Easy Way to Stop Smoking (5 page)

One of the questions we ask smokers prior to a consultation is ‘Do you want to stop smoking?' In a way it is a needless question. All smokers, including our friends in the smoker's rights groups, would love to stop smoking. If you say to even the hardest of hardcore smokers, ‘If you could go back to the time before you got hooked, with the knowledge you have now, would you have started smoking?', ‘NO WAY!' is the reply.

Say to the most confirmed smoker—someone who doesn't think that smoking injures their health, who is not worried about the social stigma and who can afford it (there aren't many around these days)—“Do you encourage your children to smoke?”, “NO WAY!” is again the reply.

All smokers intuitively feel that something evil has taken possession of them. In the early days it was a question of ‘I'm going to stop, but not today, maybe tomorrow.' Eventually we get to the stage where we think that we either don't have the required amount of willpower or that there is something inherently so enjoyable about smoking that we can't enjoy life without cigarettes.

As I said previously, the problem is not explaining why it is easy to stop;
it's understanding why we believe it has to be so difficult
. In fact, the real challenge is to explain why anybody smokes in the first place and why, at one time, over 60 percent of the adult population were smoking.

The whole business of smoking is an extraordinary enigma. The only reason we begin to smoke is because of the influence of the thousands of people already doing it. Yet every one of them wishes they had never started in the first place. As youngsters, we cannot quite believe they are not enjoying it. We associate smoking with adulthood and growing up, which all teenagers aspire to. We work hard to learn to smoke and become hooked ourselves. We then spend the rest of our smoking lives trying to stop and telling our own children not to take it up in the first place.

We also spend the rest of our lives paying through the nose for what we now perceive to be our own stupidity. The average pack-a-day smoker in the US has to earn $250,000 in their lifetime to finance their addiction. It wouldn't be so bad if we just threw that money out with the garbage, but we use it to systematically suffocate ourselves, congest our lungs with cancer-triggering tars and to poison every cell of our bodies with the hundreds of toxic chemicals contained in tobacco smoke. Every day we increasingly starve every muscle and organ of oxygen, so that we become more and more lethargic. We sentence ourselves to a lifetime of bad breath, stained teeth, filthy ashtrays, vile-smelling hair, clothes and furniture and standing alone outside, banished to the sidewalks even in sub-zero temperatures. It is a lifetime of slavery. We spend the majority of our lives in situations where we can't smoke, feeling deprived. We are forever seeking out opportunities to smoke, planning our next cigarette, building our day around the next occasion when we'll be able to light up. And when we
are
allowed to smoke, we wish we didn't have to. Looking at the cigarette and thinking, ‘Why am I doing this?'

What sort of hobby or pastime or pleasure or habit is it that when you are doing it you wish you weren't, and that only seems desirable when you are not doing it? It's a lifetime of being treated by the bulk of society (sometimes our own family included) like some sort of leper and, worst of all, living with a profound sense of self-disgust. The smoker despises himself and his inability to control this one aspect of his life. Every time the government needs to balance their books and slaps another couple of dollars on a carton, every Great American Smokeout, every time we glance at a pack and see the health warning, every time we see an anti-smoking ad on TV, every time we feel short of breath or a pain in the chest, every time we are the only smoker in a group full of non-smokers. And what do we get out of it? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Pleasure? Enjoyment? Relaxation? A prop? A boost? If any of these
things were true, smokers would be happier and more relaxed than non-smokers.

As I have said, the real challenge is not to explain why smokers perceive stopping as difficult, but to explain why anybody does it at all.

You are probably saying, ‘That's all very well. I know this, but once you are hooked on cigarettes it is very difficult to stop smoking.' But
why
is it so difficult, and why do we ‘have to' keep doing it? Smokers search for the answers to these questions all of their lives.

Some say it is because of the terrible physical withdrawal symptoms. In fact, the actual withdrawal symptoms from nicotine are so mild (see
Chapter 6
) that most smokers go through their whole smoking lives without ever realizing they are drug addicts.

