Most smokers think that a cigarette helps to relax them. The truth is that nicotine is a chemical stimulant. If you take your pulse and then smoke two consecutive cigarettes, there will be a marked increase in your pulse rate.
One of the favorite cigarettes for most smokers is the one after a meal. A meal is a time of day when we stop working; we sit down and relax, relieve our hunger and thirst and are then completely satisfied. However, the poor smoker cannot relax, as he has another hunger to satisfy. He thinks of the cigarette as the icing on the cake, but it is the little monster that needs feeding.
The truth is that the nicotine addict can never be completely relaxed, and as you go through life it gets worse.
The most unrelaxed people on this planet aren't non-smokers but fifty-year-old business executives who chain-smoke, are permanently coughing and spluttering, have high blood pressure and are constantly irritable. At this point cigarettes cease to relieve even partially the symptoms that they have created.
I can remember when I was a young accountant, bringing up a family. One of my children would do something wrong and I would lose my temper to an extent that was out of all proportion to what he had done. I really believed that I had an evil demon in my make-up. I now know that I had, however it wasn't some inherent flaw in my character, but the little nicotine monster that was creating the problem. During those times I thought I had all the problems in the world, hut when I look back on my life I wonder where all the great stress was. In everything else in my life I was in control. The one thing that controlled me was the cigarette. The sad thing is that even today I can't convince my children that it was the smoking that caused me to be so irritable. Every time they hear a smoker trying to justify his addiction, the message is ' Oh, they calm me. They help me to relax.'
A couple of years ago, the adoption authorities threatened to prevent smokers from adopting children. A man rang up, irate. He said, 'You are completely wrong. I can remember when I was a child, if 1 had a contentious matter to raise with my mother, I would wait until she lit a cigarette because she was more relaxed then.' Why couldn't he talk to his mother when she wasn't smoking a cigarette? Why are smokers so unrelaxed when they are not smoking, even after a meal at a restaurant? Why are non-smokers completely relaxed then? Why are smokers not able to relax without a cigarette? The next time you are in a supermarket and you see a young housewife screaming at a child, just watch her leave. The first thing she will do is to light a cigarette.
воскресенье, 16 августа 2009 г.
воскресенье, 9 августа 2009 г.
Concentration
Cigarettes do not help concentration. That is just another illusion.
When you are trying to concentrate, you automatically try to avoid distractions like feeling cold or hot. The smoker is already suffering: that little monster wants his fix. So when he wants to concentrate he doesn't even have to think about it. He automatically lights up, partially ending the craving, gets on with the matter in hand and has already forgotten that he is smoking.
Cigarettes do not help concentration. They help to ruin it because after a while, even while smoking a cigarette, the smoker's withdrawal pangs cease to be completely relieved. The smoker then increases his intake, and the problem then increases.
Concentration is also affected adversely for another reason. The progressive blocking up of the arteries and veins with poisons starves the brain of oxygen. In fact, your concentration and inspiration will be greatly improved as this process is reversed.
It was the concentration aspect that prevented me from succeeding when using the willpower method. I could put up with the irritability and bad temper, but when I really needed to concentrate on something difficult, I had to have that cigarette. I can well remember the panic I felt when I discovered that I was not allowed to smoke during my accountancy exams, I was already a chainsmoker and convinced that 1 would not be able to concentrate for three hours without a cigarette.
But I passed the exams, and I can't even remember thinking about smoking at the time, so, when it came to the crunch, it obviously didn't bother me.
The loss of concentration that smokers suffer when they try to stop smoking is not, in fact, due to the physical withdrawal from nicotine. When you are a smoker, you have mental blocks. When you have one, what do you do? If you are not already smoking one, you light a cigarette. That doesn't cure the mental block, so then what do you do? You do what you have to do: you get on with it, just as nonsmokers do. When you are a smoker nothing gets blamed on the cigarette. Smokers never have smoking coughs; they just have permanent colds. The moment you stop smoking, everything that goes wrong in your life is blamed on the fact that you've stopped smoking. Now when you have a mental block, instead of just getting on with it you start to say, 'If only I could light up now, it would solve my problem.' You then start to question your decision to quit smoking.
If you believe that smoking is a genuine aid to concentration, then worrying about it will guarantee that you won't be able to concentrate. It's the doubting, not the physical withdrawal pangs, that causes the problem. Always remember: it is smokers who suffer withdrawal pangs and not non-smokers.
When I extinguished my last cigarette I went overnight from a hundred a day to zero without any apparent loss of concentration.
When you are trying to concentrate, you automatically try to avoid distractions like feeling cold or hot. The smoker is already suffering: that little monster wants his fix. So when he wants to concentrate he doesn't even have to think about it. He automatically lights up, partially ending the craving, gets on with the matter in hand and has already forgotten that he is smoking.
Cigarettes do not help concentration. They help to ruin it because after a while, even while smoking a cigarette, the smoker's withdrawal pangs cease to be completely relieved. The smoker then increases his intake, and the problem then increases.
Concentration is also affected adversely for another reason. The progressive blocking up of the arteries and veins with poisons starves the brain of oxygen. In fact, your concentration and inspiration will be greatly improved as this process is reversed.
