Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [57]
All any smoker ever ‘enjoys’ in a cigarette is the ending of the state of ‘needing’ it. This is irrespective of whether or not it is the barely perceptible physical itch, or the much greater psychological torture of not being able to scratch it. Cigarettes themselves are filth and poison. This is why we only have the illusion of enjoyment after a period of abstinence. Just like thirst or hunger, the longer you experience it, the greater the sense of relief.
Smokers make the mistake of believing that smoking is a ‘habit’. They think that if they can reduce their intake and maintain it at that level, then they can break their old ‘habit’ and replace it with a new one. But smoking is not a habit; it’s drug addiction.
When you have an itch, the natural tendency is to scratch it. With cigarettes, as your body creates immunity to nicotine over the years, you need to smoke more to relieve the ‘itch’. The more you smoke, the less effect each cigarette has, and the more you need to smoke. As the drug begins to destroy you physically and mentally, as it gradually eats away at your nervous system and your confidence and courage, you are increasingly unable to limit the interval between each cigarette. This explains why people like me, who never even have any illusion that they enjoy smoking, end up as chain-smokers, even though you hate it and every cigarette is torture.
Back to the female attorney: ironically, most smokers would envy her and would be staggered to hear the misery that this poor woman had to endure. When you only smoke one cigarette every twelve hours, it appears to be the most precious thing on earth. For twelve years that poor woman was at the center of a tug-of-war. She had been unable to stop smoking but was terrified of getting lung cancer like her parents. For twenty-three hours and fifty minutes a day, she had to use willpower to fight the temptation to smoke. For the ten minutes of the day she was smoking, she felt guilt, fear, self-loathing, anger and frustration. This poor woman smoked two cigarettes a day, but her whole life was dominated by those two cigarettes. So much for ‘casual’ smoking.
I remember another case, the man who was the inspiration for this book, who was a five-a-day smoker. He called me and started to tell his story in the croaky voice I know to be the voice of a throat cancer victim. He said: ‘Mr. Carr, I just want to stop smoking before I die.’ This is how he described his life:
‘I am sixty-one years old. I have cancer of the throat through smoking. Now I can only physically cope with five roll-ups a day. I used to sleep soundly through the night. Now I wake up every hour of the night and all I can think about is cigarettes. Even when I am sleeping, I dream about smoking.
‘I cannot have my first cigarette until 10 o’clock. I get up at 5 o’clock and make endless cups of tea. My wife gets up about 8 o’clock and, because I am so bad-tempered, she will not have me in the house. I go down to the greenhouse and try to potter about, but my mind is obsessed with smoking. At 9 o’clock I begin to roll my first cigarette and I do so until it is perfect. It is not that I need it to be perfect, but it gives me something to do. I then wait for 10 o’clock. When it arrives my hands are shaking uncontrollably. I do not light the cigarette then. If I do, I have to wait three hours for the next one. Eventually I light the cigarette, take one puff and extinguish it immediately. By continuing this process I can make the cigarette last an hour. I smoke it down to about a quarter of