Easy Way to Stop Smoking (14 page)

Smokers can't block their minds to the health and financial aspects of smoking—they are just too big and too obvious to ignore—but I still struggle to understand how I could have blocked my mind to the sheer slavery of smoking. Spending half of my life not smoking, wishing I could, and the other half smoking, wishing I didn't have to.

In the last chapter I mentioned the incredible joy I experienced when I rediscovered my energy and confidence but this pales into insignificance next to the joy I felt when at last those sinister black clouds that for years had been hanging over me, disappeared forever, leaving me for the first time in my adult life a truly free man.

Smokers are not the weak-willed, spineless jellyfish that anti-smokers (and even some smokers themselves) believe.

I knew that I was strong-willed and I was in control of every other aspect of my life. I loathed myself for being dependent on something I despised so much and that I knew was ruining my life and my family's future.

I cannot even begin to describe to you the utter joy of being free from these sinister black shadows, the dependency and the self-loathing. I can't tell you how nice it is to be able to look at smokers not with a feeling of envy, but with a feeling of pity for them and a sense of elation that you have broken free and are no longer trapped.

The last two chapters have dealt with the considerable advantages of being a non-smoker. In the interests of fair play and with a desire to give a balanced account, the next chapter lists the advantages of being a smoker.

I
t is an accepted ‘fact' in our society that it is very difficult to stop smoking. Even books advising you how to quit usually start off by telling you how difficult and unpleasant the whole process is. The truth is that if you go about it the right way (i.e. follow the instructions in this book) it is ridiculously easy. I can understand why people might question that statement, but just consider it in detail for a moment.

If your aim is to run a four-minute mile, that's difficult. You will have to undergo years of extremely hard training, and even then you may be physically incapable of doing it. In fact, until Roger Bannister broke the four-minute barrier, it was considered impossible.

As a smoker about to attempt to quit, you might feel that you're about to attempt the impossible, but really all you need do is not light your next cigarette. After all, no one forces you to smoke. Unlike food or drink, cigarettes are not necessary for survival. So if you want to stop, why would it be difficult? In fact, it isn't. It is smokers who make it difficult by relying on the Willpower method. I define the Willpower Method as any method that makes the smoker feel that he or she is making a sacrifice. Let's look at this in more detail.

You never decided that you would become a smoker for life. You experimented with a few cigarettes and because they tasted so awful, you believed that you could never get hooked and were convinced that you could stop whenever you wished.

Before we realize it, we're buying them and we begin to feel uneasy if we don't have cigarettes close at hand or if we are going into a situation where we won't be able to smoke. Smoking, very quietly but very definitely, has become part of our lives. We always have our cigarettes close at hand and we begin to believe that they help us relax, concentrate, handle stress, etc. We come to rely on the cigarette to give us a ‘boost' in a wide variety of situations. We conveniently ignore the many contradictions that surround smoking. Like the fact that we use a cigarette as a stimulant in the morning to help us get going, and as a relaxant in the evening to help us ‘take the edge off'. It also doesn't occur to us that non-smokers seem to get on perfectly well without them. Whether we openly admit it or not, soon we are smoking because we don't think we can stop.

Research has shown that nicotine addiction takes place very quickly, but because it is so subtle (unlike, say, heroin addiction where the effects of the drug are plain to see) it can take smokers years to realize that they are hooked. This is because we are brainwashed into believing that we smoke because we enjoy it. This is distorted thinking: because we get miserable when we can't smoke, we assume it gives us great pleasure when we do.

Usually it is only when we try to stop for the first time that we realize we have a problem. The first attempts to stop are more often than not in the early days and are triggered by a shortage of cash as a student or by a realization that we are short of breath playing sports.

These ‘trigger' events are stressful in themselves, and ironically, it is during times of stress when our need to smoke is its greatest. We are therefore attempting what we perceive to be an extremely stressful undertaking (quitting smoking) at a time when we are already stressed and ‘need' to smoke most. We quickly conclude that doing without our ‘crutch' at a time of such stress is not an option (it never occurs to us that the cigarette is causing some of the stress), so we begin to look for an excuse to smoke. We tell ourselves that it ‘wasn't the right time' to quit. So we decide to wait until there is less stress or no stress in our lives before trying again. Of course, this gives us the perfect excuse to keep smoking indefinitely because so long as you are smoking, you will have stress. If we ever do have a period when we aren't stressed we don't quit because we need the stress to provide the motivation to do so.

This becomes a common pattern among what we call ‘serial quitters'. On the one hand we sense that being a smoker is stressful, but during our whole lives we have been brainwashed into believing that cigarettes relieve stress. This is tremendously confusing for smokers, and it is the confusion that creates the fear about quitting and that prevents us from seeing the situation as it truly is. We believe that if we have the requisite amount of Willpower we will be able to muscle through these issues, but of course Willpower is useless because it doesn't help the smoker to resolve the smoking dilemma and remove the desire to smoke.

As a consequence, because he hasn't changed his thinking about the cigarette and retains the desire to smoke, the Willpower quitter is not really a non-smoker but a smoker who is not currently allowing himself to smoke. This is why relapse is
so common among people who quit using Willpower—they never remove the desire to smoke. They believe that the cigarette gave them something and that they are now depriving themselves of that something. It is this sense of deprivation and sacrifice that keeps the desire to smoke alive. Think about it, who is more likely to relapse: someone that doesn't want to smoke or someone that does?

Quite simply, the key to being a happy non-smoker is to remove the desire to smoke. With no desire to smoke, it takes no Willpower not to do so. In the same way that it doesn't take you willpower not to do other things you have no desire to do. So long as Willpower quitters don't understand this, they will continue to have a desire to smoke and will need to use Willpower to combat that desire.

