Easy Way to Stop Smoking (17 page)

The Five-a-Day smoker:
I envied these people my whole smoking life. It never occurred to me how unhappy they were. If they enjoy smoking, why not smoke more? If they don't enjoy it, then why smoke at all? This smoker is relieving the withdrawal pangs for less than an hour a day. For the rest of the day he is in withdrawal and having to use willpower not to scratch the itch.

The Morning-only or Evening-only smoker:
He punishes himself by suffering withdrawal and using willpower for half the day so that he can relieve his perceived need to smoke for the other half. This is like banging your head against a brick wall because it feels better when you stop.

The Six-Months on, Six-Months off smoker:
(Or the “I can stop whenever I want” smoker). If he enjoys smoking, then why does he want to stop? If he doesn't enjoy it, why does he start again? The truth is that this smoker is hooked 12 months of the year. When he smokes he feels lethargic and trapped and after six months he feels so bad that he needs to stop. As a non-smoker, he feels much better, but over time forgets what it felt like to
have to be a smoker and, because he has never dealt with the brainwashing, senses that he is depriving himself or missing out on something. So he lights a cigarette. It's pretty disgusting so he falls for the same trap as the teenager (“I could never get hooked on something as disgusting as this!”). Before he knows it, he is buying cigarettes again and the whole cycle repeats. Many smokers envy these types of smokers, but in many ways they are the saddest of all. When they are smokers they wish they were non-smokers and when they are non-smokers they are wishing they could smoke. That's not a life, it's a nightmare.

The ‘I only smoke on special occasions' smoker:
Isn't it amazing how everything seems to be a special occasion?

The ‘I've stopped but I'll have the occasional smoke' smoker:
This goes back to the ‘just one cigarette argument. These smokers are headed back to full-time smoking. Think about it this way: if a recovering alcoholic came to your house and said that he was ‘just going to have one drink' what would you advise? Nicotine is many, many times more addictive than alcohol.

There are two other categories of casual smoker. The first is the type who smokes the very occasional cigarette or cigar, almost always at social occasions. These people are really non-smokers but sense that they might be missing out on something. If you look closely, it's clear that they're hating every second of it. They often don't inhale and look awkward or uncomfortable when they are smoking. They just don't ‘get' smoking but can't believe that the smoker isn't enjoying it. If they are adults, they often just give up trying to enjoy it and the whole world of smoking remains an inexplicable mystery to them. If they are teenagers, many of them will persist with smoking in the mistaken belief
that there must be something to it, and that they could never get hooked anyway. We all started this way.

The second category is very rare indeed. In fact, out of all the smokers who have sought my assistance, I can only think of about a dozen examples. The type can best be described by outlining a recent case.

A woman phoned our center and insisted on speaking to me personally. She was seeking a private session. She is an attorney, had only been smoking for about twelve years and had never smoked more or less than two cigarettes a day. She was, it was clear, a very intelligent and strong-willed lady. I explained that the success rate in group sessions was just as high as in private sessions, and in any event I was only able to give individual therapy if the attendee's face were so famous that it would disrupt the rest of the group. She began to cry, and I was not able to resist the tears.

The session was expensive. Actually, most smokers would wonder why she wanted to stop in the first place. They would gladly pay me double what that lady did to be able to smoke only two cigarettes a day. However, in doing so they would be making the mistake of assuming that seemingly ‘casual' smokers like my client are happier and more in control. In this woman's case both her parents had died from lung cancer before she herself had started smoking. Like me, she had a terrible fear of smoking before she started. Like me, she eventually caved in under the massive brainwashing and tried her first cigarette. Like me, she can remember the foul taste. Unlike me, who capitulated and became a chain-smoker very quickly, she resisted the slide.

All any smoker ever ‘enjoys' in a cigarette is the ending of the state of ‘needing' it. This is irrespective of whether or not it is the barely perceptible physical itch, or the much greater psychological torture of not being able to scratch it. Cigarettes themselves are filth and poison. This is why we only have the illusion of enjoyment after a period of abstinence. Just like thirst
or hunger, the longer you experience it, the greater the sense of relief.

Smokers make the mistake of believing that smoking is a ‘habit'. They think that if they can reduce their intake and maintain it at that level, then they can break their old ‘habit' and replace it with a new one. But smoking is not a habit; it's drug addiction.

When you have an itch, the natural tendency is to scratch it. With cigarettes, as your body creates immunity to nicotine over the years, you need to smoke more to relieve the ‘itch'. The more you smoke, the less effect each cigarette has, and the more you need to smoke. As the drug begins to destroy you physically and mentally, as it gradually eats away at your nervous system and your confidence and courage, you are increasingly unable to limit the interval between each cigarette. This explains why people like me, who never even have any illusion that they enjoy smoking, end up as chain-smokers, even though you hate it and every cigarette is torture.

Back to the female attorney: ironically, most smokers would envy her and would be staggered to hear the misery that this poor woman had to endure. When you only smoke one cigarette every twelve hours, it appears to be the most precious thing on earth. For twelve years that poor woman was at the center of a tug-of-war. She had been unable to stop smoking but was terrified of getting lung cancer like her parents. For twenty-three hours and fifty minutes a day, she had to use willpower to fight the temptation to smoke. For the ten minutes of the day she was smoking, she felt guilt, fear, self-loathing, anger and frustration. This poor woman smoked two cigarettes a day, but her whole life was dominated by those two cigarettes. So much for ‘casual' smoking.

I remember another case, the man who was the inspiration for this book, who was a five-a-day smoker. He called me and started to tell his story in the croaky voice I know to be the voice
of a throat cancer victim. He said: ‘Mr. Carr, I just want to stop smoking before I die.' This is how he described his life:

‘I am sixty-one years old. I have cancer of the throat through smoking. Now I can only physically cope with five roll-ups a day. I used to sleep soundly through the night. Now I wake up every hour of the night and all I can think about is cigarettes. Even when I am sleeping, I dream about smoking.

‘I cannot have my first cigarette until 10 o'clock. I get up at 5 o'clock and make endless cups of tea. My wife gets up about 8 o'clock and, because I am so bad-tempered, she will not have me in the house. I go down to the greenhouse and try to potter about, but my mind is obsessed with smoking. At 9 o'clock I begin to roll my first cigarette and I do so until it is perfect. It is not that I need it to be perfect, but it gives me something to do. I then wait for 10 o'clock. When it arrives my hands are shaking uncontrollably. I do not light the cigarette then. If I do, I have to wait three hours for the next one. Eventually I light the cigarette, take one puff and extinguish it immediately. By continuing this process I can make the cigarette last an hour. I smoke it down to about a quarter of an inch and then wait for the next one.'

In addition to his other troubles, this poor man had burns all over his lips caused by smoking the cigarette too low. Reading this, you probably have visions of a weak-willed jellyfish of a man. Not so. This man was over six feet tall and a decorated ex-Marine. He was a former athlete and didn't want to become a smoker. However, in World War II, cigarettes were provided free of charge as part of every soldier's rations. This man was virtually ordered to become a smoker and he has spent the rest of his life paying. By the time he contacted me, he was a mental, physical and nervous wreck, all due to smoking and the stranglehold the cigarette had on this tragic hero's life. Had he been an animal, our society would have had him put down as a mercy killing.

You may think the above case is exaggerated. It is extreme but not unique. That man poured his heart out to me, but you can be sure that many of his friends and acquaintances envied him for being a five-a-day man.

Isn't it strange that, as smokers, we equate smoking less with being happier, yet we perceive not smoking at all as terrifying? It doesn't seem to occur to us that the obvious conclusion is that the cigarette creates the misery in the first place. It also eludes us that using this rationale the happiest people would be non-smokers. These points are very obvious to non-smokers but fear prevents smokers from accepting them.

