Easy Way to Stop Smoking (6 page)

Smokers' lives are significantly more stressful than non-smokers'. This is because tobacco does not relax you or relieve stress, as the brainwashing would have you believe. Just the reverse: smoking actually causes you to become more nervous, stressed and far less relaxed than non-smokers. You don't need a degree in Biochemistry to know this, just look around—it's plain to see.

The whole business of smoking is like wandering into a giant maze. As we enter the maze our minds become misted up and clouded, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to find our way back out.

I spent thirty-three years trying to escape from that maze. Like all smokers, I couldn't understand it. However, due to a
combination of unusual circumstances, none of which reflect any credit on me, I wanted to know why previously it had been so desperately difficult to stop and yet, when I did finally quit, it was not only easy but enjoyable.

Since stopping smoking, my hobby and later my life's work has been to try to solve the many conundrums associated with smoking. It is a complex and fascinating puzzle and, like the Rubik's Cube, practically impossible to solve without assistance. However, like all complicated puzzles, if you have an instruction manual and know the solution, it is easy! I have the solution to stopping smoking easily and this book is your instruction manual. I will lead you out of the maze and ensure that you never wander into it again. All you have to do is
follow the instructions
. This means exactly what it says. If you don't follow an instruction, then in effect you take a wrong turn in trying to escape from the maze. One wrong turn renders the rest of the instructions meaningless.

Let me be very clear about this: any smoker can find it easy to stop smoking, but first we need to establish the facts. No, I do not mean statistics about lung cancer, heart disease and the many other conditions caused by smoking. You are already aware of this information and if it was going to stop you from smoking, it would have done so years ago. I mean, why do we find it difficult to stop? In order to answer this question we first need to know why we smoke.

M
ost of us started smoking for largely stupid reasons, usually involving a degree of peer pressure, but once we become aware that we're hooked, why do we carry on smoking?

No smoker truly understands why he or she smokes. If they did, they would stop immediately and effortlessly. I have asked this question of thousands of smokers during my consultations. The correct answer is the same for all smokers, but the variety of replies is infinite. All smokers know in their heart of hearts that they have been scammed. They know that they had no need to smoke before they became hooked. Most of them can remember that their first cigarette tasted awful and that they had to work hard to tolerate the disgusting smell and taste. Smokers are intelligent, rational human beings. They know that they are taking enormous risks with their health and their family's future and that they spend a fortune on cigarettes in their lifetime. Therefore it is necessary for them to develop a rational explanation to justify their smoking.

The actual reason why smokers continue to smoke is a subtle combination of the factors I will elaborate on in the next two chapters. They are:

1.
NICOTINE ADDICTION

2.
BRAINWASHING

N
icotine, a colorless, oily compound, is the drug contained in tobacco that addicts the smoker. It is the most addictive drug known to mankind, and it can take just one cigarette to become hooked. One drag of one cigarette is enough for former smokers to get hooked again.

Every drag of a cigarette delivers, via the lungs to the brain, a small dose of nicotine that acts more rapidly than the dose of heroin the addict injects into his veins. In fact, this comparison is one that the tobacco companies themselves use. In an internal memorandum dated 1971, a Philip Morris executive wrote:
‘The cigarette should be conceived not as a product but as a package. The product is nicotine. Think of the cigarette pack as a storage container for a day's supply of nicotine. Think of a cigarette as a dispenser for a dose unit of nicotine.'

Nicotine is a very fast-acting drug, which sounds frightening, but is actually good news because it means that it not only enters the body quickly but also leaves the body quickly. Immediately after putting out a cigarette, nicotine levels begin to fall. There is enough nicotine in each cigarette to make the average smoker feel the need to smoke about every forty-five minutes. Incidentally, this explains why most smokers smoke around twenty cigarettes per day.

As soon as the smoker puts out the cigarette, the nicotine starts to leave the body and the smoker goes into withdrawal.