After a while of trying and failing to quit, most smokers begin to pin their hopes on the possibility—some would say fantasy—that they will suddenly wake up one morning with no desire to smoke. We hear stories and urban myths about Brett or Jane or John or Betsy to whom this happened (e.g. ‘I had a bout of the flu and afterwards found I didn't want to smoke any more').

Don't kid yourself. I have investigated these rumors whenever I've heard about them and they are rarely as simple as they appear. Usually the smoker has been mentally preparing himself to quit for months beforehand and uses the abstinence imposed upon him from being unwell as the trigger to launch an attempt.

More often in the case of people who stop ‘just like that' they have suffered some kind of shock that has jolted them into action. Perhaps a close friend or relative has just died from a smoking-related condition or they have had a scare themselves. They tell people, “I just decided to quit and that was it” because it shows them to be decisive, action oriented, no-nonsense go-getters. Far better than admitting that you quit because you were terrified of remaining a smoker.

Please don't misunderstand me. I am not criticizing such people. Frankly, I'll support anything that helps people quit. However the problem I have with such scare tactics is that they tend not to last. As the weeks and months go by, the ex-smoker forgets how frightened they were. Because they have not removed the brainwashing or really dealt with their desire to smoke, after a period of time the cigarette begins to look attractive. Weeks or even months into their quit, they find themselves wanting to smoke and having to use Willpower not to do so. Sadly, this usually ends with relapse. The ex-smoker tells themselves that they'll ‘just have one' to prove that they've kicked it or ‘to see what it's like'. Of course, they get hooked even faster this time around and are left kicking themselves in anger and frustration at having fallen into the same trap again.

Let's consider in greater detail the flaws in the Willpower method and why quitting using Willpower (and I consider
all
other methods as Willpower) is so difficult and unpleasant.

For most of our lives we bury our head in the sand about smoking, but every so often something happens which triggers an attempt to quit. As an initial step we weigh up the pros and cons of smoking. This confirms what we have known all along: by any rational assessment there is only one conclusion, STOP SMOKING!

If you were to sit down and give points out of ten to all of the advantages of stopping and do a similar exercise with the advantages of smoking, the total point count for stopping would far outweigh the count for remaining a smoker. Even hardcore smokers tend not to dispute this.

However, although the smoker knows he would be better off as a non-smoker, he believes that becoming one will involve making a tremendous sacrifice. Although this is an illusion, it is a
powerful
one. The smoker doesn't know why, but cigarettes seem to be very precious to him, and he seems to need them, in good times and in bad.

For years he has been subjected to brainwashing that cigarettes are precious, and this illusion has been reinforced by his physical addiction to nicotine, which causes him to feel uneasy when he can't smoke. On top of this he also has to deal with even more powerful brainwashing of how difficult it is to quit.

Every smoker has heard horror stories of people who have quit for months but are still desperately craving a cigarette. Then there are the bitter ex-smokers who seem intent on sharing every second of their agonizing experience with you. Smokers are also aware of the stories about people who haven't smoked for years relapsing and becoming instantly re-addicted. Anti-smoking and quit smoking TV ads showing smokers in advanced stages of cancer and emphysema, yet who cannot quit, add to the confusion. If those poor smokers can't quit, then what chance do I have?

So instead of starting this wonderful journey with a sense of excitement and anticipation, we start with a sense of doom and gloom. Sometimes we even tell our family, friends and colleagues, ‘Look, I'm going to try to quit so I'm going to be irritable and cranky for a few months. Try to bear with me.'

So there we are, about to attack this major project, already filled with fear, misery and depression. Convinced that it's going be difficult and unpleasant and sure that we are going to fail anyway. With this frame of mind, most attempts are doomed to failure before they even start. To be honest, I find it amazing that anyone quits smoking with this approach.

Let's imagine that a Willpower quitter manages to survive a few days without smoking. His mind now begins to play tricks on him. There's no physical pain, but it feels like something is missing. This feeling grows and grows and begins to obsess the smoker. We're not sure what it is we need, but we do feel sure that the cigarette will provide it. We have created a psychological need to smoke, and the only way we can overcome it is to use Willpower. We try to deal with it by making an attempt not
to think about smoking but, of course, this merely guarantees that you think about it even more. Soon the only thing we can think about is smoking, and we begin to say things like:

“Life is too short. Look at September 11th. We could all die tomorrow. I could get run over by a bus. I have probably left it too late anyway. They say everything gives you cancer these days.”

“I've picked the wrong time. I should have waited until after Christmas / after the holidays / after this stressful event in my life.”

“I can't concentrate. I'm irritable and bad-tempered. I cannot do my job properly. My family and friends won't love me. Let's face it, for everybody's sake I have got to start smoking again. I'm a confirmed smoker and there is no way I will ever be happy again without a cigarette. Some people are just born to be smokers.” (This one kept me smoking for thirty-three years.)

At this stage, the smoker usually admits defeat and caves in. When he lights up a kind of schizophrenia takes over. On the one hand there is the illusion of relief at being able to do something that he has been ‘depriving himself' of. On the other hand, the cigarette tastes awful. The smoker profoundly resents having to smoke it and can't understand why he is doing it. This is why the smoker thinks that he lacks Willpower. In fact, it isn't a lack of willpower that is the problem, but a conflict of wills. It is this conflict that is at the root of the smoker's dilemma: every smoker wants to quit, but every smoker wants to keep smoking.

The smoker fails to quit not because he doesn't have enough willpower but because he has failed to resolve the conflict of
wills. As a result of this failure to resolve the conflict he is forced to revert to the status quo. Given the information he has at his disposal, this is a fairly rational decision. What's the point of being healthy if you're miserable? What's the point of being rich if you're miserable? Surely it is far better to have a shorter, sweeter life than a longer, more miserable one?