It was the concentration aspect that prevented me from succeeding when using the willpower method. I could put up with the irritability and bad temper, but when I really needed to concentrate on something difficult, I had to have that cigarette. I can well remember the panic I felt when I discovered that I was not allowed to smoke during my accountancy exams, I was already a chainsmoker and convinced that 1 would not be able to concentrate for three hours without a cigarette.
But I passed the exams, and I can't even remember thinking about smoking at the time, so, when it came to the crunch, it obviously didn't bother me.
The loss of concentration that smokers suffer when they try to stop smoking is not, in fact, due to the physical withdrawal from nicotine. When you are a smoker, you have mental blocks. When you have one, what do you do? If you are not already smoking one, you light a cigarette. That doesn't cure the mental block, so then what do you do? You do what you have to do: you get on with it, just as nonsmokers do. When you are a smoker nothing gets blamed on the cigarette. Smokers never have smoking coughs; they just have permanent colds. The moment you stop smoking, everything that goes wrong in your life is blamed on the fact that you've stopped smoking. Now when you have a mental block, instead of just getting on with it you start to say, 'If only I could light up now, it would solve my problem.' You then start to question your decision to quit smoking.
If you believe that smoking is a genuine aid to concentration, then worrying about it will guarantee that you won't be able to concentrate. It's the doubting, not the physical withdrawal pangs, that causes the problem. Always remember: it is smokers who suffer withdrawal pangs and not non-smokers.
When I extinguished my last cigarette I went overnight from a hundred a day to zero without any apparent loss of concentration.
Boredom
If you are already smoking at this moment, you will probably have already forgotten about it until I reminded you.
Another fallacy about smoking is that cigarettes relieve boredom. Boredom is a frame of mind.
When you smoke a cigarette your mind isn't saying, 'I'm smoking a cigarette. I'm smoking a cigarette.'
The only time that happens is when you have been deprived for a long time or are trying to cut down, or during those first few cigarettes after a failed attempt to stop.
The true situation is this: when you are addicted to nicotine and are not smoking, there is something missing. If you have something to occupy your mind that isn't stressful, you can go for long periods without being bothered by the absence of the drug. However, when you are bored there's nothing to take your mind off it. so you feed the monster. When you are indulging yourself (i.e. not trying to stop or cut down), even lighting up becomes subconscious. Even pipe smokers and roll-your-own smokers can perform this ritual automatically. If any smoker tries to remember the cigarettes he has smoked during the day, he can only remember a small proportion of them - e.g. the first of the day or the one after a meal.
The truth is that cigarettes tend to increase boredom indirectly because they make you feel lethargic, and instead of undertaking some energetic activity smokers tend to lounge around, bored, relieving their withdrawal pangs.
This is why countering the brainwashing is so important. Because it's a fact that smokers tend to smoke when they are bored and that we've been told since birth that smoking relieves boredom, it doesn't occur to us to question the fact. We've also been brainwashed into believing that chewing gum aids relaxation. It is a fact that when under stress people tend to grind their teeth. All chewing gum does is to give you a logical reason to grind your teeth. Next time you watch someone chewing gum, observe them closely and ask yourself whether they looked relaxed or tense. Observe smokers who are smoking because they are bored. They still looked bored. The cigarette doesn't relieve the boredom.
As an ex-chain-smoker I can assure you that there are no more boring activities in life than lighting up one filthy cigarette after another, day in day out, year in year out.
Another fallacy about smoking is that cigarettes relieve boredom. Boredom is a frame of mind.
When you smoke a cigarette your mind isn't saying, 'I'm smoking a cigarette. I'm smoking a cigarette.'
The only time that happens is when you have been deprived for a long time or are trying to cut down, or during those first few cigarettes after a failed attempt to stop.
The true situation is this: when you are addicted to nicotine and are not smoking, there is something missing. If you have something to occupy your mind that isn't stressful, you can go for long periods without being bothered by the absence of the drug. However, when you are bored there's nothing to take your mind off it. so you feed the monster. When you are indulging yourself (i.e. not trying to stop or cut down), even lighting up becomes subconscious. Even pipe smokers and roll-your-own smokers can perform this ritual automatically. If any smoker tries to remember the cigarettes he has smoked during the day, he can only remember a small proportion of them - e.g. the first of the day or the one after a meal.
The truth is that cigarettes tend to increase boredom indirectly because they make you feel lethargic, and instead of undertaking some energetic activity smokers tend to lounge around, bored, relieving their withdrawal pangs.
This is why countering the brainwashing is so important. Because it's a fact that smokers tend to smoke when they are bored and that we've been told since birth that smoking relieves boredom, it doesn't occur to us to question the fact. We've also been brainwashed into believing that chewing gum aids relaxation. It is a fact that when under stress people tend to grind their teeth. All chewing gum does is to give you a logical reason to grind your teeth. Next time you watch someone chewing gum, observe them closely and ask yourself whether they looked relaxed or tense. Observe smokers who are smoking because they are bored. They still looked bored. The cigarette doesn't relieve the boredom.
As an ex-chain-smoker I can assure you that there are no more boring activities in life than lighting up one filthy cigarette after another, day in day out, year in year out.
воскресенье, 2 августа 2009 г.
Stress during stop smoking
I am referring not only to the great tragedies of life but also to the minor stresses, the socializing, the telephone call, the anxieties of the housewife with no isy young children and so on.
