Easy Way to Stop Smoking (9 page)

A
s I explained earlier, some smokers claim they smoke for enjoyment, relaxation or some sort of boost. In fact, this is an illusion. The real reason that any smoker lights up is to relieve the withdrawal pangs. Relieving these pangs returns us, for a short while, to a feeling of normality and this is the illusion of pleasure or a boost. The withdrawal pangs themselves are so mild that most smokers are completely unaware that they even exist.

In the very early days we use the cigarette as a social prop. We feel we can take it or leave it. But as the days and weeks go by, the subconscious mind begins to realize that the cigarette appears to relieve the very slight pangs caused by withdrawing from the nicotine contained in the previous cigarette.

Because stress or mild anxiety can feel like the empty, insecure feeling caused by nicotine withdrawal, our subconscious gets tricked into believing that the cigarette will relieve real stress too. Of course we do feel better when we have a cigarette but all we have done is to relieve the stress and discomfort caused by withdrawing from the previous cigarette. At no time has the cigarette helped us to address the real stress or source of anxiety.

As with any drug, our bodies begin to develop immunity to its effects. The more we become hooked on the drug, the greater the need to relieve the withdrawal pangs and the greater the illusion of pleasure or relief. The further we are dragged down, the more we need the artificial boost the cigarette provides. It doesn't take long for us to now consider the state of withdrawal as our natural state, so we need to smoke regularly to feel even a semblance of normality and we become stressed and agitated if we are unable to relieve the withdrawal by smoking. This whole process is so subtle and gradual that most smokers are completely unaware that they are hooked. Instead smokers tell themselves that they have grown to enjoy smoking but cling onto the notion that they could quit anytime they wanted to.

As already stated, smokers tend to relieve their withdrawal pangs at times of stress, boredom, concentration, relaxation or a combination of these. This is explained in greater detail in the next few chapters.

I
am referring not only to the great tragedies of life, but also to the minor stresses, the socializing, the telephone call, the anxiety of the homemaker with noisy young children and so on.

Let me use the homemaker as an example. This is a very stressful life. Homemakers need to juggle more tasks than even the busiest of businessmen. They need to be part economist, part driver, part cleaner, part cook, part dishwasher, part teacher, part psychologist, part soccer coach…the list is endless. When the smoking homemaker is confronted with an additional stressful situation (for example, the car won't start), her instinct is to want to light a cigarette. She doesn't know why this is, just that it is.

What has actually happened is this. Without being conscious of it, she is already suffering mild aggravation from withdrawing from her previous cigarette. When the additional stress comes, because her subconscious mind associates the relief of
stress with cigarettes, she wants to smoke. When she lights up she relieves the stress caused by nicotine withdrawal, and feels better. This boost is not an illusion—she does feel better—but the cigarette has only removed the portion of her stress that was caused by withdrawing from the nicotine in the previous cigarette. Of course, smoking a cigarette has not fixed the car so the real stress still exists. However the smoker now feels better able to cope with the stress because they are temporarily no longer going through the additional stress of withdrawing from nicotine.

This is the illusion of the cigarette as a stress reliever. It temporarily relieves the stress caused by the previous cigarette. But all the smoker is really doing is guaranteeing that he or she will experience withdrawal pangs again and again…

Actually, I believe that even when they are smoking and supposedly relieving stress, smokers are more stressed than non-smokers. There are so few opportunities to smoke nowadays that even when we're smoking we're stressed by the thought of not being able to do so again whenever we wish. Some smokers spend their whole day planning and creating opportunities to smoke. Talk about stress!

I promised you no shock treatment. In the example I am about to give, I am not trying to shock you, I am merely emphasizing that cigarettes create stress rather than relieve it.

Try to imagine getting to the stage where your doctor tells you that unless you stop smoking he is going to have to remove your legs. Just pause for a moment and reflect on that. Try to visualize life without your legs. Try to imagine the frame of mind of a man who, issued with that warning, actually continues to smoke and then has his legs removed.

