Nicotine Addiction

Nicotine, a colorless, oily compound, is the drug contained in tobacco that addicts the smoker. It is the fastest addictive drug known to mankind, and it can take just one cigarette to become hooked.

Every puff on a cigarette delivers, via the lungs to the brain, a small dose of nicotine that acts more rapidly than the dose of heroin the addict injects into his veins.
If there are twenty puffs for you in a cigarette, you receive twenty doses of the drug with just one cigarette.
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. This explains why most smokers average about twenty per day.

As soon as the smoker extinguishes the cigarette, the nicotine rapidly starts to leave the body and the smoker begins to suffer withdrawal pangs.
I must at this point dispel a common illusion that smokers have about withdrawal pangs. Smokers think that withdrawal pangs are the terrible trauma they suffer when they try or are forced to stop smoking. These are, in fact, mainly mental; the smoker is feeling deprived of his pleasure or prop. I will explain more about this later.

The actual pangs of withdrawal from nicotine are so subtle that most smokers have lived and died without even realizing they are drug addicts. When we use the term 'nicotine addict' we think we just 'got into the habit'. Most smokers have a horror of drugs, yet that's exactly what they are - drug addicts. Fortunately it is an easy drug to kick, but you need first to accept that you are addicted.

There is no physical pain in the withdrawal from nicotine. It is merely an empty, restless feeling, the feeling of something 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, Within seven seconds of lighting a cigarette fresh nicotine is supplied and the craving ends, resulting in the feeling of relaxation and confidence that the cigarette gives to the smoker. In the early days, when we first start smoking, the withdrawal pangs and their relief are so slight that we are not even aware that they exist. When we begin to smoke regularly we think it is because we've either come to enjoy them or got into the 'habit'. The truth is we're already hooked; we do not realize it, but that little nicotine monster is already inside our stomach and every now and again we have to feed it. All smokers start smoking for stupid reasons. Nobody has to.
The only reason why anybody
continues smoking, whether they be a casual or a heavy smoker, is to feed that little monster. The whole business of smoking is a series of conundrums. All smokers know at heart that they are mugs and have been trapped by something evil. However, 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.

You know that feeling when a neighbor’s burglar alarm has been ringing all day, or there has been some other minor, persistent aggrava tion. Then the noise suddenly stops - that marvelous feeling of peace and tranquility is experienced. It is not really peace but the ending of the aggravation.

Before we start the nicotine chain, our bodies are complete. We then force nicotine into the body, and when we put that cigarette out and the nicotine starts to leave, we suffer withdrawal pangs - not physical pain, just an empty feeling. We are not even aware that it exists, but it is like a dripping tap inside our bodies. Our rational minds do not understand it. They do not need to. All we know is that we want a cigarette, and when we light it the craving goes, and for the moment we are content and confident again just as we were before we became addicted. However, the satisfaction is only temporary because, in order to relieve the craving, you have to put more nicotine into the body. As soon as you extinguish that cigarette the craving starts again, and so the chain goes on. It is a chain for life - UNLESS YOU BREAK IT.

The whole business of smoking is like wearing tight shoes just to obtain the pleasure you feel when you take them off. There are three main reasons why smokers cannot see things that way.
1 From birth we have been subjected to massive brainwashing telling us that smokers receive immense pleasure and/or a crutch from smoking. Why should we not believe them? Why else would they waste all that money and take such horrendous risks?

2 Because the physical withdrawal from nicotine involves no actual pain but is merely an empty, insecure feeling, inseparable from hunger or normal stress, and because those are the very times that we tend to light up. we tend to regard the feeling as normal.

3 However the main reason that smokers fail to see smoking in its true light, is because it works back to front. 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.

It is this reverse process that makes all drugs difficult to kick. Picture the panic state of a heroin addict who has no heroin. Now picture the utter joy when that addict can finally plunge a hypodermic needle into his vein. Can you visualize someone actually getting pleasure by injecting themselves, or does the mere thought fill you with horror? Non-heroin addicts don't suffer that panic feeling. The heroin doesn't relieve it. On the contrary, it causes it. Non-smokers don't suffer the empty feeling of needing a cigarette or start to panic when the supply runs out. Non-smokers cannot understand how smokers can possibly obtain pleasure from sticking those filthy things in their mouths, setting light to them and actually inhaling the filth into their lungs. And do you know something? Smokers cannot understand why they do it either.

We talk about smoking being relaxing or giving satisfaction. But how can you be satisfied unless you were dissatisfied in the first place? Why don't non-smokers suffer from this dissatisfied state and why, after a meal, when non-smokers are completely relaxed, are smokers completely unrelaxed until they have satisfied that little nicotine monster?

Forgive me if I dwell on this subject for a moment. 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.

