There were two other advantages on the health side that never occurred to me until I had stopped smoking. One was that I used to have repetitive nightmares every night. I would dream that! was being chased. I can only assume that these nightmares were the result of the body being deprived of nicotine throughout the night and the insecure feeling that would result. Now the only nightmare that I have is that I occasionally dream that I am smoking again. This is quite a common dream among ex-smokers. Some worry that it means that they are still subconsciously pining for a cigarette. Don't worry about it. The fact that it was a nightmare means that you are very pleased not to be a smoker. There is that twilight zone after any nightmare when you wake up and are not sure whether it is a genuine catastrophe, but isn't it marvelous when you realize that it was only a dream?
When I described being chased every night in a dream, I originally typed 'chaste'. Perhaps this was just a 'Freudian slip', but it does give me a convenient lead into the second advantage. At clinics, when covering the effect that smoking has on concentration, I would some times say: 'Which organ in your body has the greatest need of a good supply of blood?' The stupid grins, usually on the faces of the men, would indicate that they had missed the point. However, they were absolutely right.
Being a somewhat shy Englishman, I find the subject rather embarrassing, and I have no intention of doing a miniature 'Kinsey' report by going into detail about the adverse effect that smoking had on my own sexual activity and enjoyment, or that of other ex-smokers with whom I have discussed the subject. Again, I was not aware of this effect until some time after I had stopped smoking and had attributed my sexual prowess and activity, or rather lack of it, to advancing years.
However, if you watch natural-science films, you will be aware that the first rule of nature is survival, and that the second rule is survival of the species, or reproduction. Nature ensures that reproduction does not take place unless the partners feel physically healthy and know that they have secured a safe home, territory, supply of food and a suitable mate. Man's ingenuity has enabled him to bend these rules somewhat, however, I know for a fact that smoking can lead to impotency. I can also assure you, that when you feel fit and healthy, you'll enjoy sex much more and more often.
Smokers also suffer the illusion that the ill-effects of smoking are overstated. The reverse is the case. There is no doubt that cigarettes are the No. 1 cause of death in society. The trouble is that in many cases where cigarettes cause the death or are a contributory factor, it is not blamed on cigarettes in the statistics.
It has been estimated that 44 per cent of household fires are caused by cigarettes, and I wonder how many road accidents have been caused by cigarettes during that split second when you take your eye off the road to light up.
I am normally a careful driver, but the nearest I came to death (except from smoking itself) waswhen trying to roll a cigarette while driving, and I hate to think of the number of times I coughed a cigarette out of my mouth while driving it always seemed to end up between the seats. I am sure many other smoking drivers have had the experience of trying to locate the burning cigarette with one hand while trying to drive with the other.
The effect of the brainwashing is that we tend to think like the man who, having fallen off a 100-storey building, is heard to say, as he passes the fiftieth floor, 'So far, so good!' We think that as we have got away with it so far, one more cigarette won't make the difference.
Try to see it another way, the 'habit' is a continuous chain for life, each cigarette creating the need for the next. When you start the habit you light a fuse. The trouble is, YOU DON'T KNOW HOW LONG THE FUSE IS. Every time that you light a cigarette you are one step nearer to the bomb exploding. HOW WILL YOU KNOW IF IT'S THE NEXT ONE?
среда, 18 ноября 2009 г.
Tips on Stopping Smoking
I can understand why the congestion and the risks of contracting lung cancer didn't help me to quit. I could cope with the former and block my mind to the latter. As you are already aware, my method is not to frighten you into quitting, but the complete opposite - to make you realize just how more enjoyable your life will be when you have escaped.
However, I do believe that if I could have seen what was happening inside my body, this would have helped me to quit. Now I'm not referring to the shock technique of showing a smoker the color of a smoker's lungs. It was obvious to me from my nicotine-stained teeth and fingers that my lungs weren't a pretty sight. Provided they kept functioning, they were less embarrassment than my teeth and fingers - at least nobody could see my lungs.
What I am referring to is the progressive gunging- up of our arteries and veins and the gradual starving of every muscle and organ of our bodies of oxygen and nutrients and replacing them with poisons and carbon monoxide (not just from car exhausts but also from smoking).
Like the majority of motorists, I don't like the thought of dirty oil or a dirty filter in my car engine. Could you imagine buying a brand-new Rolls Royce and never changing the oil or the oil filter? That's what we effectively do to our bodies when we become smokers.
Many doctors are now relating all sorts of diseases to smoking, including diabetes, cervical cancer and breast cancer. This is no surprise to me. The tobacco industry has labored the fact that the medical profession has never scientifically proved that smoking is the direct cause of lung cancer.
The statistical evidence is so overwhelming as not to need proof. No one ever scientifically proved to me exactly why, when I bang my thumb with a hammer, it hurts. I soon got the message.
I must emphasize that I am not a doctor, but just like the hammer and the thumb, it soon became obvious to me that my congestion, my permanent cough, my frequent asthma and bronchial attacks were directly related to my smoking. However, I truly believe that the greatest hazard that smoking causes to our health is the gradual and progressive deterioration of our immune system caused by this gunging-up process.
All plants and animals on this planet are subjected to a lifetime of attack from germs, viruses, parasites, etc. The most powerful defense we have against disease is our immune system. We all suffer infections and diseases throughout our lives. I believe we all suffer from some form of cancer during our lives. However, I do not believe that the human body was designed to be diseased, and if you are strong and healthy, your immune system will fight and defeat these attacks. How can your immune system work effectively when you are starving every muscle and organ of oxygen and nutrients and replacing them with carbon monoxide and poisons? It's not so much that smoking causes these other diseases, it works rather like AIDS, it gradually destroys your immune system.
Several of the adverse effects that smoking had on my health, some of which I had been suffering from for years, did not become apparent to me until many years after I had stopped smoking.
