Easy Way to Stop Smoking (7 page)

Although eating and smoking appear to be very similar, in fact they are exact opposites:

1.
You eat to survive and to be healthy, whereas tobacco is the biggest cause of preventable death and disease in the history of Western civilization.

2.
Food genuinely tastes good, and eating can be a genuinely pleasant experience, whereas smoking involves ingesting extremely toxic fumes and is known to cause depression, anxiety and panic disorders.

3.
Eating doesn't create hunger, it genuinely relieves it. Cigarettes don't satisfy the ‘hunger' to smoke, they create and perpetuate it.

On the subject of hunger, this is an opportune moment to dispel another common myth about smoking, that smoking is a habit, a point I have touched on previously. Is eating a habit? If you think so, try breaking it completely! No, to describe eating as a habit would be the same as describing breathing as a habit. Both are essential for survival. It is true that different people are in the habit of satisfying their hunger at different times and with different types of food. But eating itself is not a habit. Neither is smoking. The only reason any smoker lights a cigarette is to try to end the slightly empty, insecure hunger-like feeling that was created by the nicotine contained in the previous cigarette. It is
true that different smokers are in the habit of trying to relieve their withdrawal pangs at different times and with different brands, but smoking itself is not a habit.

Society continues to refer to smoking as a ‘habit' and so in this book, for convenience, I sometimes also refer to the ‘habit'. However, be constantly aware that smoking is
not
habit, IT IS DRUG ADDICTION!

When we start to smoke we force our body to learn to cope with the poisons along with the disgusting smell and taste. Before we know it, we are not only buying them regularly but we
have
to have them. If we don't, we get anxious and panic sets in. Over time we tend to need to smoke more and more.

This is because, as with all drugs, the body creates some immunity to the effects of nicotine. We therefore need to smoke more to obtain the same effect. After quite a short period the cigarette ceases to completely relieve the withdrawal pangs created by the previous one, so that when you light a cigarette even though you do feel better, you are in fact still slightly more stressed and slightly less relaxed than you would be as a non-smoker, even when you are actually smoking the cigarette. The situation worsens because, once the cigarette is extinguished, the nicotine rapidly leaves the body, creating more withdrawal symptoms. This is why, in stressful situations, so many smokers tend to chain smoke.

As I said, the ‘habit' doesn't exist. The real reason every smoker keeps smoking is to feed that ‘little monster' he has created. The monster tends to need feeding in certain situations and we come to associate these occasions (or a combination of them) with smoking. The ‘Big Four' smoking occasions are:

BOREDOM & CONCENTRATION—two complete opposites!

STRESS & RELAXATION—two complete opposites!

How can a drug that relieved boredom by providing a distraction suddenly help you concentrate when you need to remove distractions? It's the same drug. It can't do both things because they are opposites.

The truth is that smoking doesn't do any of the things that, as smokers, we must tell ourselves it does. If smoking REALLY relieved boredom, aided concentration, relaxed us and got us ready for action, then smokers would be more engaged, energetic, better able to concentrate and less stressed than non-smokers. Even smokers will admit that this is not the case, and the world of science agrees—research shows smokers to have lower energy levels, more problems concentrating and much higher levels of stress than non-smokers.

Apart from being a drug (albeit one with no noticeable ‘high'), nicotine is also a powerful poison and tiny amounts are used in many commercial insecticides. If the nicotine content of just one cigarette were injected directly into your bloodstream, it would kill you. In fact, tobacco contains hundreds of poisons, including benzene, polonium and cyanide. This should not come as a surprise as the tobacco plant is from the same family as the Deadly Nightshade. In addition, many cigarettes also contain toxic additives such as ammonia and formaldehyde.

