Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [15]
‘It is oral satisfaction.’ So, why light it?
‘It is the feeling of the smoke going into my lungs.’ An awful feeling—replacing oxygen with poison—it is called suffocation.
Many believe that smoking relieves boredom but if that were true, then smokers would never be bored. Are smokers saying that there is a magic ingredient in tobacco that is a genuine medical cure for boredom? And if we smoke to relieve boredom, then why do we also smoke when we are not bored? What the smoker is really saying here is that the cigarette creates a distraction that allows us, for a moment or two, to forget we are bored.
But the same smoker will argue that the cigarette helps them to concentrate. There is a contradiction here. When we need to concentrate, we remove distractions, we don’t create them. So is the cigarette a distraction or does it remove distractions? It can’t do both. How is it possible that a drug which provides a distraction at 9 a.m. can miraculously remove distractions at 9:30 a.m.? It can’t.
And there is another contradiction too. Smokers claim that the cigarette relaxes them and helps them to handle stressful situations. But they also claim that it helps them get going in the morning, and that it gives them a boost. How can a drug that relaxes you or relieves stress also stimulate you? This contradiction illustrates the truth about smoking. The cigarette just doesn’t do any of the things we tell ourselves it does.
If cigarettes relaxed us and helped to relieve stress then smokers would be more relaxed and less stressed than non-smokers. If cigarettes helped us to get going and helped us concentrate, then smokers would be more energetic and would enjoy enhanced brain function. All athletes would be smokers, as would all university professors and Nobel Prize winners. It would be mandatory for people in stressful professions, like Air Traffic Controllers and Surgeons, to smoke. Do you smell what I smell?
For thirty-three years my excuse was that it relaxed me, and gave me confidence and courage. I also knew it was killing me and costing me a fortune. Why didn’t I go to my doctor and ask him for something to relax me and give me courage and confidence? I didn’t in case he did. It wasn’t my reason; it was my excuse.
Some say they do it for social reasons, because their friends do it. That may hold water when we are twelve or thirteen, just starting out, but it doesn’t make sense when we are fully-grown, independent adults.
Most smokers who think about it eventually come to the conclusion that it is just a habit. This is not really an explanation but, having discounted all the rational explanations it appears to be the only excuse that makes sense. Unfortunately, when we scratch the surface, this explanation is equally illogical. We make and break habits every day of our lives, and some of them are very enjoyable. We have been brainwashed into believing that smoking is a habit, and that habits are hard to break. Are habits hard to break? In the UK we drive on the left side of the road. Yet when we travel to the US I need to drive on the right. So I break my UK driving ‘habit’ and immediately acquire a new ‘habit’ with hardly any aggravation whatsoever. The change causes me no mental anguish or physical torture. I don’t miss driving on the left or develop a craving to do so. It is clearly a fallacy that habits are hard to break. We do it every day with no bother whatsoever.
So why do we find it difficult to break a ‘habit’ that tastes awful, that kills us, costs us a fortune, that is filthy and disgusting and that we would love to break anyway, when all we need to do is to stop doing it? The answer is that smoking is not a habit: IT IS NICOTINE ADDICTION! Perhaps you feel this explanation explains why it is difficult to ‘give up’? It certainly explains why so many smokers believe that it has to be difficult. This misconception arises because most smokers do not understand drug addiction and it persists because they have been brainwashed into believing that they get some genuine pleasure