This is the area where the brainwashing is the greatest. Smokers think they are aware of the health risks. They are not.
Even in my case, when I was expecting my head to explode any moment and honestly believed I was prepared to accept the consequences, I was still kidding myself, If in those days 1 had taken a cigarette out of the packet and a red bleeper started to sound, followed by a warning voice saying, 'OK, Allen, this is the one! Fortunately you do get a warning, and this is it. Up to now you have got away with it, hut if you smoke another cigarette your head will explode,' do you think I would have lit that cigarette?
If you are in doubt about the answer, just try walking up to a main road with busy traffic, stand on the kerb with your eyes closed and try to imagine you have the choice of either stopping smoking or walking blindfolded across the road before taking your next cigarette.
There is no doubt what your choice would be. I had been doing what every smoker does all his smoking life: closing my mind and keeping my head in the sand, hoping that I would wake up one morning and just not want to smoke any more. Smokers cannot allow themselves to think of the health risks. If they do, even the illusion of enjoying the 'habit' goes.
This explains why the shock treatment used by the media on National No-Smoking Days is so ineffective. It is only non-smokers who can bring themselves to watch. It also explains why smokers, recalling Uncle Fred who smoked forty a day and lived until he was eighty, will ignore the thousands of people who are brought down in their prime because of this poisonous weed.
About six times a week I have the following conversation with smokers (usually the younger ones):
MEL Why do you want to stop? SMOKER: I can't afford it.
ME: Aren't you worried about the health risks.
SMOKER: No, I could step under a bus tomorrow.
ME: Would you deliberately step under a bus Smoker: of course not.
ME: Do you not bother to look left and right when you cross the road? Smoker: Of course I do.
Exactly. The smoker goes to a lot of trouble not to step under a bus, and the odds are hundreds of thousands to one against it happening. Yet the smoker risks the near certainty of being crippled by the weed and appears to be completely oblivious to the risks. Such is the power of the brainwashing.
I remember one famous British golfer who wouldn't go on the American circuit because he was afraid of flying. Yet he would chain-smoke round the golf course. Isn't it strange that, if we felt there was the slightest fault in an airplane, we wouldn't go up in it, even though the risks are hundreds of thousands to one against death, yet we take a one-in- four certainty with the cigarette and are apparently oblivious to it. And what does the smoker get out of it?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
Another common myth about smoking is the smoker's cough. Many of the younger people who come to see me are not worried about their health because they do not cough. The true facts are just the reverse. A cough is one of nature's fail-safe methods of dispelling foreign matter from the lungs.
The cough itself is not a disease; it is just a symptom. When smokers cough it is because their lungs are trying to dispel cancer-triggering tars and poisons. When they do not cough those tars and poisons remain in their lungs, and that is when they cause cancer. Smokers tend to avoid exercise and get into the habit of shallow breathing in order not to cough. I used to believe that my permanent smokers' cough would kill me. By expelling much of the filth from my lungs, it possibly saved my life.
Just think of it this way. If you had a nice car and allowed it to rust without doing anything about it, that would be pretty stupid, as it would soon be a heap of rust and would not carry you about.
However, that would not be the end of the world; it is only a question of money and you could always buy a new one. Your body is the vehicle that carries you through life. We al! say that our health is our most valued asset. How true that is, as sick millionaires will tell you. Most of us can look back at some illness or accident in our lives when we prayed to get better. (HOW SOON WE FORGET.) By being a smoker you are not only letting rust get in and doing nothing about it; you are systematically destroying the vehicle you need to go through life, and you only get one.
Wise up. You don't have to do it, and remember: it is doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR YOU.
Just for a moment take your head out of the sand and ask yourself, if you knew for certain that the next cigarette would he the one to trigger off cancer in your body, whether you would actually smoke it. Forget the disease (it is difficult to imagine it), but imagine you have to go to the Royal Marsden to suffer those awful tests - radium treatment, etc. Now you are not planning the rest of your life. You are planning your death. What is going to happen to your family and loved ones, your plans and dreams?
I often see the people that it happens to. They didn't, think it would happen to them either, and the worst thing about it isn't the disease itself but the knowledge they have brought it on themselves. All our lives as smokers we are saying, ‘I’ll stop tomorrow.' Try to imagine how those people feel who 'hit the button'. For them the brainwashing is ended. They then see the 'habit' as it really is and spend the remainder of their lives thinking, 'Why did I kid myself I needed to smoke? If only I had the chance to go back!'
Stop kidding yourself. You have the chance. It's a chain reaction. If you smoke the next cigarette, it will lead to the next one and the next. It's already happening to you.
