Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [28]
As with any drug, our bodies begin to develop immunity to its effects. The more we become hooked on the drug, the greater the need to relieve the withdrawal pangs and the greater the illusion of pleasure or relief. The further we are dragged down, the more we need the artificial boost the cigarette provides. It doesn’t take long for us to now consider the state of withdrawal as our natural state, so we need to smoke regularly to feel even a semblance of normality and we become stressed and agitated if we are unable to relieve the withdrawal by smoking. This whole process is so subtle and gradual that most smokers are completely unaware that they are hooked. Instead smokers tell themselves that they have grown to enjoy smoking but cling onto the notion that they could quit anytime they wanted to.
As already stated, smokers tend to relieve their withdrawal pangs at times of stress, boredom, concentration, relaxation or a combination of these. This is explained in greater detail in the next few chapters.
CHAPTER 9
STRESS
I am referring not only to the great tragedies of life, but also to the minor stresses, the socializing, the telephone call, the anxiety of the homemaker with noisy young children and so on.
Let me use the homemaker as an example. This is a very stressful life. Homemakers need to juggle more tasks than even the busiest of businessmen. They need to be part economist, part driver, part cleaner, part cook, part dishwasher, part teacher, part psychologist, part soccer coach…the list is endless. When the smoking homemaker is confronted with an additional stressful situation (for example, the car won’t start), her instinct is to want to light a cigarette. She doesn’t know why this is, just that it is.
What has actually happened is this. Without being conscious of it, she is already suffering mild aggravation from withdrawing from her previous cigarette. When the additional stress comes, because her subconscious mind associates the relief of stress with cigarettes, she wants to smoke. When she lights up she relieves the stress caused by nicotine withdrawal, and feels better. This boost is not an illusion—she does feel better—but the cigarette has only removed the portion of her stress that was caused by withdrawing from the nicotine in the previous cigarette. Of course, smoking a cigarette has not fixed the car so the real stress still exists. However the smoker now feels better able to cope with the stress because they are temporarily no longer going through the additional stress of withdrawing from nicotine.
This is the illusion of the cigarette as a stress reliever. It temporarily relieves the stress caused by the previous cigarette. But all the smoker is really doing is guaranteeing that he or she will experience withdrawal pangs again and again…
Actually, I believe that even when they are smoking and supposedly relieving stress, smokers are more stressed than non-smokers. There are so few opportunities to smoke nowadays that even when we’re smoking we’re stressed by the thought of not being able to do so again whenever we wish. Some smokers spend their whole day planning and creating opportunities to smoke. Talk about stress!
I promised you no shock treatment. In the example I am about to give, I am not trying to shock you, I am merely emphasizing that cigarettes create stress rather than relieve it.
Try to imagine getting to the stage where your doctor tells you that unless you stop smoking he is going to have to remove your legs. Just pause for a moment and reflect on that. Try to visualize life without your legs. Try to imagine the frame of mind of a man who, issued with that warning, actually continues to smoke and then has his legs removed.
I used to hear stories like that and dismiss them as cranky. In fact, I used to wish that a doctor would tell me that; then I would have stopped. Yet I was fully expecting any day to have a brain hemorrhage, and lose not only my legs but my life.