Let us use the telephone conversation as an example. For most people the telephone is slightly stressful, particularly for the business man. Most calls aren't from satisfied customers or your boss congratulating you. There's usually some sort of aggro - something going wrong or somebody making demands. At that time the smoker, if he isn't already doing so, will light up a cigarette. He doesn't know why he does this, but he does know that for some reason it appears to help.
What has actually happened is this. Without being conscious of it, he has already been suffering aggravation (i.e. the withdrawal pangs). By partially relieving that aggravation at the same time as normal stress, the total stress is reduced and the smoker gets a boost. At this point the boost is not, in fact, an illusion. The smoker will feel better than before he lit the cigarette. However, even when smoking that cigarette the smoker is more tense than if he were a non-smoker because the more you go into the drug, the more it knocks you down and the less it restores you when you smoke.
I promised no shock treatment. In the example I am about to give, I am not trying to shock you, I am merely emphasizing that cigarettes destroy your nerves rather than relax them.
Try to imagine getting to the stage where a doctor tells you that unless you stop smoking he is going to have to remove your legs. Just for a moment pause and try to visualize life without your legs. Try to imagine the frame of mind of a man who, issued with that warning, actually continues smoking and then has his legs removed.
I used to hear stories like that and dismissed them as cranky. In fact, I used to wish a doctor would tell me that: then I would have stopped. Yet I was already fully expecting any day to have a brain hemorrhage and lose not only my legs but my life, I didn't think of myself as a crank, just a heavy smoker.
Such stories are not cranky. That is what this awful drug does to you. As you go through life it systematically takes away your nerve and courage. The more it takes your courage away, the more you are deluded into believing the cigarette is doing the opposite. We have all heard of the panic that overtakes smokers when they are out late at night and in fear of running out of cigarettes. Nonsmokers do not suffer from it. The cigarette causes that feeling. At the same time, as you go through life the cigarette not only destroys your nerves but is a powerful poison, progressively destroying your physical health. By the time the smoker reaches the stage at which it is killing him, he believes the cigarette is his courage and cannot face life without it.
Get it clear in your head that the cigarette is not relieving your nerves; it is slowly but steadily destroying them. One of the great gains of breaking the habit is the return of your confidence and self-assurance.
Let us use the telephone conversation as an example. For most people the telephone is slightly stressful, particularly for the business man. Most calls aren't from satisfied customers or your boss congratulating you. There's usually some sort of aggro - something going wrong or somebody making demands. At that time the smoker, if he isn't already doing so, will light up a cigarette. He doesn't know why he does this, but he does know that for some reason it appears to help.
What has actually happened is this. Without being conscious of it, he has already been suffering aggravation (i.e. the withdrawal pangs). By partially relieving that aggravation at the same time as normal stress, the total stress is reduced and the smoker gets a boost. At this point the boost is not, in fact, an illusion. The smoker will feel better than before he lit the cigarette. However, even when smoking that cigarette the smoker is more tense than if he were a non-smoker because the more you go into the drug, the more it knocks you down and the less it restores you when you smoke.
I promised no shock treatment. In the example I am about to give, I am not trying to shock you, I am merely emphasizing that cigarettes destroy your nerves rather than relax them.
Try to imagine getting to the stage where a doctor tells you that unless you stop smoking he is going to have to remove your legs. Just for a moment pause and try to visualize life without your legs. Try to imagine the frame of mind of a man who, issued with that warning, actually continues smoking and then has his legs removed.
I used to hear stories like that and dismissed them as cranky. In fact, I used to wish a doctor would tell me that: then I would have stopped. Yet I was already fully expecting any day to have a brain hemorrhage and lose not only my legs but my life, I didn't think of myself as a crank, just a heavy smoker.
Such stories are not cranky. That is what this awful drug does to you. As you go through life it systematically takes away your nerve and courage. The more it takes your courage away, the more you are deluded into believing the cigarette is doing the opposite. We have all heard of the panic that overtakes smokers when they are out late at night and in fear of running out of cigarettes. Nonsmokers do not suffer from it. The cigarette causes that feeling. At the same time, as you go through life the cigarette not only destroys your nerves but is a powerful poison, progressively destroying your physical health. By the time the smoker reaches the stage at which it is killing him, he believes the cigarette is his courage and cannot face life without it.
Get it clear in your head that the cigarette is not relieving your nerves; it is slowly but steadily destroying them. One of the great gains of breaking the habit is the return of your confidence and self-assurance.
No smoke for enjoyment
As I explained earlier, smokers think they smoke for enjoyment, relaxation or some sort of boost. In fact, this an illusion. The actual reason is the relief of withdrawal pangs.
In the early days we use the cigarette as a social prop. We can take it or leave it. However, the subtle chain has started. Our subconscious mind begins to learn that a cigarette taken at certain times tends to be pleasurable.
The more we become hooked on the drug, the greater the need to relieve the withdrawal pangs and the further the cigarette drags you down, the more you are fooled into believing it is doing the opposite. It all happens so slowly, so gradually, you are not even aware of it. Each day you feel no different from the day before. Most smokers don't even realize they are hooked until they actually try to stop, and even then many won't admit to it, A few stalwarts just keep then- heads in the sand all their lives, trying to convince themselves and other people that they enjoy it.
I have had the following conversation with hundreds of teenagers.
ME: You realize that nicotine is a drug and that the only reason why you are smoking is that you cannot stop.