At this point I must dispel a common illusion that smokers have about withdrawal. Most believe that withdrawal pangs are the terrible trauma that is experienced when a smoker isn't able to smoke, or is attempting to quit. This is not true. These pangs are, in fact, mainly mental and are caused by the illusion that the smoker is depriving himself of his pleasure or crutch.

The actual pangs of withdrawal from nicotine are so slight that most smokers have lived and died without even realizing they are drug addicts. Fortunately it is an easy drug to kick, once you understand the nature of the addiction and accept that you are, in fact, addicted. This point was quite a revelation when this book was first published. Now it is universally accepted.

There is no physical pain in the withdrawal from nicotine. It is merely a slightly empty, restless feeling, the feeling that something isn't quite right, or that something is missing, which is why many smokers think it is a feeling of needing something to do with their hands. If it is prolonged, the smoker becomes increasingly anxious, insecure, agitated and irritable. It is like hunger—for a poison, NICOTINE.

Within seven seconds of lighting up the nicotine contained in that cigarette reaches the brain and the ‘craving' ends, along with the feelings of anxiety and irritability, resulting in the feeling of relaxation and security that the cigarette appears to give
to the smoker. This is an illusion though. The feeling of ‘relief' is really just the ending of the state of tension that was created by the previous cigarette.

In the early days, this whole process of withdrawal and relief when replenishment takes place is so slight that we are not even aware that it is taking place. When we begin to smoke regularly we think it is either because we've come to enjoy it or that we have got into the ‘habit'. The truth is that we're already hooked. We don't realize it, but it's like a little nicotine monster has taken up residence inside us and its appetite is slowly but surely growing.

All smokers start smoking for a variety of stupid reasons. But the only reason why anybody continues to smoke, whether they are a ‘casual' or heavy smoker, is to feed that metaphorical ‘little monster'.

This, for me, is the saddest thing about smoking: the only ‘enjoyment' a smoker gets from a cigarette is temporary relief from the discomfort created by the previous one. All the smoker is looking for is the state of peace, tranquility and confidence that they had before they started smoking in the first place.

You know that feeling when a neighbor's burglar alarm has been ringing all day, or there has been some other minor, persistent aggravation? The noise suddenly stops and we experience a wonderful feeling of peace and tranquility. Actually, this peace is something of an illusion. All that has really happened is that the aggravation has disappeared and everything has returned to normal. What we are really enjoying is not the feeling of normality, but the ending of the aggravation.

Before we start smoking, our bodies and our lives are complete. We then force nicotine into our body by smoking our first cigarette. When we put that first cigarette out, the nicotine begins to leaves the body and is replaced by that barely noticeable feeling of a slight emptiness, a bit like hunger. This is nicotine withdrawal—my metaphorical ‘little monster'. If we
smoke again, the nicotine is replaced, the slight emptiness disappears and is replaced by a feeling of relaxation, satisfaction and confidence (i.e. a feeling of normality). But the nicotine from the second cigarette also leaves the body, so the empty feeling returns. So we need to light another cigarette to remove that feeling and once again feel normal. And so the smoker's cycle of withdrawal and replenishment begins. It's a lifelong chain of attempts to relieve the slight aggravation caused by withdrawal and to once again feel normal.

The whole business of smoking is like forcing yourself to wear tight shoes just to get the pleasure of taking them off.

This process is very visible and obvious to non-smokers. It's clear to them that their smoking friends and colleagues aren't happier or less stressed or more relaxed than non-smokers when they smoke. Rather, it's that smokers are
less
happy,
more
stressed and
less
relaxed when they
can't
smoke.

Because non-smokers see smoking this way, they correctly perceive no advantages to smoking. As a consequence, they have no desire to smoke. With no desire to do something, it takes no willpower not to do it.

There are three main reasons why smokers find it difficult to perceive cigarettes in this way.

