first cigarette after breakfast, or the one with a cocktail before dinner. If such associations are likely to tempt you to smoke, brace yourself in advance for such temptations; tell yourself that such an occasion is coming, and that you must be prepared to want to smoke badly. If you hold out only for a moment, that sudden strong temptation will die almost as quickly as it arose.

(5) Don’t permit yourself to make a single exception. Until the non-smoking habit is firmly implanted, “don’t”. If a habit is not fed, it dies relatively quickly, but it can subsist for a long time on the slightest food. If you occasionally let yourself have one cigarette or pipe on the ground that “just one won’t hurt”, you will keep alive the desire to smoke. Just one drink is too many for an alcoholic, as one cigarette is too many for the heavy smoker who is trying to reform. Win the battle of the moment — every time you say no to the temptation to smoke, you are making the next “no” easier.

(6) Baby yourself to an extent. Most of us are inclined to launch sudden, ambitious programs of self-improvement. We try to do more than we can reasonably expect of ourselves. On the contrary, indulge yourself a little. Eat what you want and enjoy it. Make it a habit to carry mints, gum, or salted nuts. During the first few weeks keep substitutes on hand — and pop one into your mouth whenever you feel like smoking.

(7) Let your sleep work for you. On the night of the first day that you give up smoking, think for a moment when you go to bed of how today you did not smoke. Then tell yourself, “Tomorrow I am not going to smoke”. Repeat it to yourself as you get drowsy. This will be the last thing in your conscious mind as you drop off to sleep. When you wake in the morning, remind yourself that you are going to get through this day, too, without smoking. Don’t make a big issue of it; just briefly say: “This day I don’t smoke”. Even if you don’t follow the other rules set down here, this exercise in “controlled sleep” could get you over the hump. You will find a sense of freedom and independence and self-assurance results from simply going half a day without tobacco. This is a sharp, continuing pleasure, and every minute helps to strengthen you against the next minute’s temptation. Above and beyond this pleasant, heartening knowledge is the awareness that you are doing something of which you will be proud — not to mention healthier and happier — for the rest of your life. Six months or six years from now, when someone offers you a cigarette, you will refuse it, but not weakly or defensively. You will say “Thanks — I use to smoke, but I gave it up.”.

5. Expense: If a man smokes two packs of cigarettes a day for 365 days it will cost him $290.00 a year! Quit smoking and automatically you save money, remain healthy, and start winning pistol matches. This is a bargain you can’t afford to overlook.

At one time or another some shooters have probably tried a sedative drug or tranquilizer to see what effects it would have on their shooting. Drugs affect different people in different ways, so dosage would be a problem even if they did any good toward reducing anxiety, nervousness, etc. Any time medication or drugs are used that affect the body functions, there is a chance that the side effects will do more harm than good to the shooter’s performance.

Some shooters no doubt prescribe certain remedies for themselves when they have a cold, a stopped-up nose or a headache. Here are some of the effects of the drugs found in these and other preparations. Most of the effects are not conductive to good shooting. Most drugs are habit forming and all are a deterrent to good health if used frequently without proper medical advice. There is not substitute for good clean living, a healthy body and just plain GUTS!

1. A depressant slows reflexes, lessens the desire to win, promotes carelessness, causes loss of concentration and coordination.

2. A stimulant causes nervousness, hypertension, increases heartbeat, excessive movement of the hands, trembling, etc.

3. Drugs in daily use.