T: Nonsense! I enjoy it. If I didn't, I would stop. ME: Just stop for a week to prove to me you can if you want to.
T: No need. I enjoy it. If I wanted to stop, I would. ME: Just stop for a week to prove to yourself you are not hooked.
T: What's the point? I enjoy it.
As already stated, smokers tend to relieve their withdrawal pangs at times of stress, boredom, concentration, relaxation or a combination of these. This point is explained in greater detail in thenext few chapters.
In the early days we use the cigarette as a social prop. We can take it or leave it. However, the subtle chain has started. Our subconscious mind begins to learn that a cigarette taken at certain times tends to be pleasurable.
The more we become hooked on the drug, the greater the need to relieve the withdrawal pangs and the further the cigarette drags you down, the more you are fooled into believing it is doing the opposite. It all happens so slowly, so gradually, you are not even aware of it. Each day you feel no different from the day before. Most smokers don't even realize they are hooked until they actually try to stop, and even then many won't admit to it, A few stalwarts just keep then- heads in the sand all their lives, trying to convince themselves and other people that they enjoy it.
I have had the following conversation with hundreds of teenagers.
ME: You realize that nicotine is a drug and that the only reason why you are smoking is that you cannot stop.
T: Nonsense! I enjoy it. If I didn't, I would stop. ME: Just stop for a week to prove to me you can if you want to.
T: No need. I enjoy it. If I wanted to stop, I would. ME: Just stop for a week to prove to yourself you are not hooked.
T: What's the point? I enjoy it.
As already stated, smokers tend to relieve their withdrawal pangs at times of stress, boredom, concentration, relaxation or a combination of these. This point is explained in greater detail in thenext few chapters.
понедельник, 29 июня 2009 г.
Tips on stopping smoking
How or why do we start smoking in the first place? To understand this fully you need to examine the powerful effect of the subconscious mind or, as I call it, the 'sleeping partner'.
We all tend to think we are intelligent, dominant human beings determining our paths through life. In fact, 99 per cent of our make- up is moulded. We are a product of the society that we are brought up in -the sort of clothes we wear, the houses we live in, our basic life patterns, even those matters on which we tend to differ, e.g. Labor or Conservative governments. It is no coincidence that Labor supporters tend to come from the working classes and Conservatives from the middle and upper classes. The subconscious is an extremely powerful influence in our lives, and even in matters of fact rather than opinion millions of people can be deluded. Before Columbus sailed round the world the majority of people knew it to be flat. Today we know it is round. If I wrote a dozen books trying to persuade you that it was fiat, I could not do it, yet how many of us have been into space to see the ball? Even if you have flown or sailed round the world, how do you know that you were not traveling in a circle above a flat surface?
Advertising men know well the power of suggestion over the subconscious mind, hence the large posters the smoker is hit with as he drives around, the adverts in every magazine. You think they are a waste of money? That they do not persuade you to buy cigarettes? You are wrong! Try it out for yourself. Next time you go into a pub or restaurant on a cold day and your companion asks you what you are having to drink, instead of saying, 'A brandy' (or whatever), embellish it with 'Do you know what I would really enjoy today? That marvelous warm glow of a brandy.' You will find that even people who dislike brandy will join you.
From our earliest years our subconscious minds are bombarded daily with inform at ion telling us that cigarettes relax us and give us confidence and courage and that the most precious thing on this earth is a cigarette. You think I exaggerate? Whenever you see a cartoon or film or play in which people are about to be executed or shot, what is their last request? That's right, a cigarette. The impact of this does not register on our conscious minds, but the sleeping partner has time to absorb it. What the message is really saying is, 'The most precious thing on this earth, my last thought and action, will be the smoking of a cigarette.' In every war film the injured man is given a cigarette. You think that things have changed recently? No. our children are still being bombarded by large hoardings and magazine adverts. Cigarette advertising is supposed to be banned on television nowadays, yet during peak viewing hours the world's top snooker players and darts players are seen constantly puffing away. The progra mmes are usually sponsored by the tobacco giants, and this is the most sinister trend of all in today's advertising: the link with sporting occasions and the jet set. Grand Prix racing cars modeled and even named after cigarette brand names or is it the other way round?
There are even plugs on television nowadays depicting a naked couple sharing a cigarette in bed after having sex. The implications are obvious. How my admiration goes out to the advertisers of the small cigar, not for their motives but for the brilliance of their campaign, whereby a man is about to face death or disaster his balloon is on fire and about to crash, or the sidecar of his motorbike is about to crash into a river, or he is Columbus and his ship is about to go over the edge of the world. Not a word is spoken. Soft music plays. He lights up a cigar; a look of sheer bliss covers his face. The conscious mind may not realize that the smoker is even watching the advert, but the 'sleeping partner' is patiently digesting the obvious implications.
True, there is pub licity the other way - the cancer scares, the legs being amputated, the badbreath campaigns - but these do not actually stop people smoking. Logically they should, but the fact is they do not. They do not even prevent youngsters from starting. All the years that 1 remained a smoker I honestly believed that, had I known of the links between lung cancer and cigarette smoking, I would never have become a smoker. The truth is that it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference.
The trap is the same today as when Sir Walter Raleigh fell into it. All the anti-smoking campaigns just help to add to the confusion. Even the products themselves, those lovely shining packets that lure you into trying their contents, contain a deadly warning on their sides. What smoker ever reads it, let alone brings himself to face the implications of it?