I used to hear stories like that and dismiss them as cranky. In fact, I used to wish that a doctor would tell me that; then I would have stopped. Yet I was fully expecting any day to have
a brain hemorrhage, and lose not only my legs but my life. I didn't think of myself as a crank, just a heavy smoker.

Such stories are not cranky. That is what this awful drug does to you. As you go through life it systematically robs you of your courage and your nerve. The more it ruins your courage, the more you come to rely on the cigarette to restore it. We all know of the panic that smokers experience when they are out late at night and running low on cigarettes. Non-smokers do not experience this fear and panic: the cigarette creates it.

Cigarettes not only destroy your nerves but also contain many toxins that attack the central nervous system and other key organs and systems, progressively destroying your physical health. By the time the smoker reaches the stage at which it is killing him, he depends totally on the cigarette. He sees it as his courage and cannot face life without it.

Get it clear in your mind: Cigarettes don't relieve stress; they create it. Cigarettes don't help you to calm down and relax; they cause you to be panicky and agitated. One of the most wonderful things about breaking free from this awful drug is the return of your courage, confidence and self-esteem.

I
f you are already smoking at this moment, you will probably have already forgotten about it until I reminded you.

Another fallacy about smoking is that it relieves boredom. Are smokers who make this claim really saying that cigarettes contain a biologically active ingredient that is a medical cure for boredom? Boredom is a frame of mind, not a medical condition. Anyway, it's not as if the dull, gray fog of boredom is replaced by the brilliant, shining, multi-colored thrill of excitement when a smoker lights up. Initially, you were bored. Now you are bored and smoking.

Just because smokers smoke when they're bored, it doesn't mean that smoking relieves boredom. The fact is that if smoking relieved boredom, smokers would never
be
bored. At the very least they would be significantly less bored than non-smokers, something that is obviously untrue.

What smokers are really saying here is that going for a cigarette provides a momentary distraction if we are bored, in
much the same way as any other activity would. The truth is that if you have something to occupy your mind that is not stressful, you can go for long periods without smoking, and it is doesn't bother you in the slightest. It is only when there is no distraction that the smoker will look to smoke. But think about it: if a cigarette relieved boredom, then why would we need to smoke more than one?

As with so much about smoking, the truth is the opposite of the brainwashing we have been subjected to. I believe that smokers have more boredom in their lives than non-smokers because cigarettes rob them of energy and they are more lethargic. Instead of getting up and doing something when they are bored, as a non-smoker does, the smoker tends to want to lounge around, bored, relieving their withdrawal pangs.

Don't take my word for it. See for yourself. Observe smokers who are smoking because they are bored. They still look bored. Anyway, if smokers smoked to relieve boredom, then why do they also smoke when they are not bored?

As an ex-chain smoker I can assure you that there are no more boring activities in life than lighting up one filthy cigarette after another, day in day out, year in year out.

C
igarettes do not aid concentration. That is yet another illusion.

When you need to concentrate, you automatically try to remove distractions. But the smoker is already distracted: that ‘little monster' wants his fix, and until he gets is, the smoker will find it difficult to concentrate. So when he wants to concentrate he doesn't even have to think about it. He automatically lights up, removes the distraction caused by needing to smoke and can concentrate properly, like a non-smoker.

Looking at it this way it is obvious that cigarettes do not help concentration, rather that experiencing withdrawal makes it harder to concentrate. Of course non-smokers are not distracted by withdrawal pangs and therefore don't need to smoke to remove them.

There is no question in my mind that cigarettes seriously impair our ability to concentrate. Apart from the constant distraction of going through nicotine withdrawal, the progressive
blocking of arteries and veins with the poisons contained in tobacco starves the brain of oxygen.