While I was busy despising those idiots and cranks who would rather lose their legs than quit smoking, it didn't even occur to me that I was already suffering from arteriosclerosis myself. My almost permanently grey complexion I attributed to my natural coloring or to lack of exercise. It never occurred to me that it was really due to the blocking up of my capillaries. I had varicose veins in my thirties, which have miraculously disappeared since I stopped smoking. I reached the stage about five years before I stopped when every night 1 would have this weird sensation in my legs. It wasn't a sharp pain or like pins and needles, just a sort of restless feeling. I would get Joyce to massage my legs every night. It didn't occur to me until at least a year after I had stopped that I no longer needed the massage.
About two years before I quit, I would occasionally get violent pains in my chest, which I feared must be lung cancer but now assume to have been angina. I haven't had a single attack since I quit.
When I was a child I would bleed profusely from cuts. This frightened me. No one explained to me that bleeding was in fact a natural and essential healing process and that the blood would clot when its healing purpose was completed. I suspected that I was a hemophiliac and feared that I might bleed to death. Later in life I would sustain quite deep cuts yet hardly bleed at all. This browny-red gunge would ooze from the cut.
The color worried me. I knew that blood was meant to be bright red and I assumed that I had some sort of blood disease. However I was pleased about the consistency, which meant that 1 no longer bled profusely. Not until after I had stopped smoking did I learn that smoking coagulated the blood and that the brownish color was due to lack of oxygen. I was ignorant of the effect at the time, but in hindsight, it was this effect that smoking was having on my health that most fills me with horror.
When I think of my poor heart trying to pump that gunge around restricted blood vessels, day in and day out, without missing a single beat, I find it a miracle that I didn't suffer a stroke or a heart attack. It made me realize, not how fragile our bodies are, but how strong and ingenious that incredible machine is!
I had liver spots on my hands in my forties. In case you don't know, liver spots are those brown or white spots that very old people have on their face and hands, I tried to ignore them, assuming that they were due to early senility caused by the hectic lifestyle that I had led. It was five years after I had quit that a smoker at the Raynes Park clinic remarked that when he had stopped previously, his liver spots disappeared. I had forgotten about mine, and to my amazement, they too had disappeared.
As long as I can remember, I had spots flashing in front of my eyes if ever I stood up too quickly, particularly if I were in a bath. I would feel dizzy, as if I were about to black out. I never related this to smoking. In fact I was convinced that it was quite normal and that everyone else had a similar reaction. Not until only five years ago, when an ex-smoker told me that he no longer had that sensation did it occur to me that I no longer had it either.
You might conclude that I am somewhat of a hypochondriac. I believe that I was when I was a smoker. One of the great evils about smoking is that it fools us into believing that nicotine gives us courage, when in fact it gradually and imperceptibly dissipates it. I was shocked when I heard my father say that he had no wish to live to be fifty. Little did I realize that twenty years la ter I would have exactly the same lack of joie de vivre. You might conclude that this chapter has been one of necessary, or unnecessary, doom and gloom. I promise you it is the complete opposite. I used to fear death when I was a child. I used to believe that smoking removed that fear. Perhaps it did. If so, it replaced it with something infinitely worse: A FEAR OF LIVING I
Now my fear of dying has returned. It does not bother me. I realize that it only exists because I now enjoy life so much. I don't brood over my fear of dying any more than I did when I was a child.
I'm far too busy living my life to the full. The odds are against my living to a hundred, but I'll try to.
I'll also try to enjoy every precious moment!
However, I do believe that if I could have seen what was happening inside my body, this would have helped me to quit. Now I'm not referring to the shock technique of showing a smoker the color of a smoker's lungs. It was obvious to me from my nicotine-stained teeth and fingers that my lungs weren't a pretty sight. Provided they kept functioning, they were less embarrassment than my teeth and fingers - at least nobody could see my lungs.
What I am referring to is the progressive gunging- up of our arteries and veins and the gradual starving of every muscle and organ of our bodies of oxygen and nutrients and replacing them with poisons and carbon monoxide (not just from car exhausts but also from smoking).
Like the majority of motorists, I don't like the thought of dirty oil or a dirty filter in my car engine. Could you imagine buying a brand-new Rolls Royce and never changing the oil or the oil filter? That's what we effectively do to our bodies when we become smokers.
Many doctors are now relating all sorts of diseases to smoking, including diabetes, cervical cancer and breast cancer. This is no surprise to me. The tobacco industry has labored the fact that the medical profession has never scientifically proved that smoking is the direct cause of lung cancer.
The statistical evidence is so overwhelming as not to need proof. No one ever scientifically proved to me exactly why, when I bang my thumb with a hammer, it hurts. I soon got the message.
I must emphasize that I am not a doctor, but just like the hammer and the thumb, it soon became obvious to me that my congestion, my permanent cough, my frequent asthma and bronchial attacks were directly related to my smoking. However, I truly believe that the greatest hazard that smoking causes to our health is the gradual and progressive deterioration of our immune system caused by this gunging-up process.
All plants and animals on this planet are subjected to a lifetime of attack from germs, viruses, parasites, etc. The most powerful defense we have against disease is our immune system. We all suffer infections and diseases throughout our lives. I believe we all suffer from some form of cancer during our lives. However, I do not believe that the human body was designed to be diseased, and if you are strong and healthy, your immune system will fight and defeat these attacks. How can your immune system work effectively when you are starving every muscle and organ of oxygen and nutrients and replacing them with carbon monoxide and poisons? It's not so much that smoking causes these other diseases, it works rather like AIDS, it gradually destroys your immune system.
Several of the adverse effects that smoking had on my health, some of which I had been suffering from for years, did not become apparent to me until many years after I had stopped smoking.
While I was busy despising those idiots and cranks who would rather lose their legs than quit smoking, it didn't even occur to me that I was already suffering from arteriosclerosis myself. My almost permanently grey complexion I attributed to my natural coloring or to lack of exercise. It never occurred to me that it was really due to the blocking up of my capillaries. I had varicose veins in my thirties, which have miraculously disappeared since I stopped smoking. I reached the stage about five years before I stopped when every night 1 would have this weird sensation in my legs. It wasn't a sharp pain or like pins and needles, just a sort of restless feeling. I would get Joyce to massage my legs every night. It didn't occur to me until at least a year after I had stopped that I no longer needed the massage.
