Allen Carrs Easy Way to Stop Smoking
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- Author: Allen Carr
Highlights
can say is that most smokers expect us to achieve that objective by telling them of the terrible health risks that they run, that smoking is a filthy disgusting habit, that it costs them a fortune, and how stupid they are not to quit. No. We do not patronize them by telling them what they already know. These are the problems of being a smoker. They are not the problems of quitting. Smokers do not smoke for the reasons that they shouldn’t smoke. In order to quit it is necessary to remove the reasons that we do smoke.
Did you ever make the positive decision that you wouldn’t be able to enjoy a meal or a social occasion without smoking, or that you wouldn’t be able to concentrate or handle stress without a cigarette? At what stage did you decide that you needed cigarettes, not just for social occasions, but that you needed to have them permanently with you, and felt insecure, even panic stricken, without them?
At the same time all smokers wish to continue to smoke. After all, no one forces us to light up and, whether they understand the reason or not, it’s only smokers themselves who decide to light up.
Fear that we will have to survive an indeterminate period of misery, deprivation and
Because the medical profession, the media and charities like ASH and QUIT haven’t a clue about how to help smokers quit, they concentrate on telling smokers what they already know: it’s unhealthy, it’s filthy and disgusting, it’s anti-social and expensive. It never seems to occur to them that smokers do not smoke for the reasons that they shouldn’t smoke. The real problem is to remove the reasons that they do.
Do they not realize that youngsters know that one cigarette won’t kill them and that no youngster ever expects to get hooked? The link between smoking and lung cancer has been established for over fifty years, yet more youngsters are becoming hooked nowadays than ever before.
It is basically fear that keeps us smoking: the fear that life will never be quite as enjoyable without cigarettes and the fear of feeling deprived. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Not only is life just as enjoyable without them but it is infinitely more so in so many ways and extra health, energy and wealth are the least of the advantages.
The Easy Method is basically this: initially to forget the reasons we’d like to stop, to face the cigarette problem and to ask ourselves the following questions: What is it doing for me? Do I actually enjoy it? Do I really need to go through life paying through the nose just to stick these things in my mouth and suffocate myself?
Each day we are increasingly starving every muscle and organ of our bodies of oxygen, so that each day we become more lethargic. We sentence ourselves to a lifetime of filth, bad breath, stained teeth, burnt clothes, filthy ashtrays and the foul smell of stale tobacco. It is a lifetime of slavery. We spend most of our lives in situations in which we are forbidden to smoke (work, restaurants, shops, bars, churches, hospitals, schools, trains, theatres, etc) or, when we are trying to cut down and stop, feeling deprived. The rest of our smoking lives is spent in situations where we are allowed to smoke but wish we didn’t have to. What sort of hobby is it that when you are doing it you wish you weren’t, and when you are not doing it you crave it? It’s a lifetime of being treated by half of society like some sort of leper and, worst of all, a lifetime of an otherwise intelligent, rational human being going through life in contempt. The smoker despises himself, every Budget Day, every National No-Smoking Day, every time he inadvertently reads the government health warning or there is a cancer scare or a bad-breath campaign, every time he gets congested or has a pain in the chest,
Some say cigarettes are very enjoyable. They aren’t. They are filthy, disgusting objects. Ask any smoker who thinks he smokes only because he enjoys a cigarette if, when he hasn’t got his own brand and can only obtain a brand he finds distasteful, he stops smoking? Smokers would rather smoke old rope than not smoke at all.
For thirty-three years my reason was that it relaxed me, gave me confidence and courage. I also knew it was killing me and costing me a fortune. Why didn’t I go to my doctor and ask him for an alternative to relax me and give me courage and confidence? I didn’t go because I knew he would suggest an alternative. It wasn’t my reason; it was my excuse.
But because that first cigarette tastes awful, our young minds are reassured that we will never become hooked, and we think that because we are not enjoying them we can stop whenever we want to.
The trap is so designed that we try to stop only when we have stress in our lives, whether it be health, shortage of money or just plain being made to feel like a leper.
After a few days of torture we decide that we have picked the wrong time. We must wait for a period without stress, and as soon as that arrives the reason for stopping vanishes.
As we leave the protection of our parents, the natural process is setting up home, mortgages, babies, more responsible jobs, etc, etc. This is also an illusion. The truth is that the most stressful periods for any creature are early childhood and adolescence. We tend to confuse responsibility with stress. Smokers’ lives automatically become more stressful because tobacco does not relax you or relieve stress, as society tries to make you believe. Just the reverse: it actually causes you to become more nervous and stressed.