At the beginning of the book I promised you no shock treatment. If you have already decided you are going to stop smoking, this isn't shock treatment for you. If you are still in doubt, skip the remainder of this chapter and come back to it when you have read the rest of the book.
Volumes of statistics have already been written about the damage that cigarettes can cause to the smoker's health. The trouble is that until the smoker decides to stop he doesn't want to know. Even the government health warning is a waste of time because the smoker puts blinkers on, and if he inadvertently reads it, the first thing he does is light up a cigarette.
Smokers tend to think of the health hazard as a hit-and- miss affair, like stepping on a mine. Get it into your head: it is already happening, Every time you puff on a cigarette you are breathing cancertriggering tars into your lungs, and cancer is by no means the worst of the killer diseases that cigarettes cause or contribute to. They are also a powerful contributory cause of heart disease, arteriosclerosis, emphysema, angina, thrombosis, chronic bronchitis and asthma.
воскресенье, 25 октября 2009 г.
Confirmed Smoker
I cannot repeat too often that it is brainwashing that makes it difficult to stop smoking, and the more brainwashing we can dispel before we start, the easier you will find it to achieve your goal.
Occasionally I get into arguments with people whom I call confirmed smokers. By my definition a confirmed smoker is somebody who can afford it, doesn't believe it injures his health and isn't worried about the social stigma. (There are not many about nowadays.)
If he is a young man, I say to him,' I cannot believe you are not worried about the money you are spending.'
Usually his eyes light up. If I had attacked him on health grounds or on the social stigma, he would feel at a disadvantage, but on money -- ' Oh, I can afford it. It is only x per week and I think it is worth it. It is my only vice or pleasure,' etc.
If he is a twenty-per-day smoker I say to him, I still cannot believe you are not worried about the money. You are going to spend over 40,000 in your lifetime. What are you doing with that money?
You are not even setting light to it or throwing it away. You are actually using that money to ruin your physical health, to destroy your nerves and confidence, to suffer a lifetime of slavery, a lifetime of bad breath and stained teeth. Surely that must worry you?'
It is apparent at this point, particularly with young smokers, that they have never considered it a lifetime expense. For most smokers the price of a packet is bad enough. Occasionally we work out what we spend in a week, and that is alarming. Very occasionally (and only when we think about stopping) we estimate what we spend in a year and that is frightening, but over a lifetime - it is unthinkable.
However, because it is an argument the confirmed smoker will say, 'I can afford it. It is only so much a week.' He does an 'encyclopedia salesman' on himself, I then say, 'I will make you an offer you cannot refuse. You pay me ?1,000 now, and I will provide you with free cigarettes for the rest of your life'.
If I were offering to take over a 40,000 mortgage for ?1,000, the smoker would have my signature, on a piece of paper before I could move, and yet not one confirmed smoker (and please bear in mind 1 am not now talking to someone like yourself who plans to stop, I am talking to someone who has no intention of stopping) has ever taken me up on that offer. Why not?
Often at this point in my consultation, a smoker will say, 'Look, I am not really worried about the money aspect,' If you are thinking along these lines, ask yourself why you are not worried. Why in other aspects of life you will go to a great deal of trouble to save a few pounds here and there and yet spend thousands of pounds poisoning yourself and hang the expense?
The answer to these questions is this. Every other decision that you make in your life will be the result of an analytical process of weighing up the pros and cons and arriving at a rational answer. It may be the wrong answer, but at least it will be the result of rational deduction. Whenever any smoker weighs up the pros and cons of smoking, the answer is a dozen times over: 'STOP SMOKING! YOU ARE A MUG!' Therefore all smokers are smoking not because they want to or because they decided to but because they think they cannot stop. They have to brainwash themselves. They have to keep their heads in the sand.
The strange thing is smokers will arrange pacts among themselves, such as 'First one to give in pays the other 50', yet the thousands of pounds that they would save by stopping don't seem to affect them. This is because they are still thinking with the brainwashed mind of the smoker.
Just take the sand out of your eyes for a moment. Smoking is a chain reaction and a chain for life.
If you do not break that chain, you will remain a smoker for the rest of your life. Now estimate how much you think you will spend on smoking for the rest of your life. The amount will obviously vary with each individual, but for the purpose of this exercise let us assume it is 10,000.
You will shortly be making the decision to smoke your final cigarette (not yet, please - remember the initial instructions). All you have to do to remain a non-smoker is not to fall for the trap again.
That is, do not smoke that first cigarette. If you do, that one cigarette will cost you 10,000.
