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By Root 330 0

$250,000 in their lifetime to finance their addiction. It wouldn’t be so bad if we just threw that money out with the garbage, but we use it to systematically suffocate ourselves, congest our lungs with cancer-triggering tars and to poison every cell of our bodies with the hundreds of toxic chemicals contained in tobacco smoke. Every day we increasingly starve every muscle and organ of oxygen, so that we become more and more lethargic. We sentence ourselves to a lifetime of bad breath, stained teeth, filthy ashtrays, vile-smelling hair, clothes and furniture and standing alone outside, banished to the sidewalks even in sub-zero temperatures. It is a lifetime of slavery. We spend the majority of our lives in situations where we can’t smoke, feeling deprived. We are forever seeking out opportunities to smoke, planning our next cigarette, building our day around the next occasion when we’ll be able to light up. And when we are allowed to smoke, we wish we didn’t have to. Looking at the cigarette and thinking, ‘Why am I doing this?’

What sort of hobby or pastime or pleasure or habit is it that when you are doing it you wish you weren’t, and that only seems desirable when you are not doing it? It’s a lifetime of being treated by the bulk of society (sometimes our own family included) like some sort of leper and, worst of all, living with a profound sense of self-disgust. The smoker despises himself and his inability to control this one aspect of his life. Every time the government needs to balance their books and slaps another couple of dollars on a carton, every Great American Smokeout, every time we glance at a pack and see the health warning, every time we see an anti-smoking ad on TV, every time we feel short of breath or a pain in the chest, every time we are the only smoker in a group full of non-smokers. And what do we get out of it? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Pleasure? Enjoyment? Relaxation? A prop? A boost? If any of these things were true, smokers would be happier and more relaxed than non-smokers.

As I have said, the real challenge is not to explain why smokers perceive stopping as difficult, but to explain why anybody does it at all.

You are probably saying, ‘That’s all very well. I know this, but once you are hooked on cigarettes it is very difficult to stop smoking.’ But why is it so difficult, and why do we ‘have to’ keep doing it? Smokers search for the answers to these questions all of their lives.

Some say it is because of the terrible physical withdrawal symptoms. In fact, the actual withdrawal symptoms from nicotine are so mild (see Chapter 6) that most smokers go through their whole smoking lives without ever realizing they are drug addicts.

Some say that it’s the taste and smell of cigarettes that keep us smoking. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are filthy, disgusting objects. Ask any smoker who suffers from the illusion that he enjoys the taste if, when he can’t get his brand, he stops smoking? Of course not. Smokers would rather smoke old rope than not smoke at all. I enjoy the taste of lobster but I never got to the stage where I had to have twenty lobsters with me everywhere I went. The truth is that we smoke despite the smell and taste of cigarettes, not because of it.

Some search for deep psychological reasons to rationalize why they smoke, for example the Freudian analysis of the cigarette as a substitute for a mother’s breast. This sounds good, but doesn’t make much sense when you analyze it. Most kids start smoking to demonstrate that they are adults and no longer tied to the Mother’s apron strings, which is the exact opposite of wanting a substitute for the breast. If it were true that cigarettes provided a feeling of safety and security then everyone would smoke. After all, we all have the same human needs to feel safe, secure and loved.

Some argue the reverse, that the cigarette is a badge of adulthood and independence. Again, the opposite is closer to the truth. How do we demonstrate our independence by becoming dependent on a drug that enslaves us?

Some say, ‘It is something