Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [23]
Many smokers will leave the bedroom before they light that first cigarette; many will have breakfast first. Increasingly, people don’t smoke in their homes and won’t have that first cigarette until they are in the car on their way to work; some won’t even smoke in the car and will have their first cigarette after they arrive at work. These smokers have gone eight or maybe ten hours without a cigarette—going through withdrawal all the while, but it doesn’t seem to bother them.
Nowadays many smokers will automatically refrain from smoking in the homes, or even in the presence of non-smokers. Even when I was a chain smoker I was able to go for quite long periods without smoking and it didn’t bother me in the slightest.
If physical withdrawal was as bad as the brainwashing would have us believe, how is it that we can go for such long periods of time without even noticing it?
Smokers have the illusion that they only suffer from withdrawal when they try to quit. In fact, smokers suffer withdrawal their entire smoking lives. It’s what makes them reach for their next cigarette. It’s just that this withdrawal is so slight that we don’t realize we’re experiencing it. Over time, we begin to perceive the smoker’s more-or-less permanent state of mild withdrawal as ‘normal’.
While it is very, very mild, physical withdrawal from nicotine does exist—as I said, we experience it every time we put out a cigarette—but it is not the main problem. It just acts as a catalyst to confuse us over the real problem: the brainwashing.
It may be of some consolation to older and heavier smokers to know that it is just as easy for them to stop as it is for so-called ‘casual’ smokers. In some respects, it’s even easier because heavier smokers tend not to have any illusions that they enjoy smoking whereas some very light smokers still do.
It may be of further consolation for you to know that the rumors that occasionally circulate (e.g. ‘Every cigarette takes five minutes off your life.’) are untrue. The human body is an incredible machine and irrespective of how many years you have been smoking, the body bounces back quickly once you quit, provided you haven’t already contracted an irreversible smoking-related condition. The recovery starts immediately after you put out your final cigarette. Within just twenty minutes your heart rate returns to normal and after 24 hours, the likelihood of a heart attack is reduced by half.
And it is never too late to stop. I have helped to cure many smokers in their fifties, sixties and seventies, and even a few in their eighties. All reported dramatic improvements in their health, and most of them noticed the change within a couple of days. A 91-year-old woman attended a seminar with her 66-year-old son. When I asked why she had decided to stop she replied: ‘To set an example for him.’ She contacted me six months later saying she felt like a young girl again.
The further the drug drags you down, the greater the relief when you quit. When I finally broke free I went from a hundred cigarettes a day to ZERO, and I didn’t experience one single pang. In fact, it was actually enjoyable, even during the withdrawal period.
Think of nicotine addiction as the ‘little monster’ I mentioned earlier. It’s utterly insignificant and you can squash it like a bug. The only danger of the little monster is that it feeds the big monster—the BRAINWASHING.
CHAPTER 7
BRAINWASHING AND THE SLEEPING PARTNER
How or why do we start smoking in the first place? To understand this fully we need to examine the power of the mind and in particular, the subconscious mind or, as I call it, the ‘sleeping partner’.
We all tend to think of ourselves as intelligent human beings making conscious decisions that dictate the path of our lives, but the truth is that most of our behavior and attitudes are determined by our surroundings, upbringing and by forces of which we are largely unaware. These forces, mostly benign, work at a sub-conscious level. As children, we absorb enormous amounts of information—good,