If you think this is a trick way of looking at it, you are still kidding yourself. Just work out how much money you would have saved if you hadn't smoked your first cigarette.
If you see the argument as factual, ask yourself how you would feel if there were a cheque from Littlewood's Pools for $10,000 on your carpet tomorrow. You'd be dancing with delight! So start dancing! You are about to start receiving that bonus, and that's just one of the several marvelous gains you are about to receive.
During the withdrawal period you may be tempted to have just one final cigarette. It will help you to resist the temptation if you remind yourself it will cost you $10,000 (or whatever your estimate is)!
I've been making that offer on television and radio programmes for years. I still find it incredible that not one confirmed smoker has ever taken my offer up. There are members of my golf club whom I taunt every time I hear them complain about an increase in tobacco prices. In fact, ['m frightened that if I goad them too much, one of them will take me up on it. I'd lose a fortune if he did.
If you are in the company of happy, cheerful smokers who tell you how much they enjoy it, just tell them that you know an idiot who, if they pay him a years smoking money in advance, will provide them with free cigarettes for the rest of their lives. Perhaps you can find me someone who will take up the offer?
Occasionally I get into arguments with people whom I call confirmed smokers. By my definition a confirmed smoker is somebody who can afford it, doesn't believe it injures his health and isn't worried about the social stigma. (There are not many about nowadays.)
If he is a young man, I say to him,' I cannot believe you are not worried about the money you are spending.'
Usually his eyes light up. If I had attacked him on health grounds or on the social stigma, he would feel at a disadvantage, but on money -- ' Oh, I can afford it. It is only x per week and I think it is worth it. It is my only vice or pleasure,' etc.
If he is a twenty-per-day smoker I say to him, I still cannot believe you are not worried about the money. You are going to spend over 40,000 in your lifetime. What are you doing with that money?
You are not even setting light to it or throwing it away. You are actually using that money to ruin your physical health, to destroy your nerves and confidence, to suffer a lifetime of slavery, a lifetime of bad breath and stained teeth. Surely that must worry you?'
It is apparent at this point, particularly with young smokers, that they have never considered it a lifetime expense. For most smokers the price of a packet is bad enough. Occasionally we work out what we spend in a week, and that is alarming. Very occasionally (and only when we think about stopping) we estimate what we spend in a year and that is frightening, but over a lifetime - it is unthinkable.
However, because it is an argument the confirmed smoker will say, 'I can afford it. It is only so much a week.' He does an 'encyclopedia salesman' on himself, I then say, 'I will make you an offer you cannot refuse. You pay me ?1,000 now, and I will provide you with free cigarettes for the rest of your life'.
If I were offering to take over a 40,000 mortgage for ?1,000, the smoker would have my signature, on a piece of paper before I could move, and yet not one confirmed smoker (and please bear in mind 1 am not now talking to someone like yourself who plans to stop, I am talking to someone who has no intention of stopping) has ever taken me up on that offer. Why not?
Often at this point in my consultation, a smoker will say, 'Look, I am not really worried about the money aspect,' If you are thinking along these lines, ask yourself why you are not worried. Why in other aspects of life you will go to a great deal of trouble to save a few pounds here and there and yet spend thousands of pounds poisoning yourself and hang the expense?
The answer to these questions is this. Every other decision that you make in your life will be the result of an analytical process of weighing up the pros and cons and arriving at a rational answer. It may be the wrong answer, but at least it will be the result of rational deduction. Whenever any smoker weighs up the pros and cons of smoking, the answer is a dozen times over: 'STOP SMOKING! YOU ARE A MUG!' Therefore all smokers are smoking not because they want to or because they decided to but because they think they cannot stop. They have to brainwash themselves. They have to keep their heads in the sand.
The strange thing is smokers will arrange pacts among themselves, such as 'First one to give in pays the other 50', yet the thousands of pounds that they would save by stopping don't seem to affect them. This is because they are still thinking with the brainwashed mind of the smoker.
Just take the sand out of your eyes for a moment. Smoking is a chain reaction and a chain for life.
If you do not break that chain, you will remain a smoker for the rest of your life. Now estimate how much you think you will spend on smoking for the rest of your life. The amount will obviously vary with each individual, but for the purpose of this exercise let us assume it is 10,000.
You will shortly be making the decision to smoke your final cigarette (not yet, please - remember the initial instructions). All you have to do to remain a non-smoker is not to fall for the trap again.
That is, do not smoke that first cigarette. If you do, that one cigarette will cost you 10,000.