Some say that it's the taste and smell of cigarettes that keep us smoking. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are filthy, disgusting objects. Ask any smoker who suffers from the illusion that he enjoys the taste if, when he can't get his brand, he stops smoking? Of course not. Smokers would rather smoke old rope than not smoke at all. I enjoy the taste of lobster but I never got to the stage where I had to have twenty lobsters with me everywhere I went. The truth is that we smoke
despite
the smell and taste of cigarettes, not because of it.

Some search for deep psychological reasons to rationalize why they smoke, for example the Freudian analysis of the cigarette as a substitute for a mother's breast. This sounds good, but doesn't make much sense when you analyze it. Most kids start smoking to demonstrate that they are adults and no longer tied to the Mother's apron strings, which is the exact opposite of wanting a substitute for the breast. If it were true that cigarettes provided a feeling of safety and security then everyone would smoke. After all, we all have the same human needs to feel safe, secure and loved.

Some argue the reverse, that the cigarette is a badge of adulthood and independence. Again, the opposite is closer to the truth. How do we demonstrate our independence by becoming dependent on a drug that enslaves us?

Some say, ‘It is something to do with my hands!' So, why light it?

‘It is oral satisfaction.' So, why light it?

‘It is the feeling of the smoke going into my lungs.' An awful feeling—replacing oxygen with poison—it is called suffocation.

Many believe that smoking relieves boredom but if that were true, then smokers would never be bored. Are smokers saying that there is a magic ingredient in tobacco that is a genuine medical cure for boredom? And if we smoke to relieve boredom, then why do we also smoke when we are not bored? What the smoker is really saying here is that the cigarette creates a distraction that allows us, for a moment or two, to forget we are bored.

But the same smoker will argue that the cigarette helps them to concentrate. There is a contradiction here. When we need to concentrate, we remove distractions, we don't create them. So is the cigarette a distraction or does it remove distractions? It can't do both. How is it possible that a drug which provides a distraction at 9 a.m. can miraculously remove distractions at 9:30 a.m.? It can't.

And there is another contradiction too. Smokers claim that the cigarette relaxes them and helps them to handle stressful situations. But they also claim that it helps them get going in the morning, and that it gives them a boost. How can a drug that relaxes you or relieves stress also stimulate you? This contradiction illustrates the truth about smoking. The cigarette just doesn't do any of the things we tell ourselves it does.

If cigarettes relaxed us and helped to relieve stress then smokers would be more relaxed and less stressed than non-smokers.
If cigarettes helped us to get going and helped us concentrate, then smokers would be more energetic and would enjoy enhanced brain function. All athletes would be smokers, as would all university professors and Nobel Prize winners. It would be mandatory for people in stressful professions, like Air Traffic Controllers and Surgeons, to smoke. Do you smell what I smell?

For thirty-three years my excuse was that it relaxed me, and 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 something to relax me and give me courage and confidence? I didn't in case he did. It wasn't my reason; it was my excuse.

Some say they do it for social reasons, because their friends do it. That may hold water when we are twelve or thirteen, just starting out, but it doesn't make sense when we are fully-grown, independent adults.

Most smokers who think about it eventually come to the conclusion that it is just a habit. This is not really an explanation but, having discounted all the rational explanations it appears to be the only excuse that makes sense. Unfortunately, when we scratch the surface, this explanation is equally illogical. We make and break habits every day of our lives, and some of them are very enjoyable. We have been brainwashed into believing that smoking is a habit, and that habits are hard to break. Are habits hard to break? In the UK we drive on the left side of the road. Yet when we travel to the US I need to drive on the right. So I break my UK driving ‘habit' and immediately acquire a new ‘habit' with hardly any aggravation whatsoever. The change causes me no mental anguish or physical torture. I don't miss driving on the left or develop a craving to do so. It is clearly a fallacy that habits are hard to break. We do it every day with no bother whatsoever.