The best way to understand the subtleties of the nicotine trap is to compare it with eating. If we are in the habit of eating regular meals, we are not aware of being hungry between meals. Only if the meal is delayed are we aware of being hungry, and even then, there is no physical pain, just an empty, insecure feeling which we know as: 'I need to eat.' And the process of satisfying our hunger is a very pleasant pastime.

Smoking appears to be almost identical. The empty, insecure feeling which we know as: 'wanting or needing a cigarette' is identical to a hunger for food, although one will not satisfy the other. Like hunger, there is no physical pain and the feeling is so imperceptible that we are not even aware of it between cigarettes. It's only if we want to light up and aren't allowed to do so that we become aware of any discomfort. But when we do light up we feel satisfied.

It is this similarity to eating which helps to fool smokers into believing that they receive some genuine pleasure. Some smokers find it very difficult to grasp that there is no pleasure or crutch, whatsoever to smoking. Some argue: 'How can you say there is no crutch? You tell me when I light up that I'll feel less nervous than before.'

Although eating and smoking appear to be very similar. In fact they are exact opposites:
1 You eat to survive and to prolong your life, whereas smoking shortens your life.
2 Food does genuinely taste good, and eating is a genuinely pleasant experience that we can enjoy throughout our lives, whereas smoking involves breathing foul and poisonous fumes into your lungs.
3 Eating doesn't create hunger and genuinely relieves it, whereas the first cigarette starts the craving for nicotine and each subsequent one, far from relieving it, ensures that you suffer it for the rest of life.

This is an opportune moment to dispel another common myth about smoking - that smoking is a habit. 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 varying 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 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.

Society frequently refers to the smoking habit and in this book, for convenience, I also refer to the 'habit'. However, be constantly aware that smoking is not habit, on the contrary it is no more nor less than DRUG ADDICTION!

When we start to smoke we have to force ourselves to learn to cope with it. Before we know it, we are not only buying them regularly but we have to have them. If we don't, panic sets in, and as we go through life we tend to smoke more and more.

This is because, as with any other drug, the body tends to become immune to the effects of nicotine and our intake tends to increase. After quite a short period of smoking the cigarette ceases to relieve completely the withdrawal pangs that it creates, so that when you light up a cigarette you feel better than you did a moment before, but you are in fact more nervous and less relaxed than you would be as a non-smoker, even when you are actually smoking the cigarette. The practice is even more ridiculous than wearing tight shoes because as you go through life an increasing amount of the discomfort remains even when the shoes are removed.

The position is even worse because, once the cigarette is extinguished, the nicotine rapidly begins to leave the body, which explains why, in stressful situations, the smoker tends to chain smoke.
As I said, the 'habit' doesn't exist. The real reason why every smoker goes on smoking is because of that little monster inside his stomach. Every now and again he has to feed it. The smoker himself will decide when he does that, and it tends to he on four types of occasion or a combination of them.

They are:
BOREDOM/CONCENTRATION - two complete opposites! STRESS/RELAXATION-two complete opposites!
What magic drug can suddenly reverse the very effect it had twenty minutes before? If you think about it, what other types of occasion are there in our lives; apart from sleep? The truth is that smoking neither relieves boredom and stress nor promotes concentration and relaxation. It is all just illusion.

Apart from being a drug, nicotine is also a powerful poison and is used in insecticides (look it up in your dictionary). The nicotine content of just one cigarette, if injected directly into a vein, would kill you. In fact, tobacco contains many poisons, including carbon monoxide, and the tobacco plant is the same genus as 'deadly nightshade'.

In case you have visions of switching to a pipe or to cigars, I should make it quite clear that the content of this book applies to all tobacco and any substance that contains nicotine, including gum, patches, nasal sprays and inhalators.
The human body is the most sophisticated object on our planet . No species, even the lowest amoeba or worm, can survive without knowing the difference between food and poison.
Through a process of natural selection over thousand of years, our minds and bodies have developed techniques for distinguishing between food and poison and fail- safe methods for ejecting the latter.
All human beings are averse to the smell and taste of tobacco until they become hooked. If you blow diluted tobacco into the face of any animal or child before it becomes hooked, it will cough and splutter.
When we smoked that first cigarette, inhaling resulted in a coughing fit, or if we smoked too many the first time, we experienced a dizzy feeling or actual physical sickness. It was our body telling us, 'YOU ARE FEEDING ME POISON. STOP DOING IT: This is the stage that often decides whether we become smokers or not. It is a fallacy that physically weak and mentally weak- willed people become smokers. The lucky ones are those who find that first cigarette repulsive; physic ally their lungs cannot cope with it, and they are cured for life, Or, alternatively, they are not mentally prepared to go through the severe learning process of trying to inhale without coughing. To me this is the most tragic part of this whole business. How hard we worked to become hooked, and this is why it is difficult to stop teenagers. Because they are still learning to smoke. because they still find cigarettes distasteful, they believe they can stop whenever they want to.
Why do they not learn from us? Then again, why did we no t learn from our parents?