If you think this is a trick way of looking at it, you are still kidding yourself. Just work out how much money you would have saved if you hadn't smoked your first cigarette.
If you see the argument as factual, ask yourself how you would feel if there were a cheque from Littlewood's Pools for $10,000 on your carpet tomorrow. You'd be dancing with delight! So start dancing! You are about to start receiving that bonus, and that's just one of the several marvelous gains you are about to receive.
During the withdrawal period you may be tempted to have just one final cigarette. It will help you to resist the temptation if you remind yourself it will cost you $10,000 (or whatever your estimate is)!
I've been making that offer on television and radio programmes for years. I still find it incredible that not one confirmed smoker has ever taken my offer up. There are members of my golf club whom I taunt every time I hear them complain about an increase in tobacco prices. In fact, ['m frightened that if I goad them too much, one of them will take me up on it. I'd lose a fortune if he did.
If you are in the company of happy, cheerful smokers who tell you how much they enjoy it, just tell them that you know an idiot who, if they pay him a years smoking money in advance, will provide them with free cigarettes for the rest of their lives. Perhaps you can find me someone who will take up the offer?
Self-imposed Slavery
Usually when smokers try to stop the main reasons are health, money, and social stigma. Part of the brainwashing of this awful drug is the sheer slavery.
Man fought hard in the last century to abolish slavery, and yet the smoker spends his life suffering self-imposed slavery. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that, when he is allowed to smoke, he wishes that he were a non-smoker. With most of the cigarettes we smoke in our lives, not only do we not enjoy them but we aren't even aware that we are smoking them. It is only after a period of abstinence that we actually suffer the delusion of enjoying a cigarette {e.g. the first in the morning, the one after a meal, etc.).
The only time that the cigarette becomes precious is when, we are trying to cut down or abstain, or when society tries to force us to (e.g. when attending churches, hospitals, supermarkets, theatres and so on).
The confirmed smoker should bear in mind that this trend will get worse and worse. Today it is Tube trains. Tomorrow it will be all public places.
Gone are the days when the smoker could enter a friend's or stranger's house and say, 'Do you mind if I smoke?' Nowadays the poor smoker, on entering a strange house, will search desperately for an ashtray and hope to find dogends 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.'
The poor smoker, who was already feeling wretched, wants the ground to open up and swallow him.
I remember during my smoking days, every time I went to church, it was an ordeal. Even during my own daughter's wedding, when I should have been standing there a proud father, what was I doing? I was thinking, 'Let's get on with it, so that we can get outside and have a drag.'
It will help you to observe smokers on these occasions. They huddle together. There is never just one packet. There are twenty packets being thrust about, and the conversation is always the same.
'Do you smoke?'
'Yes, but have one of mine.'
'I will have one of yours later.'
They light up and take a deep drag, thinking, 'Aren't we lucky? We have got our little reward. The poor non-smoker hasn't got a reward.'
The 'poor' non-smoker doesn't need a reward. We were not designed to go through life systematically poisoning our own bodies. The pathetic thing is that even when smoking a cigarette, the smoker doesn't achieve the feeling of peace, confidence and tranquility that the non-smoker has experienced for the whole of his non-smoking life. The non-smoker isn't sitting in the church feeling agitated and wishing his life away. He can enjoy the whole of his life.
I can also remember playing indoor bowls in the winter and pretending to have a weak bladder in order to nip off for a puff. No, this wasn't a fourteen-year-old schoolboy but a forty-year-old chartered accountant. How pathetic. And even when I was back playing the game 1 wasn't enjoying it. I was looking forward to the finish so that I could smoke again, yet this was supposed to be my way of relaxing and enjoying my favorite hobby.
To me one of the tremendous joys of being a non-smoker is to be freed from that slavery, to be able to enjoy the whole of my life and not spend half of it craving for a cigarette and then, when I light up, wishing I didn't have to do it.
Smokers should bear in mind that when they are in the houses of non-smokers or even in the company of non-smokers, it is not the self-righteous non-smoker who is depriving them but the 'little monster'.
Man fought hard in the last century to abolish slavery, and yet the smoker spends his life suffering self-imposed slavery. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that, when he is allowed to smoke, he wishes that he were a non-smoker. With most of the cigarettes we smoke in our lives, not only do we not enjoy them but we aren't even aware that we are smoking them. It is only after a period of abstinence that we actually suffer the delusion of enjoying a cigarette {e.g. the first in the morning, the one after a meal, etc.).
The only time that the cigarette becomes precious is when, we are trying to cut down or abstain, or when society tries to force us to (e.g. when attending churches, hospitals, supermarkets, theatres and so on).
