Smoking: Paying to Die Young.

As a small child I put up no smoking signs just before my grandparents arrived for a visit. They were both smokers and they were annoyed and insulted by the signs I put up. Both of them lived to a ripe old age. But when I was older I experimented with smoking, then I developed a habit of one or two a day. By the time I was 19, I was smoking about 5 to 10 a day, depending on what I was doing. By the time I entered hospital at age 21, I would sit in the smoke room with the other patients and staff and have good ol' chat about life, the universe and everything. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I came out of hospital early in 1996. In 1997 I was reacquainted with a friend I had made in hospital. He smoked a lot more than me. I spent long sessions with him chatting and having a laugh, but my smoking levels increased a lot over that time, to keep up with his smoking. I went from 5 - 10 to almost thirty. Now 23 years later I am totally hooked. I smoke between 30-35 a day; rollies and straights.

The smoke room in hospital was the best place to be. When I was there I made some very good, lifelong friends. My three closest friends are now dead, having killed themselves. I am left facing a life of smoking - a legacy of that social side to smoking. The government thinks that by constantly increasing the tax on cigarettes that they driving away smokers, making them quit. I haven't voluntarily smoked for at least the last fifteen years. I don't want to smoke, but my addiction is strong.

When you're a smoker, you grow more nicotine receptors in your brain over time. However, there are nicotine receptors all over your body, not just in the brain. So you have a physical addiction. I have tried to give up dozens of times unsuccessfully. The government knows that mentally unwell people are more likely to smoke. They also know that there is a hardcore group of smokers who will never be able or willing to quit smoking and yet they keep increasing the cost. They also know that the high levels of tax are driving many smokers to seek out sources of duty free, smuggled tobacco products. Some of these products are counterfeit and contain poisons. A lot of these people are just trying to earn a little extra. But some are Eastern European crime gangs. The money you spend with them goes to fund things like drug smuggling and dealing, and people trafficking.

There is no real help for mentally unwell people for giving up smoking. I have tried every single smoking treatment available more than once. The closest I got was going cold turkey. I was in bed for a week, unable to sleep, waking up every twenty minutes to drink water and my mouth was very dry the whole time. My body was not willing to let go of nicotine and in the end I went back to cigarettes just to make it stop. Just so I could finally get some sleep. 

Smoking will kill me. I have already had one heart attack. I cough heavily on and off throughout the day. I will probably soon get a diagnosis of COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). After that is a slow decline followed by death. The only thing that will save me is a massive change in lifestyle. And this is something I have tried hard to do, but I have failed so miserable, because my mental health is so bad. 

Review of the Mental Health Act.

I don't understand the ins and outs of the new review of the Mental Health Act, but I know the UK was put on notice a few years back that the regime of detaining people with no access to lawyers and no right to habeas corpus, where the detaining official must prove that he or she has legal and good reason to detain someone. The UN's Declaration of Human Rights ruled that the UK among other Western nations were in contravention of the Declaration. The government went into denial and tried to claim that they weren't contravening it because people were given a say over their treatment. But the fact is mentally ill people have no rights under the current system. They certainly have less rights than someone who has committed a criminal offence. Those people have the right of hebeas corpus. The mentally ill can be locked up indefinitely without any judicial review. They can be assessed by a Mental Act Managers review. Maybe they'll be released maybe they won't.

In this recent review it recommends these ideas as part of a new Mental Health Act now being considered by the government:

• Choice and autonomy: people being supported to express what they want and to be heard; patients should understand their rights and their relationships should be respected.
• Beneficial purpose: care and treatment should be delivered with a view to ending the need for coercion.
• Treating patients as individuals: detention should respect the individual circumstances of the detained person, and consider their protected characteristics
• Least restriction: compulsory powers should be used in the least restrictive and least invasive way possible.

This is a good start to restoring basic human rights to the mentally people of the UK. You can read the full report and recommendations carried out by the review panel.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/modernising-the-mental-health-act-final-report-from-the-independent-review

You can get more information from the charity Rethink Mental Illness: https://www.rethink.org/mhareview