Nicotine is a quick-acting drug, and levels in the bloodstream fall quickly to about half within thirty minutes of smoking a cigarette and to a quarter within an hour of finishing a cigarette.
There is no physical pain in the withdrawal from nicotine. It is merely an empty, restless feeling, the feeling that something is missing, which is why many smokers think it is something to do with their hands. If it is prolonged, the smoker becomes nervous, insecure, agitated, lacking in confidence and irritable. It is like hunger – for a poison, NICOTINE.
I think the most pathetic aspect about smoking is that the enjoyment that the smoker gets from a cigarette is the pleasure of trying to get back to the state of peace, tranquility and confidence that his body had before he became hooked in the first place.
It’s when you are not smoking that you suffer that empty feeling, but because the process of getting hooked is very subtle and gradual in the early days, we regard that feeling as normal and don’t blame it on the previous cigarette. The moment you light up, you get an almost immediate boost or buzz and do actually feel less nervous or more relaxed, and the cigarette gets the credit.
But eating itself is not a habit. Neither is smoking. The only reason any smoker lights a cigarette is to try to end the empty, insecure feeling that the previous cigarette created. It is true that different smokers are in the habit of trying to relieve their withdrawal pangs at different times but smoking itself is not a habit.
Most smokers go all night without a cigarette. The withdrawal pangs do not even wake them up.
Many smokers will buy a new car nowadays and refrain from smoking in it. Many will visit theatres, supermarkets, churches, etc, and not being able to smoke doesn’t bother them.
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 you are giving up nothing whatsoever.
If you believe that smoking is a genuine aid to concentration, then worrying about it will guarantee that you won’t be able to concentrate. It’s the doubting, not the physical withdrawal pangs, that causes the problem. Always remember: it is smokers who suffer withdrawal pangs and not non-smokers.
Smokers do not smoke because they enjoy it. They do it because they are miserable without it.
Nowadays the poor smoker, on entering a strange house, will search desperately for an ashtray and hope to find dog ends in it. If there is no ashtray, he will generally try to last out, and if he cannot, he will ask for permission to smoke and is likely to be told: ‘Smoke if you have to,’ or ‘Well, we would rather you didn’t. The smell seems to linger on.’
Non-heroin addicts don’t suffer that panic feeling. Heroin doesn’t relieve the feeling, on the contrary, it causes it. Non-smokers don’t feel miserable if they are not allowed to smoke after a meal. It’s only smokers that suffer that feeling. Nicotine doesn’t relieve it, on the contrary it causes
smoking neither improves meals and social occasions nor does it relieve stress, it’s just that smokers believe they can’t enjoy a meal or handle stress without a cigarette.
Another thing that makes it so difficult is the waiting for something to happen. If your objective is to pass a driving test, as soon as you have passed the test it is certain you have achieved your objective. Under the Willpower Method you say, ‘If I can go long enough without a cigarette, the urge to smoke will eventually go.’
Although there is no physical pain, it still has a powerful effect. The smoker is miserable and feeling insecure. Far from forgetting about smoking his mind becomes obsessed with
the more enjoyable each cigarette appears to become because the ‘enjoyment’ in a cigarette isn’t the cigarette itself; it’s the ending of the agitation caused by the craving, whether it be the slight physical craving for nicotine or the mental moping. The longer you suffer, the more ‘enjoyable’ each cigarette becomes.
Cutting down not only doesn’t work but it is the worst form of torture. It doesn’t work because initially the smoker hopes that by getting into the habit of smoking less and less, he will reduce his desire to smoke a cigarette. It is not a habit. It is an addiction, and the nature of any addiction is to want more and more, not less and less. Therefore in order to cut down, the smoker has to exercise willpower and discipline for the rest of his life.
However, cutting down helps to illustrate the whole futility of smoking because it clearly illustrates that a cigarette is enjoyable only after a period of abstinence. You have to bang your head against a brick wall (i.e. suffer withdrawal pangs) to make it nice when you stop.
All you ever enjoy in a cigarette is the ending of the craving for it, whether it be the almost imperceptible physical craving for nicotine or the mental torture caused by not being allowed to scratch the itch.
This is the most subtle aspect of the smoking trap. When we have genuine stress in our lives, it’s not the time to stop, and if we have no stress in our lives, we have no desire to stop.
We believe that we live stressful lives. In fact, we don’t. We’ve taken most genuine stress out of our lives. When you leave your home you don’t live in fear of being attacked by wild animals.
Stress cycle from Come As You Are