The confirmed smoker should bear in mind that this trend will get worse and worse. Today it is Tube trains. Tomorrow it will be all public places.
Gone are the days when the smoker could enter a friend's or stranger's house and say, 'Do you mind if I smoke?' Nowadays the poor smoker, on entering a strange house, will search desperately for an ashtray and hope to find dogends 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.'
The poor smoker, who was already feeling wretched, wants the ground to open up and swallow him.
I remember during my smoking days, every time I went to church, it was an ordeal. Even during my own daughter's wedding, when I should have been standing there a proud father, what was I doing? I was thinking, 'Let's get on with it, so that we can get outside and have a drag.'
It will help you to observe smokers on these occasions. They huddle together. There is never just one packet. There are twenty packets being thrust about, and the conversation is always the same.
'Do you smoke?'
'Yes, but have one of mine.'
'I will have one of yours later.'
They light up and take a deep drag, thinking, 'Aren't we lucky? We have got our little reward. The poor non-smoker hasn't got a reward.'
The 'poor' non-smoker doesn't need a reward. We were not designed to go through life systematically poisoning our own bodies. The pathetic thing is that even when smoking a cigarette, the smoker doesn't achieve the feeling of peace, confidence and tranquility that the non-smoker has experienced for the whole of his non-smoking life. The non-smoker isn't sitting in the church feeling agitated and wishing his life away. He can enjoy the whole of his life.
I can also remember playing indoor bowls in the winter and pretending to have a weak bladder in order to nip off for a puff. No, this wasn't a fourteen-year-old schoolboy but a forty-year-old chartered accountant. How pathetic. And even when I was back playing the game 1 wasn't enjoying it. I was looking forward to the finish so that I could smoke again, yet this was supposed to be my way of relaxing and enjoying my favorite hobby.
To me one of the tremendous joys of being a non-smoker is to be freed from that slavery, to be able to enjoy the whole of my life and not spend half of it craving for a cigarette and then, when I light up, wishing I didn't have to do it.
Smokers should bear in mind that when they are in the houses of non-smokers or even in the company of non-smokers, it is not the self-righteous non-smoker who is depriving them but the 'little monster'.
среда, 14 октября 2009 г.
I'm not going to die
This was the magic that happened to me when I extinguished that final cigarette. Let me make one point quite clear in the analogy of the sore and the ointment. The sore isn't lung cancer, or arterial sclerosis, or emphysema, or angina, or chronic asthma, or bronchitis, or coronary heart disease. They are all in addition to the sore. It isn't the thousands of pounds that we burn, or the lifetime of bad breath and stained teeth, the lethargy, the wheezing and coughing, the years we spend choking ourselves and wishing we didn't, the times when we are being punished because we are not allowed to smoke. It isn't the lifetime of being despised by other people, or, worst of all, despising yourself. These are all in addition to the sore. The sore is what makes us close our minds to all these things. It's that panic feeling of "I want a cigarette". Non-smokers don't suffer from that feeling. The worst thing we ever suffer from is fear, and the greatest gain you will receive is to be rid of that fear.
It was as if a great mist had suddenly lifted from my mind. I could see so clearly that that panic feeling of wanting a cigarette wasn't some sort of weakness in me, or some magic quality in the cigarette. It was caused by the first cigarette; and each subsequent one, far from relieving the feeling, was causing it. At the same time I could see that all these other "happy" smokers were going through the same nightmare that I was. Not as bad as mine, but all putting up phoney arguments to try to justify their stupidity.
It was as if a great mist had suddenly lifted from my mind. I could see so clearly that that panic feeling of wanting a cigarette wasn't some sort of weakness in me, or some magic quality in the cigarette. It was caused by the first cigarette; and each subsequent one, far from relieving the feeling, was causing it. At the same time I could see that all these other "happy" smokers were going through the same nightmare that I was. Not as bad as mine, but all putting up phoney arguments to try to justify their stupidity.
Effects of cigarettes smoking
Cigarettes do not help social occasions; they destroy them. Having to hold a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, trying to dispose of the ash and the continual chain of dogends, trying not to breathe smoke and fumes into the face of the person you are conversing with, wondering whether they can smell your breath or see the stains on your teeth.
Not only is there nothing to give up, but there are marvelous positive gains. When smokers contemplate quitting smoking they tend to concentrate on health, money and social stigma. These are obviously valid and important issues, but I personally believe the greatest gains from stopping are psychological, and for varying reasons they include:
1 The return of your confidence and courage.
2 Freedom from the slavery.
3 Not to have to go through life suffering the awful black shadows at the back of your mind, knowing you are being despised by half of the population and, worst of all, despising yourself.