About two years before I quit, I would occasionally get violent pains in my chest, which I feared must be lung cancer but now assume to have been angina. I haven't had a single attack since I quit.
When I was a child I would bleed profusely from cuts. This frightened me. No one explained to me that bleeding was in fact a natural and essential healing process and that the blood would clot when its healing purpose was completed. I suspected that I was a hemophiliac and feared that I might bleed to death. Later in life I would sustain quite deep cuts yet hardly bleed at all. This browny-red gunge would ooze from the cut.
The color worried me. I knew that blood was meant to be bright red and I assumed that I had some sort of blood disease. However I was pleased about the consistency, which meant that 1 no longer bled profusely. Not until after I had stopped smoking did I learn that smoking coagulated the blood and that the brownish color was due to lack of oxygen. I was ignorant of the effect at the time, but in hindsight, it was this effect that smoking was having on my health that most fills me with horror.
When I think of my poor heart trying to pump that gunge around restricted blood vessels, day in and day out, without missing a single beat, I find it a miracle that I didn't suffer a stroke or a heart attack. It made me realize, not how fragile our bodies are, but how strong and ingenious that incredible machine is!
I had liver spots on my hands in my forties. In case you don't know, liver spots are those brown or white spots that very old people have on their face and hands, I tried to ignore them, assuming that they were due to early senility caused by the hectic lifestyle that I had led. It was five years after I had quit that a smoker at the Raynes Park clinic remarked that when he had stopped previously, his liver spots disappeared. I had forgotten about mine, and to my amazement, they too had disappeared.
As long as I can remember, I had spots flashing in front of my eyes if ever I stood up too quickly, particularly if I were in a bath. I would feel dizzy, as if I were about to black out. I never related this to smoking. In fact I was convinced that it was quite normal and that everyone else had a similar reaction. Not until only five years ago, when an ex-smoker told me that he no longer had that sensation did it occur to me that I no longer had it either.
You might conclude that I am somewhat of a hypochondriac. I believe that I was when I was a smoker. One of the great evils about smoking is that it fools us into believing that nicotine gives us courage, when in fact it gradually and imperceptibly dissipates it. I was shocked when I heard my father say that he had no wish to live to be fifty. Little did I realize that twenty years la ter I would have exactly the same lack of joie de vivre. You might conclude that this chapter has been one of necessary, or unnecessary, doom and gloom. I promise you it is the complete opposite. I used to fear death when I was a child. I used to believe that smoking removed that fear. Perhaps it did. If so, it replaced it with something infinitely worse: A FEAR OF LIVING I
Now my fear of dying has returned. It does not bother me. I realize that it only exists because I now enjoy life so much. I don't brood over my fear of dying any more than I did when I was a child.
I'm far too busy living my life to the full. The odds are against my living to a hundred, but I'll try to.
I'll also try to enjoy every precious moment!
Effects of Smoking Weed
While 7 was still smoking, I'd never heard of arteriosclerosis or emphysema. I knew the permanent wheezing and coughing and the ever-increasing asthma and bronchitis attacks were a direct result of my smoking. But though they caused me discomfort there was no real pain and I could handle the discomfort.
I confess that the thought of contracting lung cancer terrified me, which is probably why I just blocked it from my mind. It's amazing how the fear of the horrendous health risks attached to smoking are overshadowed by the fear of stopping. It's not so much that the latter is a greater fear, but that if we quit today the fear is immediate, whereas the fear of contracting lung cancer is a fear of the future. Why look on the black side? Perhaps it won't happen. I'm bound to have quit by then anyway.
We tend to think of smoking as a tug-of-war. On one side fear: it's unhealthy, expensive, filthy and enslaving. On the other side the pluses: it's my pleasure, my friend, my crutch. It never seems to occur to us that this side is also fear. It's not so much that we enjoy them, but that we tend to be miserable without them.
Think of heroin addicts deprived of their heroin: the abject misery they go through. Now picture their utter joy when they are allowed to plunge a needle into their veins and end that terrible craving. Try to imagine how anyone could actually believe they get pleasure from sticking a hypodermic syringe into a vein.
Non-heroin addicts don't suffer that panic feeling. Heroin doesn't relieve the feeling, on the contrary, it causes it. Non-smokers don't feel miserable if they are not allowed to smoke after a meal.
It's only smokers that suffer that feeling. Nicotine doesn't relieve it, on the contrary it causes it.
The fear of contracting lung cancer didn't make me quit because I believed it was rather like walking through a minefield. If you got away with it - fine. If you were unlucky you stepped on a mine.
You knew the risks you were taking and if you were prepared to take the risk, what had it to do with anyone else?
So if a non-smoker ever tried to make me aware of those risks, I would use the typical evasive tactics that all addicts invariably adopt.
'You have to die of something'.
Of course you do, but is that a logical reason for deliberately shortening your life?
Quality of life is more important than longevity'.
Exactly, but you are surely not suggesting that, the quality of life of an alcoholic or a heroin addict is greater than that of someone that isn't addicted to alcohol or heroin? Do you really believe that the quality of a smoker's life is better than a non-smoker's?
Surely the smoker loses on both counts his life is both shorter and more miserable.
‘My lungs probably suffer more damage from car exhausts than from smoking;
Even if that were true, is that a logical reason for punishing your lungs further? Can you possibly conceive of anyone being stupid enough to actually put their mouth over an exhaust pipe and deliberately inhale those fumes into their lungs?
THAT'S WHAT SMOKERS EFFECTIVELY DO!
I confess that the thought of contracting lung cancer terrified me, which is probably why I just blocked it from my mind. It's amazing how the fear of the horrendous health risks attached to smoking are overshadowed by the fear of stopping. It's not so much that the latter is a greater fear, but that if we quit today the fear is immediate, whereas the fear of contracting lung cancer is a fear of the future. Why look on the black side? Perhaps it won't happen. I'm bound to have quit by then anyway.