So why do we find it difficult to break a ‘habit' that tastes awful, that kills us, costs us a fortune, that is filthy and disgusting
and that we would love to break anyway, when all we need to do is to stop doing it? The answer is that smoking is not a habit: IT IS NICOTINE ADDICTION! Perhaps you feel this explanation explains why it
is
difficult to ‘give up'? It certainly explains why so many smokers believe that it has to be difficult. This misconception arises because most smokers do not understand drug addiction and it persists because they have been brainwashed into believing that they get some genuine pleasure or crutch from smoking. They therefore believe that they are making a genuine sacrifice when they quit.

The beautiful truth is that once you understand nicotine addiction and the real reasons you smoke it is easy to stop smoking. A few weeks from now the only mystery will be why you found it necessary to smoke for as long as you have, and why you cannot persuade other smokers of HOW NICE IT IS TO BE A NON-SMOKER!

S
moking is the most subtle, sinister trap that man and nature have ever combined to devise. What or who gets us into the trap in the first place? The thousands who have already fallen into it. They even warn us not to start. That smoking is a filthy, disgusting habit that will eventually destroy us and cost us a fortune, but still we cannot believe that they are not enjoying it. One of the most tragic aspects of smoking is how hard we have to work in order to become hooked.

It is the only trap in nature which has no lure, no bait. What springs the trap is not that cigarettes taste so marvelous; it's that they taste so awful. If that first cigarette tasted wonderful, alarm bells would ring and, as intelligent human beings, we could then understand why so many get hooked and spend the rest of their lives smoking. But because that first cigarette tastes so awful, our young minds are reassured that we could never
become hooked on something so disgusting, and we think that because we are not enjoying them we can stop whenever we want to. But by that stage we are already hooked.

Nicotine is the only drug in nature that has the opposite effect to that which is desired. Boys usually start because they want to appear tough or cool—like Mel Gibson in
Lethal Weapon
or Bruce Willis in the
Die Hard
movies. In reality, tough is the last thing you feel when smoking your first cigarette. You dare not inhale, and if you do, you start to feel dizzy, then sick—usually within seconds. All you want to do is get away from the other boys and throw the filthy things away. We don't even need the health warnings. Our bodies tell us in no uncertain terms—GET THIS POISON OUT OF ME!

With girls or young women, the aim is to be the sophisticated modern young lady. We have all seen them taking little drags on a cigarette, looking absolutely ridiculous. Trying to copy Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Julia Roberts or Sarah Jessica Parker, or in years gone by, Bette Davis or Marlene Dietrich—epitomes of successful, attractive women.

By the time the boys have learned to look tough and the girls sophisticated, they wish they had never started in the first place. Actually, I'm now of the view that no woman looks sophisticated when they smoke. Notice how pictures of these beautiful, glamorous smokers never show them actually smoking, but just holding the lit cigarette. It seems to me that there is no intermediate stage between the obvious beginner and the wrinkled, pinched look of a hardcore smoker.

After we get hooked we then spend the rest of our lives trying to justify to ourselves why we do it, telling our children not to get caught in the trap and, at odd times trying to escape ourselves.

The trap is so designed that we only try to stop when we have stress in our lives, whether it be health, shortage of money or being made to feel like a leper and a criminal.

Because smokers associate stress relief with cigarettes, these stressful situations that motivate us to quit also make us want to smoke. As soon as we stop, we have more stress in our lives because we want a cigarette but can't have one. Previously, we relied on the cigarette to relieve stress but now we must do without.

After a few hours or days of torture we decide that we have picked the wrong time to quit. We must wait for a period when we have less stress, but as soon as we have less stress, our reasons for stopping vanish. Of course, that perfectly stress-free time never arrives. As we leave the protection of our parents, the natural process is to find a partner, build a family and a career and so on. We perceive these things to be stressful but they are really just part of growing up and becoming adults. We tend to confuse responsibility with stress. The truth is that the most stressful period of our lives is childhood and early adolescence. This is the period of our lives when everything is new and unknown, when our world is going through profound and constant change over which we have little or no control. Yet during this time of tremendous change and stress, we are perfectly able to handle it without cigarettes or any other false props or drugs.