Not only is life better as a non-smoker but it is infinitely more enjoyable. I do not only mean you will be healthier and wealthier. I mean you will be happier and enjoy life far more.
The marvelous gains from being a non-smoker are discussed in the next few chapters.
Some smokers find it difficult to appreciate the concept of the 'void', and the following analogy may assist you.
Imagine having a cold sore on your face. I've got this marvelous ointment. I say to you, "Try this stuff". You rub the ointment on, and the sore disappears immediately. A week later it reappears. You ask, "Do you have any more of that ointment?" I say, "Keep the tube. You might need it again". You apply the ointment.
Hey presto, the sore disappears again. Every time the sore returns, it gets larger and more painful and the Interval gets shorter and shorter. Eventually the sore covers your whole face and is excruciatingly painful. It is now returning every half hour. You know that the ointment will remove it temporarily, but you are very worried. Will the sore eventually spread over your whole body? Will the interval disappear completely? You go to your doctor. He can't cure it. You try other things, but nothing helps except this marvelous ointment.
By now you are completely dependent on the ointment. You never go out without ensuring that you have a tube of the ointment with you. If you go abroad, you make sure that you take several tubes with you. Now, in addition to your worries about your health, I'm charging you 100 per tube. You have no choice but to pay.
You then read in the medical column of your newspaper that this isn't happening just to you; many other people have been suffering from the same problem. In fact, pharmacists have discovered that the ointment doesn't actually cure the sore. All that it does is to take the sore beneath the surface of the skin. It is the ointment that has caused the sore to grow. All you have to do to get rid of the sore is to stop using the ointment. The sore will eventually disappear in due course.
Not only is there nothing to give up, but there are marvelous positive gains. When smokers contemplate quitting smoking they tend to concentrate on health, money and social stigma. These are obviously valid and important issues, but I personally believe the greatest gains from stopping are psychological, and for varying reasons they include:
1 The return of your confidence and courage.
2 Freedom from the slavery.
3 Not to have to go through life suffering the awful black shadows at the back of your mind, knowing you are being despised by half of the population and, worst of all, despising yourself.
Not only is life better as a non-smoker but it is infinitely more enjoyable. I do not only mean you will be healthier and wealthier. I mean you will be happier and enjoy life far more.
The marvelous gains from being a non-smoker are discussed in the next few chapters.
Some smokers find it difficult to appreciate the concept of the 'void', and the following analogy may assist you.
Imagine having a cold sore on your face. I've got this marvelous ointment. I say to you, "Try this stuff". You rub the ointment on, and the sore disappears immediately. A week later it reappears. You ask, "Do you have any more of that ointment?" I say, "Keep the tube. You might need it again". You apply the ointment.
Hey presto, the sore disappears again. Every time the sore returns, it gets larger and more painful and the Interval gets shorter and shorter. Eventually the sore covers your whole face and is excruciatingly painful. It is now returning every half hour. You know that the ointment will remove it temporarily, but you are very worried. Will the sore eventually spread over your whole body? Will the interval disappear completely? You go to your doctor. He can't cure it. You try other things, but nothing helps except this marvelous ointment.
By now you are completely dependent on the ointment. You never go out without ensuring that you have a tube of the ointment with you. If you go abroad, you make sure that you take several tubes with you. Now, in addition to your worries about your health, I'm charging you 100 per tube. You have no choice but to pay.
You then read in the medical column of your newspaper that this isn't happening just to you; many other people have been suffering from the same problem. In fact, pharmacists have discovered that the ointment doesn't actually cure the sore. All that it does is to take the sore beneath the surface of the skin. It is the ointment that has caused the sore to grow. All you have to do to get rid of the sore is to stop using the ointment. The sore will eventually disappear in due course.
Gross stuff about smoking cigarettes
The thing that makes it difficult for us to give up is fear. The fear that we are being deprived of our pleasure or prop. The fear that certain pleasant situations will never be quite the same again. The fear of being unable to cope with stressful situations.
In other words, the effect of brainwashing is to delude us into believing that there is a weakness in us, or something inherent in the cigarette that we need, and that when we stop smoking there will be a void.
Get it clear in your mind: CIGARETTES DO NOT FILL A VOID. THEY CREATE IT!
These bodies of ours are the most sophisticated objects on this planet. Whether you believe in a creator, a process of natural selection or a combination of both, whatever being or system devised these bodies of ours, it is a thousand times more effective than man! Man cannot create the smallest living cell, let alone the miracle of eyesight, reproduction, our circulatory system or our brains. If the creator or process had intended us to smoke, we would have been provided with some filter device to keep the poisons out of our bodies and some sort of chimney.