We tend to think of smoking as a tug-of-war. On one side fear: it's unhealthy, expensive, filthy and enslaving. On the other side the pluses: it's my pleasure, my friend, my crutch. It never seems to occur to us that this side is also fear. It's not so much that we enjoy them, but that we tend to be miserable without them.
Think of heroin addicts deprived of their heroin: the abject misery they go through. Now picture their utter joy when they are allowed to plunge a needle into their veins and end that terrible craving. Try to imagine how anyone could actually believe they get pleasure from sticking a hypodermic syringe into a vein.
Non-heroin addicts don't suffer that panic feeling. Heroin doesn't relieve the feeling, on the contrary, it causes it. Non-smokers don't feel miserable if they are not allowed to smoke after a meal.
It's only smokers that suffer that feeling. Nicotine doesn't relieve it, on the contrary it causes it.
The fear of contracting lung cancer didn't make me quit because I believed it was rather like walking through a minefield. If you got away with it - fine. If you were unlucky you stepped on a mine.
You knew the risks you were taking and if you were prepared to take the risk, what had it to do with anyone else?
So if a non-smoker ever tried to make me aware of those risks, I would use the typical evasive tactics that all addicts invariably adopt.
'You have to die of something'.
Of course you do, but is that a logical reason for deliberately shortening your life?
Quality of life is more important than longevity'.
Exactly, but you are surely not suggesting that, the quality of life of an alcoholic or a heroin addict is greater than that of someone that isn't addicted to alcohol or heroin? Do you really believe that the quality of a smoker's life is better than a non-smoker's?
Surely the smoker loses on both counts his life is both shorter and more miserable.
‘My lungs probably suffer more damage from car exhausts than from smoking;
Even if that were true, is that a logical reason for punishing your lungs further? Can you possibly conceive of anyone being stupid enough to actually put their mouth over an exhaust pipe and deliberately inhale those fumes into their lungs?
THAT'S WHAT SMOKERS EFFECTIVELY DO!
воскресенье, 25 октября 2009 г.
Health
This is the area where the brainwashing is the greatest. Smokers think they are aware of the health risks. They are not.
Even in my case, when I was expecting my head to explode any moment and honestly believed I was prepared to accept the consequences, I was still kidding myself, If in those days 1 had taken a cigarette out of the packet and a red bleeper started to sound, followed by a warning voice saying, 'OK, Allen, this is the one! Fortunately you do get a warning, and this is it. Up to now you have got away with it, hut if you smoke another cigarette your head will explode,' do you think I would have lit that cigarette?
If you are in doubt about the answer, just try walking up to a main road with busy traffic, stand on the kerb with your eyes closed and try to imagine you have the choice of either stopping smoking or walking blindfolded across the road before taking your next cigarette.
There is no doubt what your choice would be. I had been doing what every smoker does all his smoking life: closing my mind and keeping my head in the sand, hoping that I would wake up one morning and just not want to smoke any more. Smokers cannot allow themselves to think of the health risks. If they do, even the illusion of enjoying the 'habit' goes.
This explains why the shock treatment used by the media on National No-Smoking Days is so ineffective. It is only non-smokers who can bring themselves to watch. It also explains why smokers, recalling Uncle Fred who smoked forty a day and lived until he was eighty, will ignore the thousands of people who are brought down in their prime because of this poisonous weed.
About six times a week I have the following conversation with smokers (usually the younger ones):
MEL Why do you want to stop? SMOKER: I can't afford it.
ME: Aren't you worried about the health risks.
SMOKER: No, I could step under a bus tomorrow.
ME: Would you deliberately step under a bus Smoker: of course not.
ME: Do you not bother to look left and right when you cross the road? Smoker: Of course I do.
Exactly. The smoker goes to a lot of trouble not to step under a bus, and the odds are hundreds of thousands to one against it happening. Yet the smoker risks the near certainty of being crippled by the weed and appears to be completely oblivious to the risks. Such is the power of the brainwashing.
I remember one famous British golfer who wouldn't go on the American circuit because he was afraid of flying. Yet he would chain-smoke round the golf course. Isn't it strange that, if we felt there was the slightest fault in an airplane, we wouldn't go up in it, even though the risks are hundreds of thousands to one against death, yet we take a one-in- four certainty with the cigarette and are apparently oblivious to it. And what does the smoker get out of it?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
Another common myth about smoking is the smoker's cough. Many of the younger people who come to see me are not worried about their health because they do not cough. The true facts are just the reverse. A cough is one of nature's fail-safe methods of dispelling foreign matter from the lungs.
The cough itself is not a disease; it is just a symptom. When smokers cough it is because their lungs are trying to dispel cancer-triggering tars and poisons. When they do not cough those tars and poisons remain in their lungs, and that is when they cause cancer. Smokers tend to avoid exercise and get into the habit of shallow breathing in order not to cough. I used to believe that my permanent smokers' cough would kill me. By expelling much of the filth from my lungs, it possibly saved my life.
Just think of it this way. If you had a nice car and allowed it to rust without doing anything about it, that would be pretty stupid, as it would soon be a heap of rust and would not carry you about.
However, that would not be the end of the world; it is only a question of money and you could always buy a new one. Your body is the vehicle that carries you through life. We al! say that our health is our most valued asset. How true that is, as sick millionaires will tell you. Most of us can look back at some illness or accident in our lives when we prayed to get better. (HOW SOON WE FORGET.) By being a smoker you are not only letting rust get in and doing nothing about it; you are systematically destroying the vehicle you need to go through life, and you only get one.
Wise up. You don't have to do it, and remember: it is doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR YOU.
Just for a moment take your head out of the sand and ask yourself, if you knew for certain that the next cigarette would he the one to trigger off cancer in your body, whether you would actually smoke it. Forget the disease (it is difficult to imagine it), but imagine you have to go to the Royal Marsden to suffer those awful tests - radium treatment, etc. Now you are not planning the rest of your life. You are planning your death. What is going to happen to your family and loved ones, your plans and dreams?
