Playing With Fire

Playing With Fire is a unique book that explores current issues surrounding the epidemic of smoking among women. This is an extremely important topic today because for the first time in our history, young women are more likely than men to become smokers. Cancer of the lung is now one of the major causes of cancer deaths among women, and women now account for more than half the new cases of lung cancer each year. The future looks bleak, for it is predicted by the World Health Organization that deaths from lung cancer among women will double over the next twenty years. This is in addition to the loss optimum health due to smoking.

Playing With Fire helps to explain the reasons for the current pattern of smoking among women. It is the hypothesis of this book that while the lives of women have changed dramatically over the past quarter-century, the advances that women have made economically and socially have not made our world so much a better place, as a more stressful one. New roles and responsibilities are layered on top of the older, more traditional ones and consequently women are suffering the effects of burnout as never before. Cigarette smoking is an effective way of self-medicating to alleviate the pain and stress of our daily lives.

Playing With Fire is unique in that it takes a compassionate view of women who smoke and challenges them to explore deeper issues in their lives, something vitally important in long-term smoking cessation. The book validates women's experiences and provides them with a context for why they feel the way they do, which gives meaning to why they smoke. While supporting women in their personal choices--to smoke or not to smoke--it encourages them to seriously consider the risks involved and to consider ways of improving their situation and self-care practices.

The beauty of Playing With Fire is that it does not preach or scold, but rather takes readers on a journey of self-discovery that will help women to understand their lives and motives for smoking, as well as the possibility of personal change and power. It is a book that explores the creation of a better world through the individual's acceptance of and love for the self and the adoption of healthy self-care practices.