Our bodies are, in fact, provided with failsafe warning devices in the form of the cough, dizziness, sickness, etc., and we ignore these at our peril.
The beautiful truth is - there is nothing to give up. Once you purge that little monster from your body and the brainwashing from your mind, you will neither want cigarettes nor need them.
Cigarettes do not improve meals. They ruin them. They destroy your sense of taste and smell.
Observe smokers in a restaurant, smoking between courses. It is not the meal that they are enjoying; they cannot wait for the meal to be over, as it is interfering with the cigarettes. Many of them do it in spite of the fact that they know it causes offence to non-smokers. It is not that smokers are generally inconsiderate people; it is just that they are miserable without the cigarette. They are between the devil and the deep blue sea. They either have to abstain and be miserable because they cannot smoke, or smoke and be miserable because they are offending other people, feel guilty and despise themselves for it.
Watch smokers at an official function where they have to wait for the loyal toast. Many of them develop weak bladders and have to sneak off for a crafty puff. That is when you see smoking for the true addiction that it is. Smokers do not smoke because they enjoy it. They do it because they are miserable without it.
Because many of us start smoking on social occasions when we are young and shy, we acquire the belief that we cannot enjoy social occasions without a cigarette. This is nonsense. Tobacco takes away your confidence. The greatest evidence of the fear that cigarettes instill in smokers is their effect on women. Practically all women are fastidious about their personal appearance. They wouldn't dream of appearing at a social func tion not immaculately turned out and smelling beautiful. Yet knowing that their breath smells like a stale ashtray does not seem to deter them in the least. I know that it bothers them greatly - many hate the smell of their own hair and clothes - yet it doesn't deter them. Such is the fear that this awful drug instills in the smoker.
In other words, the effect of brainwashing is to delude us into believing that there is a weakness in us, or something inherent in the cigarette that we need, and that when we stop smoking there will be a void.
Get it clear in your mind: CIGARETTES DO NOT FILL A VOID. THEY CREATE IT!
These bodies of ours are the most sophisticated objects on this planet. Whether you believe in a creator, a process of natural selection or a combination of both, whatever being or system devised these bodies of ours, it is a thousand times more effective than man! Man cannot create the smallest living cell, let alone the miracle of eyesight, reproduction, our circulatory system or our brains. If the creator or process had intended us to smoke, we would have been provided with some filter device to keep the poisons out of our bodies and some sort of chimney.
Our bodies are, in fact, provided with failsafe warning devices in the form of the cough, dizziness, sickness, etc., and we ignore these at our peril.
The beautiful truth is - there is nothing to give up. Once you purge that little monster from your body and the brainwashing from your mind, you will neither want cigarettes nor need them.
Cigarettes do not improve meals. They ruin them. They destroy your sense of taste and smell.
Observe smokers in a restaurant, smoking between courses. It is not the meal that they are enjoying; they cannot wait for the meal to be over, as it is interfering with the cigarettes. Many of them do it in spite of the fact that they know it causes offence to non-smokers. It is not that smokers are generally inconsiderate people; it is just that they are miserable without the cigarette. They are between the devil and the deep blue sea. They either have to abstain and be miserable because they cannot smoke, or smoke and be miserable because they are offending other people, feel guilty and despise themselves for it.
Watch smokers at an official function where they have to wait for the loyal toast. Many of them develop weak bladders and have to sneak off for a crafty puff. That is when you see smoking for the true addiction that it is. Smokers do not smoke because they enjoy it. They do it because they are miserable without it.
Because many of us start smoking on social occasions when we are young and shy, we acquire the belief that we cannot enjoy social occasions without a cigarette. This is nonsense. Tobacco takes away your confidence. The greatest evidence of the fear that cigarettes instill in smokers is their effect on women. Practically all women are fastidious about their personal appearance. They wouldn't dream of appearing at a social func tion not immaculately turned out and smelling beautiful. Yet knowing that their breath smells like a stale ashtray does not seem to deter them in the least. I know that it bothers them greatly - many hate the smell of their own hair and clothes - yet it doesn't deter them. Such is the fear that this awful drug instills in the smoker.
среда, 7 октября 2009 г.