I often see the people that it happens to. They didn't, think it would happen to them either, and the worst thing about it isn't the disease itself but the knowledge they have brought it on themselves. All our lives as smokers we are saying, ‘I’ll stop tomorrow.' Try to imagine how those people feel who 'hit the button'. For them the brainwashing is ended. They then see the 'habit' as it really is and spend the remainder of their lives thinking, 'Why did I kid myself I needed to smoke? If only I had the chance to go back!'
Stop kidding yourself. You have the chance. It's a chain reaction. If you smoke the next cigarette, it will lead to the next one and the next. It's already happening to you.
At the beginning of the book I promised you no shock treatment. If you have already decided you are going to stop smoking, this isn't shock treatment for you. If you are still in doubt, skip the remainder of this chapter and come back to it when you have read the rest of the book.
Volumes of statistics have already been written about the damage that cigarettes can cause to the smoker's health. The trouble is that until the smoker decides to stop he doesn't want to know. Even the government health warning is a waste of time because the smoker puts blinkers on, and if he inadvertently reads it, the first thing he does is light up a cigarette.
Smokers tend to think of the health hazard as a hit-and- miss affair, like stepping on a mine. Get it into your head: it is already happening, Every time you puff on a cigarette you are breathing cancertriggering tars into your lungs, and cancer is by no means the worst of the killer diseases that cigarettes cause or contribute to. They are also a powerful contributory cause of heart disease, arteriosclerosis, emphysema, angina, thrombosis, chronic bronchitis and asthma.
Even in my case, when I was expecting my head to explode any moment and honestly believed I was prepared to accept the consequences, I was still kidding myself, If in those days 1 had taken a cigarette out of the packet and a red bleeper started to sound, followed by a warning voice saying, 'OK, Allen, this is the one! Fortunately you do get a warning, and this is it. Up to now you have got away with it, hut if you smoke another cigarette your head will explode,' do you think I would have lit that cigarette?
If you are in doubt about the answer, just try walking up to a main road with busy traffic, stand on the kerb with your eyes closed and try to imagine you have the choice of either stopping smoking or walking blindfolded across the road before taking your next cigarette.
There is no doubt what your choice would be. I had been doing what every smoker does all his smoking life: closing my mind and keeping my head in the sand, hoping that I would wake up one morning and just not want to smoke any more. Smokers cannot allow themselves to think of the health risks. If they do, even the illusion of enjoying the 'habit' goes.
This explains why the shock treatment used by the media on National No-Smoking Days is so ineffective. It is only non-smokers who can bring themselves to watch. It also explains why smokers, recalling Uncle Fred who smoked forty a day and lived until he was eighty, will ignore the thousands of people who are brought down in their prime because of this poisonous weed.
About six times a week I have the following conversation with smokers (usually the younger ones):
MEL Why do you want to stop? SMOKER: I can't afford it.
ME: Aren't you worried about the health risks.
SMOKER: No, I could step under a bus tomorrow.
ME: Would you deliberately step under a bus Smoker: of course not.
ME: Do you not bother to look left and right when you cross the road? Smoker: Of course I do.
Exactly. The smoker goes to a lot of trouble not to step under a bus, and the odds are hundreds of thousands to one against it happening. Yet the smoker risks the near certainty of being crippled by the weed and appears to be completely oblivious to the risks. Such is the power of the brainwashing.
I remember one famous British golfer who wouldn't go on the American circuit because he was afraid of flying. Yet he would chain-smoke round the golf course. Isn't it strange that, if we felt there was the slightest fault in an airplane, we wouldn't go up in it, even though the risks are hundreds of thousands to one against death, yet we take a one-in- four certainty with the cigarette and are apparently oblivious to it. And what does the smoker get out of it?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
Another common myth about smoking is the smoker's cough. Many of the younger people who come to see me are not worried about their health because they do not cough. The true facts are just the reverse. A cough is one of nature's fail-safe methods of dispelling foreign matter from the lungs.
The cough itself is not a disease; it is just a symptom. When smokers cough it is because their lungs are trying to dispel cancer-triggering tars and poisons. When they do not cough those tars and poisons remain in their lungs, and that is when they cause cancer. Smokers tend to avoid exercise and get into the habit of shallow breathing in order not to cough. I used to believe that my permanent smokers' cough would kill me. By expelling much of the filth from my lungs, it possibly saved my life.
Just think of it this way. If you had a nice car and allowed it to rust without doing anything about it, that would be pretty stupid, as it would soon be a heap of rust and would not carry you about.
However, that would not be the end of the world; it is only a question of money and you could always buy a new one. Your body is the vehicle that carries you through life. We al! say that our health is our most valued asset. How true that is, as sick millionaires will tell you. Most of us can look back at some illness or accident in our lives when we prayed to get better. (HOW SOON WE FORGET.) By being a smoker you are not only letting rust get in and doing nothing about it; you are systematically destroying the vehicle you need to go through life, and you only get one.
Wise up. You don't have to do it, and remember: it is doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR YOU.
Just for a moment take your head out of the sand and ask yourself, if you knew for certain that the next cigarette would he the one to trigger off cancer in your body, whether you would actually smoke it. Forget the disease (it is difficult to imagine it), but imagine you have to go to the Royal Marsden to suffer those awful tests - radium treatment, etc. Now you are not planning the rest of your life. You are planning your death. What is going to happen to your family and loved ones, your plans and dreams?
I often see the people that it happens to. They didn't, think it would happen to them either, and the worst thing about it isn't the disease itself but the knowledge they have brought it on themselves. All our lives as smokers we are saying, ‘I’ll stop tomorrow.' Try to imagine how those people feel who 'hit the button'. For them the brainwashing is ended. They then see the 'habit' as it really is and spend the remainder of their lives thinking, 'Why did I kid myself I needed to smoke? If only I had the chance to go back!'
