Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [19]
Before we start smoking, our bodies and our lives are complete. We then force nicotine into our body by smoking our first cigarette. When we put that first cigarette out, the nicotine begins to leaves the body and is replaced by that barely noticeable feeling of a slight emptiness, a bit like hunger. This is nicotine withdrawal—my metaphorical ‘little monster’. If we smoke again, the nicotine is replaced, the slight emptiness disappears and is replaced by a feeling of relaxation, satisfaction and confidence (i.e. a feeling of normality). But the nicotine from the second cigarette also leaves the body, so the empty feeling returns. So we need to light another cigarette to remove that feeling and once again feel normal. And so the smoker’s cycle of withdrawal and replenishment begins. It’s a lifelong chain of attempts to relieve the slight aggravation caused by withdrawal and to once again feel normal.
The whole business of smoking is like forcing yourself to wear tight shoes just to get the pleasure of taking them off.
This process is very visible and obvious to non-smokers. It’s clear to them that their smoking friends and colleagues aren’t happier or less stressed or more relaxed than non-smokers when they smoke. Rather, it’s that smokers are less happy, more stressed and less relaxed when they can’t smoke.
Because non-smokers see smoking this way, they correctly perceive no advantages to smoking. As a consequence, they have no desire to smoke. With no desire to do something, it takes no willpower not to do it.
There are three main reasons why smokers find it difficult to perceive cigarettes in this way.
1. From birth we have been exposed to massive brainwashing telling us that smokers receive immense pleasure from smoking or that it provides a crutch to help us cope with stress. We just can’t believe that smokers would spend huge sums of money and take horrendous risks with their health to do something that doesn’t give them anything.
2. Because physical withdrawal from nicotine is so mild, just a slightly empty, insecure feeling, we don’t think of cigarettes in the same way as we think of other drugs. Because smokers are in withdrawal whenever they are not smoking, they come to perceive the state of withdrawal as ‘normal’, inseparable in our minds from hunger or mild stress.
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. When you light up, it disappears, and we give the cigarette the credit for this. What we forget is that withdrawing from the previous cigarette created that empty feeling in the first place! This is the illusion of pleasure we associate with smoking. We only acknowledge the boost the cigarette gives us. What we don’t acknowledge is that the previous cigarette created the need for the boost back to normal in the first place. Of course, non-smokers don’t need this illusory boost because they didn’t get the empty feeling caused by withdrawing from the previous cigarette to begin with.
It is our inability to understand this reverse process that can make it difficult to kick this or any other drug. Fortunately, once you understand the process, it’s easy. Picture the panic of a heroin addict who has not been able to shoot up for several hours or days. Now picture the relief when that addict can finally plunge a hypodermic needle into his vein. If you witnessed such a scene, would you conclude that shooting up with heroin relieves panic, or would you think that heroin withdrawal creates it? Non-heroin addicts don’t suffer that panic feeling when they can’t shoot up. The heroin doesn’t relieve the symptoms of panic; withdrawing from the previous dose caused them.
Equally, non-smokers don’t get the empty feeling of needing