1.
From birth we have been exposed to massive brainwashing telling us that smokers receive immense pleasure from smoking or that it provides a crutch to help us cope with stress. We just can't believe that smokers would spend huge sums of money and take horrendous risks with their health to do something that doesn't give them anything.

2.
Because physical withdrawal from nicotine is so mild, just a slightly empty, insecure feeling, we don't think of cigarettes in the same way as we think of other drugs. Because smokers are in withdrawal whenever they are not smoking,
they come to perceive the state of withdrawal as ‘normal', inseparable in our minds from hunger or mild stress.

3.
However the main reason that smokers fail to see smoking in its true light is because it works back-to-front. It's when you are
not
smoking that you suffer that empty feeling. When you light up, it disappears, and we give the cigarette the credit for this. What we forget is that withdrawing from the previous cigarette created that empty feeling in the first place! This is the illusion of pleasure we associate with smoking. We only acknowledge the boost the cigarette gives us. What we don't acknowledge is that the previous cigarette created the need for the boost back to normal in the first place. Of course, non-smokers don't need this illusory boost because they didn't get the empty feeling caused by withdrawing from the previous cigarette to begin with.

It is our inability to understand this reverse process that can make it difficult to kick this or any other drug. Fortunately, once you understand the process, it's easy. Picture the panic of a heroin addict who has not been able to shoot up for several hours or days. Now picture the relief when that addict can finally plunge a hypodermic needle into his vein. If you witnessed such a scene, would you conclude that shooting up with heroin relieves panic, or would you think that heroin withdrawal
creates
it? Non-heroin addicts don't suffer that panic feeling when they can't shoot up. The heroin doesn't relieve the symptoms of panic; withdrawing from the previous dose caused them.

Equally, non-smokers don't get the empty feeling of needing a cigarette or start to panic when they can't smoke. The cigarette
causes
those symptoms and the next one temporarily relieves them to provide the illusion of pleasure or the illusion of relief.

Smokers talk about cigarettes relaxing them and giving satisfaction. But how can you even notice being relaxed unless you were tense in the first place? How can we suddenly feel satisfied unless you were previously dissatisfied? Why don't non-smokers suffer from this state of tension and dissatisfaction? Why is it that after a meal, when non-smokers are completely relaxed and happy, smokers are tense and edgy—until they have fed that little nicotine monster?

Forgive me if I dwell on this subject for a moment. The main reason that smokers find it difficult to quit is that they believe that they are giving up a genuine pleasure or crutch. It is absolutely essential to understand that there is nothing to ‘give up'.

The best way to understand the subtleties of the nicotine trap is to compare it with eating. If we are in the habit of eating at set times during the day, we don't get hungry between meals. Only if the meal is delayed are we aware of being hungry, and even then, there is no physical pain, just an empty, slightly insecure feeling which we know as: ‘I need to eat.' And the process of satisfying our hunger can be very enjoyable indeed.

Smoking appears on the surface to be almost identical. The empty, insecure feeling we know as wanting or ‘needing' a cigarette is almost identical to a hunger for food. Like hunger, there is no physical pain and the sensation is so slight that we are not even aware of it for much of the day. It's only when we want to smoke but aren't allowed to do so—the equivalent of the meal being delayed—that we become aware of any discomfort. When we do light up the discomfort ends and we once again feel normal.

Incidentally, this is also why some smokers believe that the cigarette works as an appetite suppressant. Smoking doesn't suppress the appetite; it's just that withdrawal feels like hunger (I discuss this in more detail in
Chapter 30
‘Will I Put On Weight?').

It is this superficial similarity between smoking and eating which fools smokers into believing they sometimes get a genuine pleasure or crutch when they smoke. Sadly, the truth is that all they have done is to remove the slight feeling of discomfort caused by the previous cigarette. Some smokers find it difficult to accept that there is no pleasure or crutch whatsoever to smoking. Some argue: ‘How can you say there is no crutch? You tell me when I light up that I'll remove the feeling of discomfort.' But the point is that the non-smoker didn't feel any discomfort to begin with.