Stop kidding yourself. You have the chance. It's a chain reaction. If you smoke the next cigarette, it will lead to the next one and the next. It's already happening to you.
At the beginning of the book I promised you no shock treatment. If you have already decided you are going to stop smoking, this isn't shock treatment for you. If you are still in doubt, skip the remainder of this chapter and come back to it when you have read the rest of the book.
Volumes of statistics have already been written about the damage that cigarettes can cause to the smoker's health. The trouble is that until the smoker decides to stop he doesn't want to know. Even the government health warning is a waste of time because the smoker puts blinkers on, and if he inadvertently reads it, the first thing he does is light up a cigarette.
Smokers tend to think of the health hazard as a hit-and- miss affair, like stepping on a mine. Get it into your head: it is already happening, Every time you puff on a cigarette you are breathing cancertriggering tars into your lungs, and cancer is by no means the worst of the killer diseases that cigarettes cause or contribute to. They are also a powerful contributory cause of heart disease, arteriosclerosis, emphysema, angina, thrombosis, chronic bronchitis and asthma.
Confirmed Smoker
I cannot repeat too often that it is brainwashing that makes it difficult to stop smoking, and the more brainwashing we can dispel before we start, the easier you will find it to achieve your goal.
Occasionally I get into arguments with people whom I call confirmed smokers. By my definition a confirmed smoker is somebody who can afford it, doesn't believe it injures his health and isn't worried about the social stigma. (There are not many about nowadays.)
If he is a young man, I say to him,' I cannot believe you are not worried about the money you are spending.'
Usually his eyes light up. If I had attacked him on health grounds or on the social stigma, he would feel at a disadvantage, but on money -- ' Oh, I can afford it. It is only x per week and I think it is worth it. It is my only vice or pleasure,' etc.
If he is a twenty-per-day smoker I say to him, I still cannot believe you are not worried about the money. You are going to spend over 40,000 in your lifetime. What are you doing with that money?
You are not even setting light to it or throwing it away. You are actually using that money to ruin your physical health, to destroy your nerves and confidence, to suffer a lifetime of slavery, a lifetime of bad breath and stained teeth. Surely that must worry you?'
It is apparent at this point, particularly with young smokers, that they have never considered it a lifetime expense. For most smokers the price of a packet is bad enough. Occasionally we work out what we spend in a week, and that is alarming. Very occasionally (and only when we think about stopping) we estimate what we spend in a year and that is frightening, but over a lifetime - it is unthinkable.
However, because it is an argument the confirmed smoker will say, 'I can afford it. It is only so much a week.' He does an 'encyclopedia salesman' on himself, I then say, 'I will make you an offer you cannot refuse. You pay me ?1,000 now, and I will provide you with free cigarettes for the rest of your life'.
If I were offering to take over a 40,000 mortgage for ?1,000, the smoker would have my signature, on a piece of paper before I could move, and yet not one confirmed smoker (and please bear in mind 1 am not now talking to someone like yourself who plans to stop, I am talking to someone who has no intention of stopping) has ever taken me up on that offer. Why not?
Often at this point in my consultation, a smoker will say, 'Look, I am not really worried about the money aspect,' If you are thinking along these lines, ask yourself why you are not worried. Why in other aspects of life you will go to a great deal of trouble to save a few pounds here and there and yet spend thousands of pounds poisoning yourself and hang the expense?
The answer to these questions is this. Every other decision that you make in your life will be the result of an analytical process of weighing up the pros and cons and arriving at a rational answer. It may be the wrong answer, but at least it will be the result of rational deduction. Whenever any smoker weighs up the pros and cons of smoking, the answer is a dozen times over: 'STOP SMOKING! YOU ARE A MUG!' Therefore all smokers are smoking not because they want to or because they decided to but because they think they cannot stop. They have to brainwash themselves. They have to keep their heads in the sand.
The strange thing is smokers will arrange pacts among themselves, such as 'First one to give in pays the other 50', yet the thousands of pounds that they would save by stopping don't seem to affect them. This is because they are still thinking with the brainwashed mind of the smoker.
Just take the sand out of your eyes for a moment. Smoking is a chain reaction and a chain for life.
If you do not break that chain, you will remain a smoker for the rest of your life. Now estimate how much you think you will spend on smoking for the rest of your life. The amount will obviously vary with each individual, but for the purpose of this exercise let us assume it is 10,000.
You will shortly be making the decision to smoke your final cigarette (not yet, please - remember the initial instructions). All you have to do to remain a non-smoker is not to fall for the trap again.
That is, do not smoke that first cigarette. If you do, that one cigarette will cost you 10,000.
If you think this is a trick way of looking at it, you are still kidding yourself. Just work out how much money you would have saved if you hadn't smoked your first cigarette.
If you see the argument as factual, ask yourself how you would feel if there were a cheque from Littlewood's Pools for $10,000 on your carpet tomorrow. You'd be dancing with delight! So start dancing! You are about to start receiving that bonus, and that's just one of the several marvelous gains you are about to receive.
During the withdrawal period you may be tempted to have just one final cigarette. It will help you to resist the temptation if you remind yourself it will cost you $10,000 (or whatever your estimate is)!
I've been making that offer on television and radio programmes for years. I still find it incredible that not one confirmed smoker has ever taken my offer up. There are members of my golf club whom I taunt every time I hear them complain about an increase in tobacco prices. In fact, ['m frightened that if I goad them too much, one of them will take me up on it. I'd lose a fortune if he did.
If you are in the company of happy, cheerful smokers who tell you how much they enjoy it, just tell them that you know an idiot who, if they pay him a years smoking money in advance, will provide them with free cigarettes for the rest of their lives. Perhaps you can find me someone who will take up the offer?
Occasionally I get into arguments with people whom I call confirmed smokers. By my definition a confirmed smoker is somebody who can afford it, doesn't believe it injures his health and isn't worried about the social stigma. (There are not many about nowadays.)
If he is a young man, I say to him,' I cannot believe you are not worried about the money you are spending.'
