Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [21]
Society continues to refer to smoking as a ‘habit’ and so in this book, for convenience, I sometimes also refer to the ‘habit’. However, be constantly aware that smoking is not habit, IT IS DRUG ADDICTION!
When we start to smoke we force our body to learn to cope with the poisons along with the disgusting smell and taste. Before we know it, we are not only buying them regularly but we have to have them. If we don’t, we get anxious and panic sets in. Over time we tend to need to smoke more and more.
This is because, as with all drugs, the body creates some immunity to the effects of nicotine. We therefore need to smoke more to obtain the same effect. After quite a short period the cigarette ceases to completely relieve the withdrawal pangs created by the previous one, so that when you light a cigarette even though you do feel better, you are in fact still slightly more stressed and slightly less relaxed than you would be as a non-smoker, even when you are actually smoking the cigarette. The situation worsens because, once the cigarette is extinguished, the nicotine rapidly leaves the body, creating more withdrawal symptoms. This is why, in stressful situations, so many smokers tend to chain smoke.
As I said, the ‘habit’ doesn’t exist. The real reason every smoker keeps smoking is to feed that ‘little monster’ he has created. The monster tends to need feeding in certain situations and we come to associate these occasions (or a combination of them) with smoking. The ‘Big Four’ smoking occasions are:
BOREDOM & CONCENTRATION—two complete opposites!
STRESS & RELAXATION—two complete opposites!
How can a drug that relieved boredom by providing a distraction suddenly help you concentrate when you need to remove distractions? It’s the same drug. It can’t do both things because they are opposites.
The truth is that smoking doesn’t do any of the things that, as smokers, we must tell ourselves it does. If smoking REALLY relieved boredom, aided concentration, relaxed us and got us ready for action, then smokers would be more engaged, energetic, better able to concentrate and less stressed than non-smokers. Even smokers will admit that this is not the case, and the world of science agrees—research shows smokers to have lower energy levels, more problems concentrating and much higher levels of stress than non-smokers.
Apart from being a drug (albeit one with no noticeable ‘high’), nicotine is also a powerful poison and tiny amounts are used in many commercial insecticides. If the nicotine content of just one cigarette were injected directly into your bloodstream, it would kill you. In fact, tobacco contains hundreds of poisons, including benzene, polonium and cyanide. This should not come as a surprise as the tobacco plant is from the same family as the Deadly Nightshade. In addition, many cigarettes also contain toxic additives such as ammonia and formaldehyde.
In case you have visions of switching to a pipe or cigars, I should make it quite clear that the content of this book applies to all tobacco. Indeed nicotine is so toxic that it is hard to see any reason to consume any product containing it, including nicotine gum, patches, tabs, e-cigarettes, nasal sprays, lozenges, inhalators, chewing tobacco, and Snus (orally taken tobacco common in Scandinavia and just launched in the US, where it seems to be geared towards attracting young people).
No species on earth, from the lowest amoeba or worm upwards, can survive without knowing the difference between food and poison.
The human body is by far the most sophisticated machine on the planet. Over millions of years, our minds and bodies have developed techniques for distinguishing between food and poison and fail-safe methods for rejecting the latter.
All human beings are averse to the smell and taste of tobacco until they become hooked. We don’t even need the health warnings to know that tobacco is poisonous. We need only to listen to our bodies. If you blow smoke into the face of any