In case you have visions of switching to a pipe or cigars, I should make it quite clear that the content of this book applies to all tobacco. Indeed nicotine is so toxic that it is hard to see any reason to consume any product containing it, including nicotine gum, patches, tabs, e-cigarettes, nasal sprays, lozenges, inhalators, chewing tobacco, and Snus (orally taken tobacco common in Scandinavia and just launched in the US, where it seems to be geared towards attracting young people).

No species on earth, from the lowest amoeba or worm upwards, can survive without knowing the difference between food and poison.

The human body is by far the most sophisticated machine on the planet. Over millions of years, our minds and bodies have developed techniques for distinguishing between food and poison and fail-safe methods for rejecting the latter.

All human beings are averse to the smell and taste of tobacco until they become hooked. We don't even need the health warnings to know that tobacco is poisonous. We need only to listen to our bodies. If you blow smoke into the face of any animal, it will instinctively cough and splutter in an attempt to expel the poison.

When we smoked our first cigarette, for most of us inhaling resulted in a coughing fit. If we managed to smoke the whole thing, we most likely experienced dizziness or nausea. These symptoms were our body's way of telling us: ‘YOU ARE FEEDING ME POISON. STOP IT.' This is the key moment that often decides our future: whether we become smokers or not. It is a fallacy that weak and weak-willed people become smokers. Smokers need to be strong and strong-willed to endure the process of learning to smoke. The lucky ones are those who find that first cigarette so repulsive that they cannot go through this process of learning to tolerate tobacco smoke; physically their lungs cannot cope with it, and they avoid the trap.

To me this is the most tragic part of the whole business. How hard we have to work to become hooked in the first place! Ironically, this is why it is difficult to get teenagers to quit. Because they still find cigarettes and smoking distasteful, they refuse to believe that they can get hooked. They believe they can stop whenever they want to. Sadly, by this stage, they are already addicted. Why do they not learn from us? Then again, why did we not learn from our parents?

Some smokers believe they enjoy the taste and smell of the tobacco. This, like so much else with respect to smoking, is an illusion. What we are actually doing when we learn to smoke is teaching our bodies to become desensitized to the disgusting smell and taste in order to get our fix.

Ask a smoker who believes he smokes because he enjoys the smell and taste of tobacco, ‘If you cannot get your normal brand of cigarette, do you abstain?' No way. A smoker will smoke anything rather than abstain. Smokers prefer their own brands because they have taught themselves to tolerate the smell and taste, but if their brand isn't available a smoker will smoke any brand in order to get his fix. This is why smokers who at first find roll-ups, cigars, menthols or pipes absolutely disgusting, over time can learn to ‘like' or, more accurately, tolerate them.

Smokers will even keep smoking through colds, ‘flu, sore throats, bronchitis and emphysema. Taste, smell and ‘enjoyment' have nothing to do with it. If it did, no-one would smoke more than one cigarette. There are even thousands of people hooked on nicotine chewing gum which tastes disgusting, and many of them are also still smoking.

During our seminars some smokers find it alarming to realize that they are drug addicts and think that this will make it even more difficult to stop. In fact, it is very good news for two important reasons:

1.
Most of us carry on smoking because, although we know that the disadvantages of smoking outweigh the advantages, we believe that there is something intrinsically enjoyable or special that the cigarette gives us. We feel that after we stop smoking there will be a ‘void', that our life will never be quite the same. This is an illusion, as I will demonstrate. The fact is that the cigarette gives you nothing.

2.
Although it is a highly addictive drug because of the speed with which it hooks you, ironically, you are never badly hooked on the drug itself. Because it is so fast-acting it also leaves the body very quickly. Eight hours after putting out a cigarette, you are 97% nicotine-free. After just three days of not smoking, you are 100% nicotine-free.

You will ask, quite rightly, why if this is the case, so many smokers find it so difficult to stop, and suffer through months of torture? Why do so many spend the rest of their lives craving cigarettes at odd times, even years after they have become 100% nicotine-free?