Usually his eyes light up. If I had attacked him on health grounds or on the social stigma, he would feel at a disadvantage, but on money -- ' Oh, I can afford it. It is only x per week and I think it is worth it. It is my only vice or pleasure,' etc.
If he is a twenty-per-day smoker I say to him, I still cannot believe you are not worried about the money. You are going to spend over 40,000 in your lifetime. What are you doing with that money?
You are not even setting light to it or throwing it away. You are actually using that money to ruin your physical health, to destroy your nerves and confidence, to suffer a lifetime of slavery, a lifetime of bad breath and stained teeth. Surely that must worry you?'
It is apparent at this point, particularly with young smokers, that they have never considered it a lifetime expense. For most smokers the price of a packet is bad enough. Occasionally we work out what we spend in a week, and that is alarming. Very occasionally (and only when we think about stopping) we estimate what we spend in a year and that is frightening, but over a lifetime - it is unthinkable.
However, because it is an argument the confirmed smoker will say, 'I can afford it. It is only so much a week.' He does an 'encyclopedia salesman' on himself, I then say, 'I will make you an offer you cannot refuse. You pay me ?1,000 now, and I will provide you with free cigarettes for the rest of your life'.
If I were offering to take over a 40,000 mortgage for ?1,000, the smoker would have my signature, on a piece of paper before I could move, and yet not one confirmed smoker (and please bear in mind 1 am not now talking to someone like yourself who plans to stop, I am talking to someone who has no intention of stopping) has ever taken me up on that offer. Why not?
Often at this point in my consultation, a smoker will say, 'Look, I am not really worried about the money aspect,' If you are thinking along these lines, ask yourself why you are not worried. Why in other aspects of life you will go to a great deal of trouble to save a few pounds here and there and yet spend thousands of pounds poisoning yourself and hang the expense?
The answer to these questions is this. Every other decision that you make in your life will be the result of an analytical process of weighing up the pros and cons and arriving at a rational answer. It may be the wrong answer, but at least it will be the result of rational deduction. Whenever any smoker weighs up the pros and cons of smoking, the answer is a dozen times over: 'STOP SMOKING! YOU ARE A MUG!' Therefore all smokers are smoking not because they want to or because they decided to but because they think they cannot stop. They have to brainwash themselves. They have to keep their heads in the sand.
The strange thing is smokers will arrange pacts among themselves, such as 'First one to give in pays the other 50', yet the thousands of pounds that they would save by stopping don't seem to affect them. This is because they are still thinking with the brainwashed mind of the smoker.
Just take the sand out of your eyes for a moment. Smoking is a chain reaction and a chain for life.
If you do not break that chain, you will remain a smoker for the rest of your life. Now estimate how much you think you will spend on smoking for the rest of your life. The amount will obviously vary with each individual, but for the purpose of this exercise let us assume it is 10,000.
You will shortly be making the decision to smoke your final cigarette (not yet, please - remember the initial instructions). All you have to do to remain a non-smoker is not to fall for the trap again.
That is, do not smoke that first cigarette. If you do, that one cigarette will cost you 10,000.
If you think this is a trick way of looking at it, you are still kidding yourself. Just work out how much money you would have saved if you hadn't smoked your first cigarette.
If you see the argument as factual, ask yourself how you would feel if there were a cheque from Littlewood's Pools for $10,000 on your carpet tomorrow. You'd be dancing with delight! So start dancing! You are about to start receiving that bonus, and that's just one of the several marvelous gains you are about to receive.
During the withdrawal period you may be tempted to have just one final cigarette. It will help you to resist the temptation if you remind yourself it will cost you $10,000 (or whatever your estimate is)!
I've been making that offer on television and radio programmes for years. I still find it incredible that not one confirmed smoker has ever taken my offer up. There are members of my golf club whom I taunt every time I hear them complain about an increase in tobacco prices. In fact, ['m frightened that if I goad them too much, one of them will take me up on it. I'd lose a fortune if he did.
If you are in the company of happy, cheerful smokers who tell you how much they enjoy it, just tell them that you know an idiot who, if they pay him a years smoking money in advance, will provide them with free cigarettes for the rest of their lives. Perhaps you can find me someone who will take up the offer?
Self-imposed Slavery
Usually when smokers try to stop the main reasons are health, money, and social stigma. Part of the brainwashing of this awful drug is the sheer slavery.
Man fought hard in the last century to abolish slavery, and yet the smoker spends his life suffering self-imposed slavery. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that, when he is allowed to smoke, he wishes that he were a non-smoker. With most of the cigarettes we smoke in our lives, not only do we not enjoy them but we aren't even aware that we are smoking them. It is only after a period of abstinence that we actually suffer the delusion of enjoying a cigarette {e.g. the first in the morning, the one after a meal, etc.).
The only time that the cigarette becomes precious is when, we are trying to cut down or abstain, or when society tries to force us to (e.g. when attending churches, hospitals, supermarkets, theatres and so on).
The confirmed smoker should bear in mind that this trend will get worse and worse. Today it is Tube trains. Tomorrow it will be all public places.
Gone are the days when the smoker could enter a friend's or stranger's house and say, 'Do you mind if I smoke?' Nowadays the poor smoker, on entering a strange house, will search desperately for an ashtray and hope to find dogends in it. If there is no ashtray, he will generally try to last out, and if he cannot, he will ask for permission to smoke and is likely to be told: 'Smoke if you have to,' or 'Well, we would rather you didn't. The smell seems to linger on.'
The poor smoker, who was already feeling wretched, wants the ground to open up and swallow him.
I remember during my smoking days, every time I went to church, it was an ordeal. Even during my own daughter's wedding, when I should have been standing there a proud father, what was I doing? I was thinking, 'Let's get on with it, so that we can get outside and have a drag.'
It will help you to observe smokers on these occasions. They huddle together. There is never just one packet. There are twenty packets being thrust about, and the conversation is always the same.
'Do you smoke?'
'Yes, but have one of mine.'
