No Smoking

Moat smokers are aware of the effect that this progressive process of gunging- up and starvation of oxygen and nutrients has on their lungs. However, they are not so aware of the effect it has on their energy level.

One of the subtleties of the smoking trap is that the effects it has on us, both physical and mental, happen so gradually and imperceptibly that we are not aware of them and regard them as normal.

It is very similar to the effects of bad eating habits. The pot-belly appears so gradually that it causes us no alarm. We look at people who are grossly overweight and wonder how they could possibly have allowed themselves to reach that state.

But supposing it happened overnight. You went to bed weighing ten stone, trim, rippling with muscles and not an ounce of fat on your body. You awoke weighing thirteen stone, fat, bloated and pot-bellied. Instead of waking up feeling fully rested and full of energy, you wake up feeling miserable, lethargic and you can hardly open your eyes. You would be panic-stricken, wondering what awful disease you had contracted overnight. Yet the disease is exactly the same. The fact that it took you twenty years to reach that state is irrelevant.

So it is with smoking. If I could immediately transfer you into your mind and body to give you a direct comparison on how you would feel having stopped smoking for just three weeks, that is all I would need to do to persuade you to quit. You would think: 'Will I really feel this good?' Or what it really amounts to: 'Have I really sunk that low?' I emphasize that I don't just mean how you would feel healthier and have more energy, but how you would feel more confident and relaxed and better able to concentrate.

As a teenager, I can remember rushing around just for the hell of it. For thirty-odd years, I was permanently tired and lethargic. I used to struggle to wake up at nine o'clock in the morning. After my evening meal I would lie on a settee watching television and nod off after five minutes. Because my father used to be the same, I thought this behavior was normal. I believed that energy was the exclusive prerogative of children and teenagers, and that old age began in the early twenties.

Shortly after I extinguished ray final cigarette, I was relieved that the congestion and the coughing disappeared, and I haven't had an asthma or bronchitis attack since. However something truly marvelous and unexpected also happened. I started waking at seven o'clock in the morning feeling completely rested and full of energy, actually wanting to exercise, jog and swim. At forty-eight I couldn't run a step or swim a stroke. My sporting activities were confined to such dynamic pursuits as green bowling, affectionately referred to as the old man's game, and golf, for which I had to use a motorized buggy. At the age of sixty- four I jog two to three miles daily, exercise for half an hour and swim twenty lengths. It's great to have energy, and when you feel physically and mentally strong, it feels great to be alive.

The problem is that when you quit smoking, the return of your physical and mental health is also gradual. True it's nothing like as slow as the slide into the pit, and if you are going through the trauma of the willpower method of quitting, any health or financial gains will be obliterated by the depression you will be going through.

Unfortunately, I cannot immediately transfer you into your mind and body in three weeks' time.

But you can! You know instinctively that what I am telling you is correct. All you need to do is: USE YOUR IMAGINATION!