Easy Way to Stop Smoking (16 page)

As I have said many times: it's not that we enjoy smoking, it's that we're miserable when we can't smoke. But non-smokers don't get miserable when they can't smoke. The cigarette causes the misery. Why can't we see this when it is so obvious to everyone else?

Cutting down not only doesn't work, but it is also the worst form of torture. It doesn't work because smoking is not a habit, it is an addiction. You can't become less addicted to something, you're either addicted or you are not. We can't break a pack-a-day addiction and re-make it as a two-a-day addiction. You aren't deciding how much you will smoke; the rate at which your body metabolizes nicotine dictates how much you will smoke.

When we cut down, our psychological ‘need' to smoke remains the same but now we are only servicing that need on a limited basis. This means that we spend large amounts of time wanting to smoke but not allowing ourselves to do so. This builds a feeling of deprivation and sacrifice identical to that experienced by the smoker trying to quit using willpower. Therefore when we are cutting down, we have to suffer the misery of the willpower quitter without even getting the benefit of being smoke-free! It is truly the worst of both worlds. You have to apply willpower and discipline for the rest of your life. Who could think of a more miserable future?

As I said, the main problem with stopping is not the chemical addiction, but the mistaken belief that the cigarette gives you some pleasure and that as a non-smoker you will be depriving yourself of that pleasure. This mistaken belief is triggered by the brainwashing we are subjected to before we become smokers, and is reinforced by the chemical addiction once we do. All cutting down does is to reinforce this fallacy further to the extent that smoking comes to dominate the smoker's life and convince him that the most precious thing on the planet is the next cigarette.

In any case, as I've already said, cutting down doesn't work anyway. It takes enormous amounts of willpower to cut down. If you haven't had the willpower to quit, why do you think you'll have the much larger amount of willpower needed to cut down?

Through all the smokers and ex-smokers I have met, I have heard of literally tens of thousands of attempts to quit by cutting down. I have only heard of a handful of successes. Of all the quit smoking techniques this has to be the least successful and the most unpleasant. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

However, the experience of cutting down does help us to explode one of the myths about smoking because it clearly illustrates that smoking is only ‘pleasurable' after a period of abstinence. Once you see that, it becomes very obvious that we are not enjoying the cigarette itself, but the ending of the state of misery of needing it.

So your choices are simple:

Cut down for life
. This is self-imposed torture and you will fail miserably (as have millions of smokers before you) because smoking isn't a habit that you can break and re-make in another form, but drug addiction. “Cutting down” doesn't work with drug addiction!

Continue to smoke
as you do now, being dominated by fear, misery and slavery. What is the point?

Break free
, take your life back and give yourself the gifts of health, happiness and freedom.

The other important point that cutting down demonstrates is that there is no such thing as ‘just one' cigarette. Smoking is a chain reaction. Every cigarette creates the ‘need' to smoke the next. You can't break the chain by cutting down, only by breaking the chain!

REMEMBER: CUTTING DOWN WILL DRAG YOU DOWN.

‘J
ust one cigarette' is a myth you must get out of your mind. See it for what it really is—fiction.

It is ‘just one cigarette' that gets us hooked in the first place. That ‘one' cigarette led to the tens of thousands of others you have smoked.

It is ‘just one cigarette' to tide us over a difficult patch or on a special occasion that is the cause of failure of most of our attempts to stop.

It is ‘just one cigarette' that, when smokers think they are free, sends them back into the trap. Sometimes we smoke it just to confirm that we have indeed broken free. It tastes horrible and you question how you could have become hooked in the first place. You are convinced you could never get hooked again, but you already are. Before you know it, you're back buying cigarettes and wondering what on earth happened.

It is the thought of that one ‘special' cigarette that often prevents smokers from even trying to stop: the first in the morning or the one after a meal.

Get it firmly into your mind that there is no such thing as ‘just one cigarette'. It is a chain reaction that will dominate you for the rest of your life unless you choose to break it.

It is the myth of the occasional or ‘special' cigarette that keeps willpower quitters mourning the loss of their ‘little friend' instead of celebrating the death of an enemy. You must teach yourself to see smoking for what it really is. That ‘just one cigarette' led to the years and years of slavery and torture you have had to endure as a smoker.

Whenever you think about smoking you must see it as a lifetime's chain of filth, disease, fear, misery and slavery. These are the facts of smoking. A lifetime of paying an exorbitant amount of money for the privilege of feeding yourself poison. A lifetime of shame, anger, guilt, bad breath, and mental and physical torture. And for what do we put ourselves through this awful experience? So we can remove the slightly empty feeling of withdrawal caused by the previous cigarette, and feel like a non-smoker.

There are two things in particular that really grind us down about smoking. First, it's so unremitting. The cigarette has got you by the throat and, so long as you remain a smoker, it never lets go. You never get a day off, or even a couple of hours off. It doesn't matter if it's twenty below outside, or if you have a cough or a cold, or if you're on a plane or at the movies—it never lets up and gives you a break.

The second is that it's so unrewarding. It's only when we are not smoking that the cigarette seems desirable. When we're smoking we're mostly either unaware of it or we are aware but wishing we didn't have to. All the cigarette does is remove the need to smoke and in doing so, momentarily lets you feel like a non-smoker.

If you struggle with this, ask yourself a simple question. If you could go back in time to when you smoked your first cigarette and you had the knowledge, understanding and experience of smoking you have now, would you still light that cigarette? Every smoker on the planet would answer the same: ‘You have got to be joking!' Yet every smoker has this choice every day of his smoking life. Why don't we opt for what we know to be the smart choice? The answer is fear: the fear that we'll be unable to enjoy life or cope with stress. We ignore the fact that we are not enjoying life as a smoker and that the cigarette itself is causing the stress.