The truth is that casual smokers are no happier than heavy smokers, and many of them are extremely unhappy indeed. The manifestation of their addiction is a little different to that of the regular smoker, but they are addicted nonetheless. As casual smokers they suffer from two additional burdens that make their lives even more miserable. Firstly, they are only servicing their addiction on a limited basis. This means that they have to use willpower and go through extended periods of enduring the torture of wanting to smoke but not allowing themselves to do so. Second, because they are abstaining on a prolonged basis, they suffer from the illusion that they enjoy smoking where in fact they are enjoying an end to the dissatisfied state of needing to smoke.

In any case, drug addicts are notorious liars and this includes many ‘casual' smokers. Most ‘casual' smokers smoke far more and far more frequently than they care to admit. I have lost count of the number of conversations I have had with so-called five-a-day smokers who have smoked more than five during the course of the conversation! Observe ‘casual' smokers at social occasions such as weddings and parties. They'll be chain-smoking along with the best of them.

You don't need to envy casual smokers. The truth is that they, along with all of the other smokers in your life, will be
envying you when you break free. Life is so much sweeter without dragging this ball and chain with you wherever you go.

Teenagers can be more of a challenge to cure because they don't believe that they are hooked and they think they could quit anytime they wanted to. By the time they work it all out; it's too late. I'd like to warn the parents of children who loathe smoking not to have a false sense of security. All children hate smoking right up until the time they become hooked.

It saddens and frustrates me that, despite investing tens of millions of dollars, society has still not found an effective way to prevent children from starting to smoke. Health warnings don't deter young people because teenagers think the warnings are only applicable to older smokers. They treat the anti-smoking education programs like DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) as a joke. Attempts by the establishment to deter kids from smoking only serve to make it appear more desirable. The reason for this is that the children are receiving mixed messages. On the one hand, very un-cool people (teachers, doctors, health educators) are telling them that it is not cool to smoke. But on the other hand, very cool people (peers, older kids, movie stars, rock stars) are telling them that it is very cool to smoke. Put yourself in a thirteen-year-old's place; which story would you buy?

What I find genuinely difficult to accept is that we continue to allow tobacco companies and their proxies to promote tobacco to children. According to the
Smoke Free Movies
website, between May 2002 and April 2003, 82% of top grossing PG-13 films featured smoking scenes and half of all the smoking shots were in movies rated for kids. This is up substantially from 1999–2000, when only 21% of the tobacco shots were in movies rated G, PG, and PG13. People tend to be shocked and horrified at such data, but there's really nothing new here. Hollywood has always been a key channel for the promotion of the smoking message, going back to the days of Dietrich, Bogart and Spencer Tracy.

It is an irrefutable fact that the vast majority of youngsters who end up addicted to cocaine, heroin or any other of the so-called hard drugs, are introduced to the concept of addiction by smoking tobacco. I have yet to meet a heroin addict who was not first a smoker. If you can help your children to avoid the smoking trap, you substantially reduce the risk of them becoming dependent on heavier drugs. As a smoker you are a walking, talking, real-life billboard for smoking. Being free from that role is a wonderful bonus when you become a happy non-smoker.

T
he secret smoker should be grouped with casual smokers, but the effects of secret smoking are so insidious that it merits a separate chapter. It can lead to the breakdown of personal relationships. In my case it nearly caused a divorce.

I was three weeks into one of my failed attempts to stop. The attempt had been triggered by my wife's worry about my constant wheezing and coughing. I had told her I was not worried about my health. She said, ‘I know you aren't, but how would you feel if you had to watch someone you love systematically destroying themselves?' It was an argument that I found irresistible, hence the attempt to stop. The attempt ended at around the three week mark after a heated argument with an old friend. It did not register until years afterwards that my devious mind had deliberately triggered the argument. I felt justly aggrieved at the time, but I do not believe that it was
coincidence, as I had never argued with this particular friend before, nor have I since. Anyway, I had my excuse. I desperately ‘needed' a cigarette and started smoking again.