I believe that a leading cigarette manufacturer is actually using the Government Health Warning to sell its products. Many of the scenes include frightening features such as spiders, dragonflies and the Venus flytrap. The health warning is now so large and bold that the smoker cannot avoid it, however hard he tries. The pang of fear that the smoker suffers prompts an association of ideas with the glossy gold packet.
Ironically, the most powerful force in this brainwashing is the smoker himself. It is a fallacy that smokers are weak-willed and physically weak specimens. You have to be physically strong in order to cope with the poison.
This is one of the reasons why smokers refuse to accept the overwhelming statistics that prove that smoking cripples your health. Everyone knows of an Uncle Fred who smoked forty a day, never had a day's illness in his life, and lived to eighty. They refuse even to consider the hundreds of other smokers who are cut down in their prime or the fact that Uncle Fred might still be alive if he hadn't been a smoker.
If you do a small survey among your friends and colleagues, you will find that most smokers are, in fact, strong-willed people. They tend to be self-employed, business executives or in certain specialized professions, such as doctors, lawyers, policemen, teachers, salesmen, nurses, secretaries, housewives with children, etc. - in other words, anybody leading a stressful existence. The main delusion of smokers is that smoking relieves stress and tends to be associated with the dominant type, the type that takes on responsibility and stress, and, of course, that is the type that we admire and therefore tend to copy. Another group that tends to get hooked are people in monotonous jobs because the other main reason for smoking is boredom. However, the idea that smoking relieves boredom is also an illusion, I am afraid.
The extent of the brainwashing is quite incredible. As a society we get all uptight about glue-sniffing, heroin addiction, etc. Actual deaths from glue-sniffing do not amount to ten per annum, and deaths from heroin are less than a hundred a year in this country.
There is another drug, nicotine, on which over 60 per cent of us become hooked at some time in our lives and the majority spend the rest of their lives paying for it through the nose. Most of their spare money goes on cigarettes and hundreds of thousands of people have their lives ruined every year because they became hooked. It is the No. I killer in society, including road accidents, fires, etc. Why is it that we regard glue-sniffing and heroin addiction as such great evils, while the drug that we spend most of our money on and is actually killing us we used to regard a few years ago as a perfectly acceptable social habit? In recent years it has been considered a slightly unsociable habit that may injure our health but is legal and on sale in glossy packets in every newsagent, pub, club, garage and restaurant. The biggest vested interest is our own government. It makes 8,000,000,000 per year out of smokers, and the tobacco companies spend over 100,000,000 per year in promotion alone.
You need to start building resistance to this brainwashing, just as if you were buying a car from a secondhand dealer. You would be nodding politely hut you would not believe a word the man was saying.
Start looking behind these glossy packets at the filth and poison beneath. Do not be fooled by the cut-glass ashtrays or the gold lighter or the millions who have been conned. Start asking yourself:
Why am I doing it?
Do I really need to?
NO, OF COURSE YOU DON'T.
1 find this brainwashing aspect the most difficult of all to explain. Why is it that an otherwise rational, intelligent human being becomes a complete imbecile about his own addiction? It pains me to confess that out of the thousands of people that I have assisted in kicking the habit, I was the biggest idiot of all.
Not only did I reach a hundred a day myself, but my father was a heavy smoker. He was a strong man, cut down in his prime due to smoking. I can remember watching him when I was a boy; he would be coughing and spluttering in the mornings. I could see he wasn't enjoying it and it was so obvious to me that something evil had got possession of him. I can remember saying to my mother, 'Don't ever let me become a smoker'.
At the age of fifteen I was a physical- fitness fanatic. Sport was my life and 1 was full of courage and confidence. If anybody had said to me in those days that I would end up smoking a hundred cigarettes a day, I would have gambled my lifetime's earnings that it would not happen, and I would have given any odds that had been asked.
At the age of forty I was a physical and mental cigarette junky. I had reached the stage where I couldn't carry out the most mundane physical or mental act without first lighting up. With most smokers the triggers are the normal stresses of life, like answering the telephone or socializing. I couldn't even change a television programme or a light bulb without lighting up.
I knew it was killing me. There was no way I could kid myself otherwise. But why I couldn't see what it was doing to me mentally 1 cannot understand. It was almost jumping up and biting me on the nose. The ridiculous thing is that most smokers suffer the delusion at some time in their life that they enjoy a cigarette. I never suffered that delusion, I smoked because 1 thought it helped me to concentrate and because it helped my nerves. Now I am a non-smoker, the most difficult part is trying to believe that those days actually happened. It's like awakening from a nightmare, and that is about the size of it. Nicotine is a drug, and your senses are drugged - your taste buds, your sense of smell. The worst aspect of smoking isn't the injury to your health or pocket, it is the warping of the mind. You search for any plausible excuse to go on smoking.
I remember at one stage switching to a pipe, after a failed attempt to kick cigarettes, in the belief that it was less harmful and would cut down my intake.
Some of those pipe tobaccos are absolutely foul. The aroma can be pleasant but, to start with, they are awful to smoke. I can remember that for about three months the tip of my tongue was as sore as a boil. A liquid brown goo collects in the bottom of the bowl of the pipe. Occasionally you unwittingly bring the bowl above the horizontal and before you realize it you have swallowed a mouthful of the filthy stuff. The result is usually to throw up immediately, no matter what company you are in.