Stop selling yourself short. You can do this. Anybody can. It's ridiculously easy.

In order to make it easy to stop smoking there are certain fundamentals to get clear in your mind. We have already dealt with three of them up to now:

• There is nothing to give up. On the contrary, by quitting you are earning yourself the wonderful gifts of health, happiness and freedom.
  
• There is no such thing as ‘just one cigarette', just a lifetime's chain of filth, disease and misery. Your very first cigarette led to every single cigarette you have ever smoked.
  
• In a smoking context, there is nothing unique or different about you. All smokers fell into the same trap, and with the right information and mindset, all smokers can find it easy to stop.
  

Many believe that they are confirmed smokers or have ‘addictive personalities', but I'm not so sure. No one needed to smoke before they lit that first cigarette and became hooked. It is the effect of all drugs to make us feel powerless and helpless.
This makes us want the drug more so that we can remove the feeling and once again feel normal. It is the drug that addicts us, not our personalities. These feelings of frailty and that we are somehow flawed and incomplete are promoted aggressively by advertisers in a wide range of categories, who use these fears to sell their products.

It is essential to remove this belief that we are helplessly dependent on nicotine (or any other drug for that matter). The reason for this is that if we believe it, it becomes our reality. Up to now we have believed ourselves to be dependent on cigarettes but the truth is that it is the cigarette itself that creates the ‘need' to smoke. Non-smokers don't have it.

If we can replace the fear with facts, we can see the cigarette for what it really is—a nicotine delivery device—and remove the belief that we ‘need' to smoke. With no ‘need' to smoke or desire to do so, it's easy to break free. It is essential to remove all the brainwashing.

H
eavy smokers tend to envy casual smokers. We've all met these characters: ‘Oh, I can go all week without a cigarette, it really doesn't bother me.' We think: ‘I wish I were like that.' I know this is hard to believe, but there is no such thing as a happy smoker—casual or otherwise. No smoker enjoys being a smoker. Never forget:

No smoker decided that they were going to become a
smoker—casual or otherwise. They fell into a trap.

Some smokers find it difficult to admit to themselves that they have fallen for a trap because to do so would be to admit to a flaw or weakness, so they are in denial.

They lie to themselves and others about their smoking in an attempt to justify what they know to be thoroughly irrational behavior.

I used to be a fanatical golfer. Because I enjoyed it so much I would play whenever I could. If casual smokers think that smoking is so enjoyable, why don't they do it more? And why do casual smokers feel bound to say things like ‘I could go all week without a smoke and it wouldn't bother me.' Why bother to say such a thing? If I said: ‘I could go a whole week without a carrot' would you think that I didn't have a problem with carrots, or that I did? If I didn't have a problem with carrots, why would I be telling you about how masterfully I can control my intake of them? It doesn't add up.

The casual smoker is trying to convince both of you that he doesn't have a problem. But if he didn't have a problem, surely he wouldn't have a need to mention it? After all, I'm sure you don't go around telling people that you can go all week without shooting up with heroin. Why make such a statement unless you are a heroin addict? Only a heroin addict would be proud of going all week without.

It doesn't make sense. Casual smokers would have you believe that they could take or leave cigarettes. But if this were true, why would they take them? Which adult, knowing what we know now about smoking, would choose to become a smoker? Would you?

Actually, I believe many casual smokers are more firmly hooked than heavy smokers. The reason for this is that they suffer from the illusion that they enjoy smoking, whereas few heavy smokers believe they enjoy smoking—they are just doing it because they don't think they can stop.

Remember, the only ‘pleasure' that smokers get is the illusory one of temporarily relieving the very slight withdrawal symptoms caused by the previous cigarette. Picture that little nicotine monster as an itch. For the most part, it is so slight we are barely even aware of it.

All smokers, casual or otherwise, have this ‘itch' and of course the natural tendency is to scratch it as soon as you become aware of it. By lighting up, we scratch the itch, but because our bodies build immunity to the effect of the drug, as time goes on we tend to need to smoke more to relieve it. Soon, nicotine withdrawal creates a permanent itch, and this is why most smokers become regular smokers, and also why some become chain smokers.

Casual smokers remain so for a variety of reasons:

• FEAR: They are terrified of the consequences of smoking more and think that by limiting their intake they are limiting their risk.
  
• MONEY: They physically can't afford to smoke more, or resent paying for something they don't enjoy, so they limit their intake in an attempt to control the cost.
  
• LACK OF OPPORTUNITY: These days many people won't smoke in their car, at work, at home or when their kids are around. This only leaves a very limited number of opportunities to smoke and so these smokers have to use significant amounts of willpower not to smoke more.
  
• FEAR OF LOSS OF CONTROL: These people hate smoking and being a smoker. They live in fear of becoming hooked, but of course, already are.
  

I used to think of my chain-smoking as a weakness. I couldn't understand why my friends could limit their intake to five, ten or twenty a day. I knew I was a very strong-willed person. It never occurred to me that most smokers are physically incapable of chain-smoking. The truth is that these five-a-day smokers whom I envied throughout my smoking life don't smoke more because their bodies can't hack it, they detest it, they can't afford to, they are using willpower not to or they are terrified of the consequences.

Let's take a closer look at the different categories of ‘casual' smoker.

THE BEGINNER. This is the teenager who is trying the odd cigarette at parties or when hanging out with their friends. At this stage, the cigarette tastes absolutely disgusting and the teenager is convinced that he could never get hooked. Unfortunately this is exactly how and when over 95% of us became addicted and we spend the rest of our lives paying for it and trying to break free.

THE RELAPSER. This is a smoker who was previously a heavier smoker but feels he can't do without altogether. These usually fall into a couple of categories: