Easy Way to Stop Smoking (21 page)

A
lthough you are 100% nicotine-free after three days of abstinence it can take up to three weeks before our mind and body become fully accustomed to the absence of nicotine and many of the other thousands of chemicals present in tobacco smoke. It is not uncommon to experience smoking thoughts during this period. These consist of two quite separate factors.

1.
The physical withdrawal pangs of nicotine—that slightly empty, insecure feeling, like hunger, which smokers identify as a ‘need' to smoke.

2.
The psychological trigger of certain events such as a telephone conversation or a coffee break.

It is the failure of Willpower quitters to understand and differentiate between these two factors that make their attempts
to quit so miserable and unsuccessful. Although ‘pangs' are not painful as such, it is important not to underestimate their potential influence if we approach this task with the wrong mental attitude.

If smokers using willpower to quit can manage to abstain for a few days, the physical component of the ‘pang' disappears. It is the psychological triggers that cause the difficulty. That smoker has grown accustomed to relieving his need to smoke at certain times of the day and when doing certain things. Over time, these associations can become quite strong. Thus the smoker forms the view that he can't have a coffee, or drink a beer, or take a break, or enjoy a meal without a cigarette. It is important to deal with this point and best to do so by using an example.

Let's say that you buy a brand new car, and true to Murphy's Law, instead of the signal lever being on the left, as with your old car, it is on the right. You know it's on the right, but for a couple of weeks, until you become accustomed to it, you occasionally put the windshield wipers on whenever you want to signal.

Stopping smoking is similar. During the early days of being quit, certain events may trigger the thought, ‘I want a cigarette.' This is because for all of the years you were a smoker, you associated this specific event with smoking. In such situations, ‘I want a cigarette' becomes a conditioned reflex. It is essential to counter-condition your response in these situations otherwise you will interpret your conditioned ‘I want a cigarette' response as fact and then feel deprived because you can't have one. This is the beginning of the slippery slope of having to use willpower.

A common such trigger is a meal, particularly one at a restaurant with friends. The ex-smoker having to use willpower already feels depressed and deprived. When his friends light up after the meal this feeling is doubled. Because the brainwashing still exists in his mind, he believes that his friends are enjoying
the cigarette rather than merely removing the dissatisfied state of needing to smoke. This compounds the feeling of deprivation further and the ex-smoker needs to use substantial amounts of willpower to get through the occasion. The saddest thing here is that even though he is not smoking, the cigarette is still dominating the ex-smoker's life.

Even with my method, responding correctly to these ‘triggers' is the most challenging part and it can make the difference between finding stopping an ‘OK' experience and a wonderful, life-changing one.

It is essential to counter this conditioning from the start and to do so successfully you must replace the fear and confusion caused by the brainwashing with hard facts. Get it clear in your mind: you don't need to smoke and you don't need to torture yourself by regarding the cigarette as some sort of crutch or friend when you know for a fact that it is neither. There is no need to be miserable. Cigarettes don't make meals or social occasions; they ruin them. Smokers aren't smoking after a meal because they enjoy it, but because they are drug addicts who need their ‘fix' after a period of abstinence.

Abandon the ridiculous concept of smoking as being pleasurable for its own sake. If we smoked just for the sake of smoking, we could smoke herbal cigarettes (no, not that kind of herb!). The reason that herbal cigarettes haven't taken off here or anywhere else is that there is no point in smoking them because they haven't got any nicotine. We can clarify this point by comparing it with heroin. Do you think a heroin addict shoots up because he enjoys using a hypodermic or to get the drug? It's so obvious with other people's addictions, isn't it? Smokers smoke to get nicotine, not because they enjoy the act of smoking. As a vivid demonstration of this, look at the story of
Next
.

Next
was launched by the world's biggest tobacco company, Philip Morris, in 1989. It was touted as a nicotine-free cigarette and the nicotine was removed by using high-pressure
carbon dioxide in a process similar to the method used by coffee companies when making decaffeinated coffee (they were referred to as “de-nic” cigarettes internally at Philip Morris). Smokers hated them though. After experimenting with them, it began to dawn on smokers that there is no point in smoking apart from to get the nicotine, and that there was no pleasure in the physical act of smoking for its own sake. The product flopped and was withdrawn.

Once you can see that there is no aspect of smoking that is remotely approaching pleasurable, you will have no more need to stick a cigarette in your mouth than you would in your ear.

Whether the pang is due to physical withdrawal or the psychological trigger mechanism, accept it. There is no physical pain and with the right mental approach you can brush it off as if it were a bit of fluff on your sleeve.

Instead of feeling fearful and anxious about pangs, embrace them. Say to yourself: ‘I know what this is—it's the ‘little monster' dying. This is what smokers suffer from their whole lives and that's what keeps them smoking. Non-smokers don't get these pangs. Isn't it great that I am breaking free from this awful addiction and looking forward to a life of freedom?'

Don't focus on the pang, but on what it represents—the death not of a friend, but of a terrible enemy. One that enslaved you for years and stole your health, your money, your self-respect, your courage and confidence, all the time trying to kill you.

Think of the next few days and weeks as a game of poker where you have a Royal Flush and your opponent doesn't even have a pair of twos. You have the better cards and will crush him, so he'll try to cheat and trick you. Whatever he throws at you doesn't matter because it doesn't change the facts. You have the winning hand. You are going to win and at last be able to claim the prize you so richly deserve—a life of health, happiness and freedom.

You have him just where you want him. You have used facts to see through the confusion and fear that he has created to try to keep you trapped. As every minute passes, he becomes weaker. It's over. You have won. You are free.