'I will have one of yours later.'
They light up and take a deep drag, thinking, 'Aren't we lucky? We have got our little reward. The poor non-smoker hasn't got a reward.'
The 'poor' non-smoker doesn't need a reward. We were not designed to go through life systematically poisoning our own bodies. The pathetic thing is that even when smoking a cigarette, the smoker doesn't achieve the feeling of peace, confidence and tranquility that the non-smoker has experienced for the whole of his non-smoking life. The non-smoker isn't sitting in the church feeling agitated and wishing his life away. He can enjoy the whole of his life.
I can also remember playing indoor bowls in the winter and pretending to have a weak bladder in order to nip off for a puff. No, this wasn't a fourteen-year-old schoolboy but a forty-year-old chartered accountant. How pathetic. And even when I was back playing the game 1 wasn't enjoying it. I was looking forward to the finish so that I could smoke again, yet this was supposed to be my way of relaxing and enjoying my favorite hobby.
To me one of the tremendous joys of being a non-smoker is to be freed from that slavery, to be able to enjoy the whole of my life and not spend half of it craving for a cigarette and then, when I light up, wishing I didn't have to do it.
Smokers should bear in mind that when they are in the houses of non-smokers or even in the company of non-smokers, it is not the self-righteous non-smoker who is depriving them but the 'little monster'.
Man fought hard in the last century to abolish slavery, and yet the smoker spends his life suffering self-imposed slavery. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that, when he is allowed to smoke, he wishes that he were a non-smoker. With most of the cigarettes we smoke in our lives, not only do we not enjoy them but we aren't even aware that we are smoking them. It is only after a period of abstinence that we actually suffer the delusion of enjoying a cigarette {e.g. the first in the morning, the one after a meal, etc.).
The only time that the cigarette becomes precious is when, we are trying to cut down or abstain, or when society tries to force us to (e.g. when attending churches, hospitals, supermarkets, theatres and so on).
The confirmed smoker should bear in mind that this trend will get worse and worse. Today it is Tube trains. Tomorrow it will be all public places.
Gone are the days when the smoker could enter a friend's or stranger's house and say, 'Do you mind if I smoke?' Nowadays the poor smoker, on entering a strange house, will search desperately for an ashtray and hope to find dogends in it. If there is no ashtray, he will generally try to last out, and if he cannot, he will ask for permission to smoke and is likely to be told: 'Smoke if you have to,' or 'Well, we would rather you didn't. The smell seems to linger on.'
The poor smoker, who was already feeling wretched, wants the ground to open up and swallow him.
I remember during my smoking days, every time I went to church, it was an ordeal. Even during my own daughter's wedding, when I should have been standing there a proud father, what was I doing? I was thinking, 'Let's get on with it, so that we can get outside and have a drag.'
It will help you to observe smokers on these occasions. They huddle together. There is never just one packet. There are twenty packets being thrust about, and the conversation is always the same.
'Do you smoke?'
'Yes, but have one of mine.'
'I will have one of yours later.'
They light up and take a deep drag, thinking, 'Aren't we lucky? We have got our little reward. The poor non-smoker hasn't got a reward.'
The 'poor' non-smoker doesn't need a reward. We were not designed to go through life systematically poisoning our own bodies. The pathetic thing is that even when smoking a cigarette, the smoker doesn't achieve the feeling of peace, confidence and tranquility that the non-smoker has experienced for the whole of his non-smoking life. The non-smoker isn't sitting in the church feeling agitated and wishing his life away. He can enjoy the whole of his life.
I can also remember playing indoor bowls in the winter and pretending to have a weak bladder in order to nip off for a puff. No, this wasn't a fourteen-year-old schoolboy but a forty-year-old chartered accountant. How pathetic. And even when I was back playing the game 1 wasn't enjoying it. I was looking forward to the finish so that I could smoke again, yet this was supposed to be my way of relaxing and enjoying my favorite hobby.
To me one of the tremendous joys of being a non-smoker is to be freed from that slavery, to be able to enjoy the whole of my life and not spend half of it craving for a cigarette and then, when I light up, wishing I didn't have to do it.
Smokers should bear in mind that when they are in the houses of non-smokers or even in the company of non-smokers, it is not the self-righteous non-smoker who is depriving them but the 'little monster'.
среда, 14 октября 2009 г.
I'm not going to die
This was the magic that happened to me when I extinguished that final cigarette. Let me make one point quite clear in the analogy of the sore and the ointment. The sore isn't lung cancer, or arterial sclerosis, or emphysema, or angina, or chronic asthma, or bronchitis, or coronary heart disease. They are all in addition to the sore. It isn't the thousands of pounds that we burn, or the lifetime of bad breath and stained teeth, the lethargy, the wheezing and coughing, the years we spend choking ourselves and wishing we didn't, the times when we are being punished because we are not allowed to smoke. It isn't the lifetime of being despised by other people, or, worst of all, despising yourself. These are all in addition to the sore. The sore is what makes us close our minds to all these things. It's that panic feeling of "I want a cigarette". Non-smokers don't suffer from that feeling. The worst thing we ever suffer from is fear, and the greatest gain you will receive is to be rid of that fear.
It was as if a great mist had suddenly lifted from my mind. I could see so clearly that that panic feeling of wanting a cigarette wasn't some sort of weakness in me, or some magic quality in the cigarette. It was caused by the first cigarette; and each subsequent one, far from relieving the feeling, was causing it. At the same time I could see that all these other "happy" smokers were going through the same nightmare that I was. Not as bad as mine, but all putting up phoney arguments to try to justify their stupidity.
It was as if a great mist had suddenly lifted from my mind. I could see so clearly that that panic feeling of wanting a cigarette wasn't some sort of weakness in me, or some magic quality in the cigarette. It was caused by the first cigarette; and each subsequent one, far from relieving the feeling, was causing it. At the same time I could see that all these other "happy" smokers were going through the same nightmare that I was. Not as bad as mine, but all putting up phoney arguments to try to justify their stupidity.
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