It took me three months to learn to cope with the pipe, hut what 1 cannot understand is why I didn't sit down sometime during that three months and ask myself why I was subjecting myself to the torture.
Of course, once they learn to cope with the pipe, no one appears more contented than pipe smokers. Most of them are convinced that they smoke because they enjoy the pipe. But why did they have to work so hard to learn to like it when they were perfectly happy without it?
The answer is that once you have become addicted to nicotine, the brainwashing is increased. Your subconscious mind knows that the little monster has to be fed, and you block everything else from your mind. As I have already stated, it is fear that keeps people smoking, the fear of that empty, insecure feeling that you get when you stop supplying the nicotine. Because you are not aware of it doesn't moan it isn't there. You don't have to understand it any more than a cat needs to understand where the under-floor hot-water pipes are. It just knows that if it sits in a certain place it gets the feeling of warmth.
It is the brainwashing that is the main difficulty in giving up smoking. The brainwashing of our upbringing in society reinforced with the brainwashing from our own addiction and, most powerful of all, the brainwashing of our friends, relatives and colleagues.
Did you notice that up to now I've frequently referred to 'giving up' smoking, I used the expression at the beginning of the previous paragraph. This is a classic example of the brainwashing. The expression implies a genuine sacrifice. The beautiful truth is that there is absolutely nothing to give up. On the contrary, you will be freeing yourself from a terrible disease and achieving marvelous positive gains. We are going to start removing this brainwashing now. From this point on, no longer will we refer to 'giving up', but to stopping, quitting or the true position: ESCAPING!
The only thing that persuades us to smoke in the first place is all the other people doing it. We feel we are missing out. We work so hard to become hooked, yet nobody ever finds out what they have been missing. But every time we see another smoker he reassures us that there must be something in it, otherwise he wouldn't be doing it. Even when he has kicked the habit, the ex-smoker feels he is being deprived when a smoker lights up at a party or other social function. He feels safe. He can have just one. And, before he knows it, he is hooked again.
This brainwashing is very powerful and you need to be aware of its effects. Many older smokers will remember the Paul Temple detective series that was a very popular radio programme after the war. One of the series was dealing with addiction to marijuana, commonly known as 'pot' or 'grass'.
Unbeknown to the smoker, wicked men were selling cigarettes that contained 'pot'. There were no harmful effects. People merely became addicted and had to go on buying the cigarettes. (During my consultations literally hundreds of smokers have admitted to trying 'pot'. None of them said they became hooked on it.) I was about seven years old when I listened to the programme. It was my first knowledge of drug addiction. The concept of addiction, being compelled to go on taking the drug, filled me with horror, and even to this day, in spite of the fact that I am fairly convinced that 'pot' is not addictive. I would not dare take one puff of marijuana. How ironic that I should have ended up a junky on the world's No. 1 addictive drug. If only Paul Temple had warned me about the cigarette itself. How ironic too that over forty years later mankind spends thousands of pounds on cancer research, yet millions are spent persuading healthy teenagers to become hooked on the filthy weed, our own government having the largest vested interest.
We are about to remove the brainwashing. It is not the non-smoker who is being deprived but the poor smoker who is forfeiting a lifetime of:
HEALTH
ENERGY
WEALTH
PEACE OF MIND
CONFIDENCE
COURAGE
SELF-RESPECT
HAPPINESS
FREEDOM.
And what does he gain from these considerable sacrifices?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING-except the illusion of trying to get back to the state of peace, tranquility and confidence that the non-smoker enjoys all the time.
We all tend to think we are intelligent, dominant human beings determining our paths through life. In fact, 99 per cent of our make- up is moulded. We are a product of the society that we are brought up in -the sort of clothes we wear, the houses we live in, our basic life patterns, even those matters on which we tend to differ, e.g. Labor or Conservative governments. It is no coincidence that Labor supporters tend to come from the working classes and Conservatives from the middle and upper classes. The subconscious is an extremely powerful influence in our lives, and even in matters of fact rather than opinion millions of people can be deluded. Before Columbus sailed round the world the majority of people knew it to be flat. Today we know it is round. If I wrote a dozen books trying to persuade you that it was fiat, I could not do it, yet how many of us have been into space to see the ball? Even if you have flown or sailed round the world, how do you know that you were not traveling in a circle above a flat surface?
Advertising men know well the power of suggestion over the subconscious mind, hence the large posters the smoker is hit with as he drives around, the adverts in every magazine. You think they are a waste of money? That they do not persuade you to buy cigarettes? You are wrong! Try it out for yourself. Next time you go into a pub or restaurant on a cold day and your companion asks you what you are having to drink, instead of saying, 'A brandy' (or whatever), embellish it with 'Do you know what I would really enjoy today? That marvelous warm glow of a brandy.' You will find that even people who dislike brandy will join you.