Many smokers believe they enjoy the taste and smell of the tobacco. It is an illusion. What we are actually doing when we learn to smoke is teaching our bodies to become immune to the bad smell and taste in order to get our fix, like heroin addicts who think that they enjoy injecting themselves. The withdrawal pangs from heroin are relatively severe, and all they are really enjoying is the ritual of relieving those pangs.

The smoker teaches himself to shut his mind to the bad taste and smell to get his 'fix'. Ask a smoker who believes he smokes only because he enjoys the taste and smell of tobacco, 'If you cannot get your normal brand of cigarette and can only obtain a brand you find dis tasteful, do you stop smoking?' No way. A smo ker will smoke old rope rather than abstain, and it doesn't matter if you switch to roll - ups, mentholated cigarettes, cigars or a pipe; to begin with they taste awful but if you persevere you will learn to like them. Smokers will even try to keep smoking during colds, flu, sore throats, bronchitis and emphysema.

Enjoyment has nothing to do with it. If it did, no one would smoke more than one cigarette. There are even thousands of ex-smokers hooked on that filthy nicotine chewing gum that doctors prescribe, and many of them are still smoking.

During my consultations some smokers find it alarming to realize they are drug addicts and think it will make it even more difficult to stop. In fact, it is all good news for two important reasons:
1 The reason why most of us carry on smoking is because, although we know the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, we believe that there is something in the cigarette that we actually enjoy or that it is some sort of prop. We feel that after we stop smoking there will he a void, that certain situations in our life will never be quite the same. This is an illusion. The fact is the cigarette gives nothing; it only takes away and then partially restores to create the illusion. I will explain this in more detail in a later chapter.
2 Although it is the world's most powerful drug because of the speed with which you become hooked, you are never badly hooked. Because it is a quick-acting drug it takes only three weeks for 99 per cent of the nicotine to leave your body, and the actual withdrawal pangs are so mild that most smokers have lived and died without ever realizing that they have suffered them.

You will quite rightly ask why it is that many smokers find it so difficult to stop, go through months of torture and spend the rest of their lives pining for a cigarette at odd times. The answer is the second reason why we smoke - the brainwashing. The chemical addiction is easy to cope with. Most smokers go all night without a cigarette. The withdrawal pangs do not even wake them up.

Many smokers will actually leave the bedroom before they light that first cigarette; many will have breakfast first; many will wait until they arrive at work. They can suffer ten hours' withdrawal pangs, and it doesn't bother them, but if they went ten hours during the day without a cigarette, they'd be tearing their hair out.

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. Even on the tube trains there have been no riots. Smokers are almost pleased for someone or something to force them to stop smoking.

Nowadays many smokers will automatically refrain from smoking in the home of, or merely in the company of non-smokers with little discomfort to themselves. In fact, most smokers have extended periods during which they abstain without effort. Even in my case I would quite happily relax all evening without a cigarette. In the later years as a smoker I actually used to look forward to the evenings when I could stop choking myself (what a ridiculous 'habit').

The chemical addiction is easy to cope with, even when you are still addicted, and there are thousands of smokers who remain casual smokers all their lives. They are just as heavily addicted as the heavy smoker. There are even heavy smokers who have kicked the 'habit' but will have an occasional cigar, and that keeps them addicted.

As I say, the actual nicotine addiction is not the main problem. It just acts like a catalyst to keep our minds confused over the real problem: the brainwashing,
It may be of consolation to lifelong and heavy smokers to know that it is just as easy for them to stop as casual smokers. In a peculiar way. it is easier. The further you go along with the 'habit', the more it drags you down and the greater the gain when you stop.

It, may be of further consolation for you to know that the rumors that occasionally circulate (e.g. 'It takes seven years for the "gunge" to leave your body' or 'Every cigarette you smoke takes five minutes off your life') are untrue.

Do not think the bad effects of smoking are exaggerated. If anything, they are sadly understated, but the truth is the 'five minutes' rule is obviously an estimation and applies only if you contract one of the killer diseases or just 'gunge' yourself to a standstill.

In fact, the 'gunge' never leaves your body completely. If there are smokers about, it is in the atmosphere, and even non-smokers acquire a small percentage. However, these bodies of ours are incredible machines and have enormous powers of recovery, providing you haven't already triggered off one of the irreversible diseases. If you stop now, your body will recover within a matter of a few weeks, almost as if you had never been a smoker.

As I have said, it is never too late to stop. I have helped to cure many smokers in their fifties and sixties and even a few in their seventies and eighties. A 91-year-old woman attended my clinic with her 66-year-old son. When I asked her why she had decided to stop smoking, she replied, 'To set an example for him'. She contacted me six months later saying she felt like a young girl again.

The further it drags you down, the greater the relief. When I finally stopped I went straight from a hundred a day to ZERO, and didn't have one bad pang. In fact, it was actually enjoyable, even during the withdrawal period. But we must remove the brainwashing.