The answer is the second component to the smoking puzzle—the brainwashing. Breaking the physical addiction and getting through the chemical withdrawal is fast and easy to cope with. In fact, smokers cope with withdrawal their whole smoking lives and they cope with it so easily that they aren't even aware it exists.

Most smokers go all night without a cigarette. The withdrawal ‘pangs' do not even wake them up.

Many smokers will leave the bedroom before they light that first cigarette; many will have breakfast first. Increasingly, people don't smoke in their homes and won't have that first cigarette until they are in the car on their way to work; some won't even smoke in the car and will have their first cigarette after they arrive at work. These smokers have gone eight or maybe ten hours without a cigarette—going through withdrawal all the while, but it doesn't seem to bother them.

Nowadays many smokers will automatically refrain from smoking in the homes, or even in the presence of non-smokers. Even when I was a chain smoker I was able to go for quite long periods without smoking and it didn't bother me in the slightest.

If physical withdrawal was as bad as the brainwashing would have us believe, how is it that we can go for such long periods of time without even noticing it?

Smokers have the illusion that they only suffer from withdrawal when they try to quit. In fact, smokers suffer withdrawal their entire smoking lives. It's what makes them reach for their next cigarette. It's just that this withdrawal is so slight
that we don't realize we're experiencing it. Over time, we begin to perceive the smoker's more-or-less permanent state of mild withdrawal as ‘normal'.

While it is very, very mild, physical withdrawal from nicotine does exist—as I said, we experience it every time we put out a cigarette—but it is not the main problem. It just acts as a catalyst to confuse us over the real problem: the brainwashing.

It may be of some consolation to older and heavier smokers to know that it is just as easy for them to stop as it is for so-called ‘casual' smokers. In some respects, it's even easier because heavier smokers tend not to have any illusions that they enjoy smoking whereas some very light smokers still do.

It may be of further consolation for you to know that the rumors that occasionally circulate (e.g. ‘Every cigarette takes five minutes off your life.') are untrue. The human body is an incredible machine and irrespective of how many years you have been smoking, the body bounces back quickly once you quit, provided you haven't already contracted an irreversible smoking-related condition. The recovery starts immediately after you put out your final cigarette. Within just twenty minutes your heart rate returns to normal and after 24 hours, the likelihood of a heart attack is reduced by half.

And it is never too late to stop. I have helped to cure many smokers in their fifties, sixties and seventies, and even a few in their eighties. All reported dramatic improvements in their health, and most of them noticed the change within a couple of days. A 91-year-old woman attended a seminar with her 66-year-old son. When I asked why she had decided to stop she replied: ‘To set an example for him.' She contacted me six months later saying she felt like a young girl again.

The further the drug drags you down, the greater the relief when you quit. When I finally broke free I went from a
hundred cigarettes a day to ZERO, and I didn't experience one single pang. In fact, it was actually enjoyable, even during the withdrawal period.

Think of nicotine addiction as the ‘little monster' I mentioned earlier. It's utterly insignificant and you can squash it like a bug. The only danger of the little monster is that it feeds the big monster—the BRAINWASHING.

H
ow or why do we start smoking in the first place? To understand this fully we need to examine the power of the mind and in particular, the subconscious mind or, as I call it, the ‘sleeping partner'.

We all tend to think of ourselves as intelligent human beings making conscious decisions that dictate the path of our lives, but the truth is that most of our behavior and attitudes are determined by our surroundings, upbringing and by forces of which we are largely unaware. These forces, mostly benign, work at a sub-conscious level. As children, we absorb enormous amounts of information—good, bad, useful and utterly worthless—effortlessly and without even being aware that we are learning.

Tobacco marketing executives are well aware of the importance of the sub-conscious and the power of suggestion and they have used it for years to promote the image of smoking as normal, natural and desirable. When we are growing up we are bombarded with messages that cigarettes help us relax, concentrate and handle stress. We form the belief that cigarettes are special, precious things and that we are somehow incomplete without them.