From our earliest years our subconscious minds are bombarded daily with inform at ion telling us that cigarettes relax us and give us confidence and courage and that the most precious thing on this earth is a cigarette. You think I exaggerate? Whenever you see a cartoon or film or play in which people are about to be executed or shot, what is their last request? That's right, a cigarette. The impact of this does not register on our conscious minds, but the sleeping partner has time to absorb it. What the message is really saying is, 'The most precious thing on this earth, my last thought and action, will be the smoking of a cigarette.' In every war film the injured man is given a cigarette. You think that things have changed recently? No. our children are still being bombarded by large hoardings and magazine adverts. Cigarette advertising is supposed to be banned on television nowadays, yet during peak viewing hours the world's top snooker players and darts players are seen constantly puffing away. The progra mmes are usually sponsored by the tobacco giants, and this is the most sinister trend of all in today's advertising: the link with sporting occasions and the jet set. Grand Prix racing cars modeled and even named after cigarette brand names or is it the other way round?
There are even plugs on television nowadays depicting a naked couple sharing a cigarette in bed after having sex. The implications are obvious. How my admiration goes out to the advertisers of the small cigar, not for their motives but for the brilliance of their campaign, whereby a man is about to face death or disaster his balloon is on fire and about to crash, or the sidecar of his motorbike is about to crash into a river, or he is Columbus and his ship is about to go over the edge of the world. Not a word is spoken. Soft music plays. He lights up a cigar; a look of sheer bliss covers his face. The conscious mind may not realize that the smoker is even watching the advert, but the 'sleeping partner' is patiently digesting the obvious implications.
True, there is pub licity the other way - the cancer scares, the legs being amputated, the badbreath campaigns - but these do not actually stop people smoking. Logically they should, but the fact is they do not. They do not even prevent youngsters from starting. All the years that 1 remained a smoker I honestly believed that, had I known of the links between lung cancer and cigarette smoking, I would never have become a smoker. The truth is that it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference.
The trap is the same today as when Sir Walter Raleigh fell into it. All the anti-smoking campaigns just help to add to the confusion. Even the products themselves, those lovely shining packets that lure you into trying their contents, contain a deadly warning on their sides. What smoker ever reads it, let alone brings himself to face the implications of it?
I believe that a leading cigarette manufacturer is actually using the Government Health Warning to sell its products. Many of the scenes include frightening features such as spiders, dragonflies and the Venus flytrap. The health warning is now so large and bold that the smoker cannot avoid it, however hard he tries. The pang of fear that the smoker suffers prompts an association of ideas with the glossy gold packet.
Ironically, the most powerful force in this brainwashing is the smoker himself. It is a fallacy that smokers are weak-willed and physically weak specimens. You have to be physically strong in order to cope with the poison.
This is one of the reasons why smokers refuse to accept the overwhelming statistics that prove that smoking cripples your health. Everyone knows of an Uncle Fred who smoked forty a day, never had a day's illness in his life, and lived to eighty. They refuse even to consider the hundreds of other smokers who are cut down in their prime or the fact that Uncle Fred might still be alive if he hadn't been a smoker.
If you do a small survey among your friends and colleagues, you will find that most smokers are, in fact, strong-willed people. They tend to be self-employed, business executives or in certain specialized professions, such as doctors, lawyers, policemen, teachers, salesmen, nurses, secretaries, housewives with children, etc. - in other words, anybody leading a stressful existence. The main delusion of smokers is that smoking relieves stress and tends to be associated with the dominant type, the type that takes on responsibility and stress, and, of course, that is the type that we admire and therefore tend to copy. Another group that tends to get hooked are people in monotonous jobs because the other main reason for smoking is boredom. However, the idea that smoking relieves boredom is also an illusion, I am afraid.
The extent of the brainwashing is quite incredible. As a society we get all uptight about glue-sniffing, heroin addiction, etc. Actual deaths from glue-sniffing do not amount to ten per annum, and deaths from heroin are less than a hundred a year in this country.
There is another drug, nicotine, on which over 60 per cent of us become hooked at some time in our lives and the majority spend the rest of their lives paying for it through the nose. Most of their spare money goes on cigarettes and hundreds of thousands of people have their lives ruined every year because they became hooked. It is the No. I killer in society, including road accidents, fires, etc. Why is it that we regard glue-sniffing and heroin addiction as such great evils, while the drug that we spend most of our money on and is actually killing us we used to regard a few years ago as a perfectly acceptable social habit? In recent years it has been considered a slightly unsociable habit that may injure our health but is legal and on sale in glossy packets in every newsagent, pub, club, garage and restaurant. The biggest vested interest is our own government. It makes 8,000,000,000 per year out of smokers, and the tobacco companies spend over 100,000,000 per year in promotion alone.
You need to start building resistance to this brainwashing, just as if you were buying a car from a secondhand dealer. You would be nodding politely hut you would not believe a word the man was saying.
Start looking behind these glossy packets at the filth and poison beneath. Do not be fooled by the cut-glass ashtrays or the gold lighter or the millions who have been conned. Start asking yourself:
Why am I doing it?
Do I really need to?
NO, OF COURSE YOU DON'T.
1 find this brainwashing aspect the most difficult of all to explain. Why is it that an otherwise rational, intelligent human being becomes a complete imbecile about his own addiction? It pains me to confess that out of the thousands of people that I have assisted in kicking the habit, I was the biggest idiot of all.
Not only did I reach a hundred a day myself, but my father was a heavy smoker. He was a strong man, cut down in his prime due to smoking. I can remember watching him when I was a boy; he would be coughing and spluttering in the mornings. I could see he wasn't enjoying it and it was so obvious to me that something evil had got possession of him. I can remember saying to my mother, 'Don't ever let me become a smoker'.
