万花筒 2011-01-30&01-31 戒烟，难于上青天？

 Sean McMenamin says he's unsuccessfully tried to go smoke free for 16 years, but he's not ready to give up. He says his father's early death was cigarette-related . "The thing that scares me right now is I'm the same age as when my father passed away."

 

Sean says his wife is trying to quit too, for the sake of their children, but this die hard Flyers fan feels stuck in the penalty box. Cold turkey, nicotine¹ gum, hypnosis all have failed him, and it's not just the cost to his health he's worried about. "That's ridiculous amounts of money to spend for something I know is gonna kill me." 

 

"Nicotine dependence² is the hardest substance abuse to treat."

 

Dr. Robert Schnoll, who specializes in the treatment of nicotine dependence says there are 2 types of treatment: Behavioral therapy and medications approved by federal health officials. "Those include nicotine replacement³ therapies like the patch, the gum, nasal spray, lozenges, inhalers, and there's two additional non-nicotine medications. One's buproprion and the other is a more recently developed medication called varencline."

 

Also known as zyban and chantix. These medications have been in the press because of concerns about safety. "If you have friends and relatives that can be sure to monitor your reactions to these medications, the likelihood of something seriously negative happening is gonna be very low, and these medications are gonna offer you the best chance for quitting."

 

The doctor says you can dramatically increase your chance of success with one simple step join a smoking cessation program. "That can offer them formal counseling and access to medication versus⁴ trying to move it alone."

 

"There's that age-old saying, 'if I knew then what I know now, there's a lot of things I would have done differently,' but smoking would have been the main one, not to start in the first place."

1 nicotine   

n.(化)尼古丁，烟碱

参考例句：

• Many smokers who are chemically addicted to nicotine cannot cut down easily.许多有尼古丁瘾的抽烟人不容易把烟戒掉。
• Many smokers who are chemically addicted to nicotine cannot cut down easily.许多有尼古丁瘾的抽烟人不容易把烟戒掉。

2 dependence   

n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属

参考例句：

• Doctors keep trying to break her dependence of the drug.医生们尽力使她戒除毒瘾。
• He was freed from financial dependence on his parents.他在经济上摆脱了对父母的依赖。

3 replacement   

n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品

参考例句：

• We are hard put to find a replacement for our assistant.我们很难找到一个人来代替我们的助手。
• They put all the students through the replacement examination.他们让所有的学生参加分班考试。

4 versus   

prep.以…为对手，对；与…相比之下

参考例句：

• The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
• The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。