Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [54]
The second is that it’s so unrewarding. It’s only when we are not smoking that the cigarette seems desirable. When we’re smoking we’re mostly either unaware of it or we are aware but wishing we didn’t have to. All the cigarette does is remove the need to smoke and in doing so, momentarily lets you feel like a non-smoker.
If you struggle with this, ask yourself a simple question. If you could go back in time to when you smoked your first cigarette and you had the knowledge, understanding and experience of smoking you have now, would you still light that cigarette? Every smoker on the planet would answer the same: ‘You have got to be joking!’ Yet every smoker has this choice every day of his smoking life. Why don’t we opt for what we know to be the smart choice? The answer is fear: the fear that we’ll be unable to enjoy life or cope with stress. We ignore the fact that we are not enjoying life as a smoker and that the cigarette itself is causing the stress.
Stop selling yourself short. You can do this. Anybody can. It’s ridiculously easy.
In order to make it easy to stop smoking there are certain fundamentals to get clear in your mind. We have already dealt with three of them up to now:
There is nothing to give up. On the contrary, by quitting you are earning yourself the wonderful gifts of health, happiness and freedom.
There is no such thing as ‘just one cigarette’, just a lifetime’s chain of filth, disease and misery. Your very first cigarette led to every single cigarette you have ever smoked.
In a smoking context, there is nothing unique or different about you. All smokers fell into the same trap, and with the right information and mindset, all smokers can find it easy to stop.
Many believe that they are confirmed smokers or have ‘addictive personalities’, but I’m not so sure. No one needed to smoke before they lit that first cigarette and became hooked. It is the effect of all drugs to make us feel powerless and helpless. This makes us want the drug more so that we can remove the feeling and once again feel normal. It is the drug that addicts us, not our personalities. These feelings of frailty and that we are somehow flawed and incomplete are promoted aggressively by advertisers in a wide range of categories, who use these fears to sell their products.
It is essential to remove this belief that we are helplessly dependent on nicotine (or any other drug for that matter). The reason for this is that if we believe it, it becomes our reality. Up to now we have believed ourselves to be dependent on cigarettes but the truth is that it is the cigarette itself that creates the ‘need’ to smoke. Non-smokers don’t have it.
If we can replace the fear with facts, we can see the cigarette for what it really is—a nicotine delivery device—and remove the belief that we ‘need’ to smoke. With no ‘need’ to smoke or desire to do so, it’s easy to break free. It is essential to remove all the brainwashing.
CHAPTER 25
CASUAL SMOKERS, TEENAGERS, NON–SMOKERS
Heavy smokers tend to envy casual smokers. We’ve all met these characters: ‘Oh, I can go all week without a cigarette, it really doesn’t bother me.’ We think: ‘I wish I were like that.’ I know this is hard to believe, but there is no such thing as a happy smoker—casual or otherwise. No smoker enjoys being a smoker. Never forget:
No smoker decided that they were going to become a
smoker—casual or otherwise. They fell into a trap.
Some smokers find it difficult to admit to themselves that they have fallen for a trap because to do so would be to admit to a flaw or weakness, so they are in denial.
They lie to themselves and others about their smoking in an attempt to justify what they know to be thoroughly irrational behavior.