It was the concentration aspect of smoking that prevented me from succeeding when using the Willpower method. I could put up with the irritability and bad temper, but when I really needed to concentrate on something difficult, I
had
to have that cigarette. I can well remember the panic I felt when I discovered that I was not allowed to smoke during my accountancy exams. I was already a chain-smoker and convinced that I would not be able to concentrate for three hours without a cigarette. But I passed the exams, and I can't even remember thinking about smoking at the time, so when it came to the crunch, it obviously didn't bother me.

If we look at the world around us, it's blatantly obvious that cigarettes don't enhance concentration or get our creative juices flowing. If they did then every Nobel Prize winner on the planet would be a smoker, and universities, research institutions and corporations would encourage their staff to smoke. Plato, Homer, Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo and Galileo all seemed to operate at a decent intellectual level without the aid of tobacco.

The loss of concentration that smokers suffer when they try to stop smoking is not, in fact, due to the physical withdrawal from nicotine. When you are a smoker and you have a mental block, what do you do? That's right, if you are not already smoking one, you light a cigarette. That doesn't cure the block, so then what do you do? You do what non-smokers do: you knuckle down and get on with it. Only this time you do so without the distraction of going through nicotine withdrawal. You work through the block—as the non-smoker does—but give the credit to the cigarette. Instead you should be blaming the cigarette for providing the distraction that caused the loss of concentration in the first place. This is a very common theme with respect to smoking. The cigarette gets the credit for
everything and the blame for nothing. The moment you stop smoking, everything that goes wrong in your life is blamed on the fact that you've stopped smoking.

Because the willpower quitter has not re-examined this belief, as we have done, he still believes that smoking aids concentration. When he has a mental block, he thinks, ‘If only I could light up now, it would solve my problem.' He then starts to question his decision to quit smoking and this doubt eats away at his resolve—the first step on the road to relapse.

As a footnote to this issue, smokers who claim that the cigarette helps them to concentrate are often the ones who claim that it also relieves boredom. This is interesting because when we're bored we look for distractions and when we want to concentrate we look to remove distractions. So which one is it? Does the cigarette provide a distraction or remove distractions? It obviously can't do both because they are exact opposites, yet because as smokers we unquestioningly accept the brainwashing, we tell ourselves that it can.

When I extinguished my final cigarette, overnight I went from smoking a hundred a day to none without any loss of concentration.

M
ost smokers think that a cigarette helps to relax them. The truth is that nicotine is a chemical stimulant (a poor and inefficient one, but a stimulant nevertheless). Don't take my word for it: take your pulse rate then light a cigarette, take three or four drags in quick succession and check your pulse rate again. You will see a marked increase. How can something that elevates our heart rate and blood pressure be described as ‘relaxing'?

One of the favorite cigarettes for many smokers is the one after a meal. This is because a meal is a part of the day when we stop working; we sit down and relax and relieve our hunger and thirst. At such times the non-smoker is on a real high, enjoying the opportunity to relax and socialize. However, the poor smoker cannot relax, as he has another hunger he needs to satisfy. He thinks of the cigarette as the icing on the cake, but in reality it is the little monster that needs to be fed, and until he is, the smoker can't relax.

The most uptight, tense people on the planet aren't non-smokers but chain-smokers who are permanently coughing and spluttering, have high blood pressure and are constantly irritable. By this stage cigarettes cease to relieve even partially the symptoms that they have created.

I can remember when I was a young accountant, bringing up a family. One of my children would do something wrong and I would lose my temper to a degree that was out of all proportion to what he had done. I really believed that I had an evil, uncontrollable side to my character. I now know that I did, however it wasn't some inherent flaw in me, but the nicotine ‘monster' that was rearing its ugly head. During those times I thought I had all the problems in the world, and I wondered what I had done to deserve this miserable, stressful life. Today, I can see the problem so clearly. I was in control of all aspects of my life, bar one. The one thing that controlled me was the cigarette and it was this that was the source of so much unhappiness. The sad thing is that even today I can't convince my children that it was the smoking that caused me to be so irritable.