Combination Cigarettes
No, a mosaic cigarette is not when you are smoking two or more at the unvaried time. When that happens, you Rather commence to wonder why you were smoking the primary one. I once burnt the promote of my hand trying to put a cigarette in my down in the dumps when there was already one there. Really, it is not quite as stupid as you come up with. As I have already said, in due course the cigarette ceases to disburden the withdrawal pangs, and level when you are smoking the cigarette there is notwithstanding something missing. This is the horrendous frustration of the chain smoker. Whenever you necessary the boost, you are already smoking, and this is why impenetrable smokers often accouter e come to drink or other drugs. But I digress.
A mixture cigarette is one occasioned by two or more of our established reasons for smoking, e.g. popular functions, parties, weddings, meals in restaurants. These are examples of occasions that are both stressful and relaxing. This puissance at first appear to be a contradiction, but it isn't. Any cultivate of socializing can be stressful, flatten with friends, and at the that having been said time you want to be enjoying yourself and be altogether relaxed.
There are situations where all four reasons are furnish at one and the same time. Driving can be one of these. If you are leaving a strained situation, like a afflict to the dentist or the doctor, you can now ease. At the same time driving each time involves an element of note. Your life is at define. You are also having to apply oneself. You may not be aware of the last two factors, but the act that they are collective unconscious doesn\'t mean they aren't there. And if you are stuck in a See trade jam, or have a long motorway dig, you may also be bored.
Another paragon example is a game of cards. If it's a unflinching like bridge or poker, you bear to concentrate. If you are losing more than you can supply, it is stressful. If you have lengthy periods of not getting a acceptable hand, it can be boring. And, while all this is current on, you are at leisure; you are supposed to be relaxing. During a high-spirited of cards, no matter how cold shoulder the withdrawal pangs are, all smokers wishes be chain-smoking, coextensive with otherwise casual smokers. The ashtrays desire fill and overflow in no then.
There'll be a true fall-out cloud primarily head height. If you were to tap any of the smokers on the pitch in and ask him if he was enjoying it, the answer would be "You take got to be joking." It is oft after nights like these, when we wake up with a throat like a cess pit that we conclusion to stop smoking.
These combine cigarettes are often express ones, the ones that we think about we\'ll miss most when we are contemplating stopping smoking. We dream up that life order never be quite as enjoyable again. In really, it is the same principle at available: these cigarettes unqualifiedly provide relief from withdrawal pangs, and at positive times we have greater indigence to relieve them than at others. Let us alter b transfer it quite clear. It is not the cigarette that is specialized; it is the occasion. Once we maintain removed the need for the cigarette, such occasions force become more enjoyable and the stressful situations less stressful. This make be explained in greater exhaustively in the next article.
A mixture cigarette is one occasioned by two or more of our established reasons for smoking, e.g. popular functions, parties, weddings, meals in restaurants. These are examples of occasions that are both stressful and relaxing. This puissance at first appear to be a contradiction, but it isn't. Any cultivate of socializing can be stressful, flatten with friends, and at the that having been said time you want to be enjoying yourself and be altogether relaxed.
There are situations where all four reasons are furnish at one and the same time. Driving can be one of these. If you are leaving a strained situation, like a afflict to the dentist or the doctor, you can now ease. At the same time driving each time involves an element of note. Your life is at define. You are also having to apply oneself. You may not be aware of the last two factors, but the act that they are collective unconscious doesn\'t mean they aren't there. And if you are stuck in a See trade jam, or have a long motorway dig, you may also be bored.
Another paragon example is a game of cards. If it's a unflinching like bridge or poker, you bear to concentrate. If you are losing more than you can supply, it is stressful. If you have lengthy periods of not getting a acceptable hand, it can be boring. And, while all this is current on, you are at leisure; you are supposed to be relaxing. During a high-spirited of cards, no matter how cold shoulder the withdrawal pangs are, all smokers wishes be chain-smoking, coextensive with otherwise casual smokers. The ashtrays desire fill and overflow in no then.
There'll be a true fall-out cloud primarily head height. If you were to tap any of the smokers on the pitch in and ask him if he was enjoying it, the answer would be "You take got to be joking." It is oft after nights like these, when we wake up with a throat like a cess pit that we conclusion to stop smoking.
These combine cigarettes are often express ones, the ones that we think about we\'ll miss most when we are contemplating stopping smoking. We dream up that life order never be quite as enjoyable again. In really, it is the same principle at available: these cigarettes unqualifiedly provide relief from withdrawal pangs, and at positive times we have greater indigence to relieve them than at others. Let us alter b transfer it quite clear. It is not the cigarette that is specialized; it is the occasion. Once we maintain removed the need for the cigarette, such occasions force become more enjoyable and the stressful situations less stressful. This make be explained in greater exhaustively in the next article.
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