At the age of fifteen I was a physical- fitness fanatic. Sport was my life and 1 was full of courage and confidence. If anybody had said to me in those days that I would end up smoking a hundred cigarettes a day, I would have gambled my lifetime's earnings that it would not happen, and I would have given any odds that had been asked.
At the age of forty I was a physical and mental cigarette junky. I had reached the stage where I couldn't carry out the most mundane physical or mental act without first lighting up. With most smokers the triggers are the normal stresses of life, like answering the telephone or socializing. I couldn't even change a television programme or a light bulb without lighting up.
I knew it was killing me. There was no way I could kid myself otherwise. But why I couldn't see what it was doing to me mentally 1 cannot understand. It was almost jumping up and biting me on the nose. The ridiculous thing is that most smokers suffer the delusion at some time in their life that they enjoy a cigarette. I never suffered that delusion, I smoked because 1 thought it helped me to concentrate and because it helped my nerves. Now I am a non-smoker, the most difficult part is trying to believe that those days actually happened. It's like awakening from a nightmare, and that is about the size of it. Nicotine is a drug, and your senses are drugged - your taste buds, your sense of smell. The worst aspect of smoking isn't the injury to your health or pocket, it is the warping of the mind. You search for any plausible excuse to go on smoking.
I remember at one stage switching to a pipe, after a failed attempt to kick cigarettes, in the belief that it was less harmful and would cut down my intake.
Some of those pipe tobaccos are absolutely foul. The aroma can be pleasant but, to start with, they are awful to smoke. I can remember that for about three months the tip of my tongue was as sore as a boil. A liquid brown goo collects in the bottom of the bowl of the pipe. Occasionally you unwittingly bring the bowl above the horizontal and before you realize it you have swallowed a mouthful of the filthy stuff. The result is usually to throw up immediately, no matter what company you are in.
It took me three months to learn to cope with the pipe, hut what 1 cannot understand is why I didn't sit down sometime during that three months and ask myself why I was subjecting myself to the torture.
Of course, once they learn to cope with the pipe, no one appears more contented than pipe smokers. Most of them are convinced that they smoke because they enjoy the pipe. But why did they have to work so hard to learn to like it when they were perfectly happy without it?
The answer is that once you have become addicted to nicotine, the brainwashing is increased. Your subconscious mind knows that the little monster has to be fed, and you block everything else from your mind. As I have already stated, it is fear that keeps people smoking, the fear of that empty, insecure feeling that you get when you stop supplying the nicotine. Because you are not aware of it doesn't moan it isn't there. You don't have to understand it any more than a cat needs to understand where the under-floor hot-water pipes are. It just knows that if it sits in a certain place it gets the feeling of warmth.
It is the brainwashing that is the main difficulty in giving up smoking. The brainwashing of our upbringing in society reinforced with the brainwashing from our own addiction and, most powerful of all, the brainwashing of our friends, relatives and colleagues.
Did you notice that up to now I've frequently referred to 'giving up' smoking, I used the expression at the beginning of the previous paragraph. This is a classic example of the brainwashing. The expression implies a genuine sacrifice. The beautiful truth is that there is absolutely nothing to give up. On the contrary, you will be freeing yourself from a terrible disease and achieving marvelous positive gains. We are going to start removing this brainwashing now. From this point on, no longer will we refer to 'giving up', but to stopping, quitting or the true position: ESCAPING!
The only thing that persuades us to smoke in the first place is all the other people doing it. We feel we are missing out. We work so hard to become hooked, yet nobody ever finds out what they have been missing. But every time we see another smoker he reassures us that there must be something in it, otherwise he wouldn't be doing it. Even when he has kicked the habit, the ex-smoker feels he is being deprived when a smoker lights up at a party or other social function. He feels safe. He can have just one. And, before he knows it, he is hooked again.
This brainwashing is very powerful and you need to be aware of its effects. Many older smokers will remember the Paul Temple detective series that was a very popular radio programme after the war. One of the series was dealing with addiction to marijuana, commonly known as 'pot' or 'grass'.
Unbeknown to the smoker, wicked men were selling cigarettes that contained 'pot'. There were no harmful effects. People merely became addicted and had to go on buying the cigarettes. (During my consultations literally hundreds of smokers have admitted to trying 'pot'. None of them said they became hooked on it.) I was about seven years old when I listened to the programme. It was my first knowledge of drug addiction. The concept of addiction, being compelled to go on taking the drug, filled me with horror, and even to this day, in spite of the fact that I am fairly convinced that 'pot' is not addictive. I would not dare take one puff of marijuana. How ironic that I should have ended up a junky on the world's No. 1 addictive drug. If only Paul Temple had warned me about the cigarette itself. How ironic too that over forty years later mankind spends thousands of pounds on cancer research, yet millions are spent persuading healthy teenagers to become hooked on the filthy weed, our own government having the largest vested interest.
We are about to remove the brainwashing. It is not the non-smoker who is being deprived but the poor smoker who is forfeiting a lifetime of:
HEALTH
ENERGY
WEALTH
PEACE OF MIND
CONFIDENCE
COURAGE
SELF-RESPECT
HAPPINESS
FREEDOM.
And what does he gain from these considerable sacrifices?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING-except the illusion of trying to get back to the state of peace, tranquility and confidence that the non-smoker enjoys all the time.
суббота, 6 июня 2009 г.
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.
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.
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