Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [20]
Smokers talk about cigarettes relaxing them and giving satisfaction. But how can you even notice being relaxed unless you were tense in the first place? How can we suddenly feel satisfied unless you were previously dissatisfied? Why don’t non-smokers suffer from this state of tension and dissatisfaction? Why is it that after a meal, when non-smokers are completely relaxed and happy, smokers are tense and edgy—until they have fed 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 there is nothing to ‘give up’.
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 at set times during the day, we don’t get 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, slightly insecure feeling which we know as: ‘I need to eat.’ And the process of satisfying our hunger can be very enjoyable indeed.
Smoking appears on the surface to be almost identical. The empty, insecure feeling we know as wanting or ‘needing’ a cigarette is almost identical to a hunger for food. Like hunger, there is no physical pain and the sensation is so slight that we are not even aware of it for much of the day. It’s only when we want to smoke but aren’t allowed to do so—the equivalent of the meal being delayed—that we become aware of any discomfort. When we do light up the discomfort ends and we once again feel normal.
Incidentally, this is also why some smokers believe that the cigarette works as an appetite suppressant. Smoking doesn’t suppress the appetite; it’s just that withdrawal feels like hunger (I discuss this in more detail in Chapter 30 ‘Will I Put On Weight?’).
It is this superficial similarity between smoking and eating which fools smokers into believing they sometimes get a genuine pleasure or crutch when they smoke. Sadly, the truth is that all they have done is to remove the slight feeling of discomfort caused by the previous cigarette. Some smokers find it difficult to accept 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 remove the feeling of discomfort.’ But the point is that the non-smoker didn’t feel any discomfort to begin with.
Although eating and smoking appear to be very similar, in fact they are exact opposites:
1. You eat to survive and to be healthy, whereas tobacco is the biggest cause of preventable death and disease in the history of Western civilization.
2. Food genuinely tastes good, and eating can be a genuinely pleasant experience, whereas smoking involves ingesting extremely toxic fumes and is known to cause depression, anxiety and panic disorders.
3. Eating doesn’t create hunger, it genuinely relieves it. Cigarettes don’t satisfy the ‘hunger’ to smoke, they create and perpetuate it.
On the subject of hunger, this is an opportune moment to dispel another common myth about smoking, that smoking is a habit, a point I have touched on previously. 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 different 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 slightly empty, insecure hunger-like feeling that was created by the nicotine contained in the previous cigarette. It is true that different smokers are in the habit of trying to relieve their withdrawal