Whatever you do, don't try
not
to think about smoking. This is a tactic used by people who are quitting using willpower. They try not to think about smoking, but of course this makes them think about it even more. Soon they are obsessed and can't get the cigarette out of their mind. You
will
think about smoking—but it's
what
you are thinking that it important. Whenever you think about smoking, think how wonderful it is that you have broken free. SAVOR EACH THOUGHT AND EACH MOMENT. REMIND YOURSELF HOW WONDERFUL IT IS TO BE FREE ONCE AGAIN AND CELEBRATE THE PURE JOY OF NO LONGER BEING A PRISONER, A SLAVE AND AN ADDICT.

As I have said, with this mental approach, pangs that would torture a willpower quitter will become moments of pure pleasure and achievement for you. You will be amazed at how quickly smoking becomes a total non-issue in your life.

Willpower quitters frequently doubt their decision to quit because they still suffer from the illusion that they enjoyed smoking and this causes the sense of deprivation we have already discussed at some length. You, on the other hand have removed any doubts and as a result can focus on enjoying the process of breaking free and remaining a happy non-smoker.

If one of your smoking friends offers you a cigarette, you can be proud to say, “No, thanks” safe in the knowledge that he will be envying not only the fact that you are a non-smoker, but such an obviously happy one. It'll hurt him to think that one more smoker has broken out of the prison, but at the same time it'll give him hope that maybe he too can get free.

Remember that you have traded in a life of fear, misery and slavery for one of health, happiness and freedom. Remember the
tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars that one cigarette would cost you and ask yourself whether you would pay this money just to be a slave to something that you detest and will most likely kill you in the most terrible way imaginable.

Some smokers fear that they will have to go through the rest of their lives reversing these conditioned responses that smokers have in certain situations. In other words, they see themselves as having to use psychological tricks to kid themselves into believing that they don't need to smoke. This is not so. I am not asking you to use mindless optimism to drown out rational thought; I'm asking you to use rational thought to drown out fear and confusion. There is a saying that the optimist sees the bottle as half-full and the pessimist sees it as half-empty. In the case of smoking, the bottle
is
empty and the smoker sees it as full. It is the smoker who has been brainwashed, not the rest of society! Once you start telling yourself that you don't need to smoke, and letting yourself be happy about not having to smoke, it's amazing how quickly this replaces the conditioned response of the brainwashed smoker. The reason that this ‘takes' so easily is because it is the truth. You do not need to smoke. It's the last thing you need to do; make sure it isn't the last thing you do.

T
his is the undoing of many smokers who try to stop using Willpower. They will go through three or four days smoke-free and then have the odd couple of drags, ‘just to tide them over'. They do not realize the devastating effect this has on their frame of mind.

For the vast majority of relapsing smokers, the first drag is disgusting, and this gives them a conscious boost. They think, ‘Good, it wasn't enjoyable. I'm losing the urge to smoke.' The point is that CIGARETTES WERE NEVER ENJOYABLE. Enjoyment wasn't the reason you smoked; if it was, nobody would ever smoke more than one cigarette.

The only reason you smoked was to feed that ‘little monster' again. You were a drug addict. Just think: you had starved him for three or four days and he was, to all intents and purposes, dead. Then you threw him a lifeline. How precious that one cigarette or puff must have been to him! Now he alive again, craving nicotine. You may not be consciously aware of
it, but the fix your body received will be communicated to your subconscious mind and all your sound preparation will be undermined. There will be a little voice at the back of your mind saying, ‘In spite of all the logic, they
are
precious. I want another one.'

That single drag has two damaging effects.

1.
It keeps the ‘little monster' alive in your body, craving nicotine.

2.
It keeps the big monster—the brainwashing—alive in your mind, wanting a cigarette. If you take a drag, what's to stop you taking another one? Or one hundred, or one million?

Don't play this dangerous game. There is only one loser—you. I absolutely guarantee you that you will be back smoking regularly before you know it. Just one cigarette is exactly how every smoker on the planet started, and it is also how every single ex-smoker on the planet relapsed.

Don't play games with yourself over something this important. If you have one drag, you will be smoking for the rest of your life.

T
he combinations of factors that will determine how easy each individual smoker will find it to quit are infinite. To start with, each of us has his own character, personal circumstances, motivation, timing, etc.

In my experience, people from certain professions tend to find it harder than others, because they find it difficult to let go of the brainwashing.

An example might be work that combines short bursts of intense, stressful activity with extended periods of inactivity. Car salesmen for example have a lot of ‘downtime' when they are bored and they tend to smoke to provide a distraction. These long periods of relative inactivity are often followed by or sandwiched between periods of intense activity and pressure, when they smoke for the illusory ‘relief' it gives them.

Homemakers are sometimes in a similar situation. No one works harder than a homemaker in my experience, but although much of the work can be stressful, it can also be boring. Long periods of monotonous housework are ‘rewarded' by a cigarette, and the homemaker's day can be mapped out by limited, and therefore precious, opportunities to smoke.

The challenge for these types of smoker is to see through the brainwashing of the cigarette as an all-purpose stress reliever / stimulant / relaxant / reward / comforter / friend and to see it for what it really is: a drug delivery device, much like the heroin addicts hypodermic syringe. This is easy with the right frame of mind. Believe it or not, it is not compulsory to mope around craving cigarettes when these triggers come. Instead, why not use that opportunity to celebrate your freedom and congratulate yourself that you have got rid of this evil monster?

Remember, any smoker, regardless of age, sex, intelligence or profession, can find it easy and enjoyable to stop provided YOU FOLLOW ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS.