Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [60]
No matter how awful the crime, from that point on my sympathies were with the murderer. As a secret smoker, I felt like a criminal. The endless hours of not being able to smoke, then sneaking out into the garage for a desperation drag or two, shivering in the cold wondering where the pleasure was. The fear of being caught red-handed like a naughty schoolboy. Would Joyce discover where I had hidden the cigarettes, lighter and butts? The relief of returning to the house undiscovered only to begin to panic about whether she would smell the smoke on my breath or clothes. As I took longer and more frequent absences, the risk increased. I knew that it was only a matter of time until I was discovered. The final humiliation and shame almost came as a relief as the sheer torture of being a secret smoker was replaced by the very slightly more tolerable torture of once again becoming a chain-smoker.
OH, THE JOYS OF BEING A SMOKER!
CHAPTER 27
A SOCIAL HABIT?
The main reason there are now far more ex-smokers than smokers in the US is the social revolution that is taking place with respect to smoking.
Yes, I know: health and money are the main reasons that smokers quote as their motivation to quit, but this has always been the case and doesn’t totally explain the very rapid decline in smoking rates. Smokers have lived with the health risks for decades. You don’t need cancer scares or health warnings to know that cigarettes ruin your life. These bodies of ours are the most sophisticated machines on the planet and they tell us—no, they practically yell at us—from the first drag to the last that cigarettes are POISON.
The only reason we get dragged into it in the first place is because of the social pressure from our friends or siblings. Smoking was once considered to be a social lubricant and, to a degree, it still is by teenagers, mainly for the reasons explained in Chapter 25. But today, even most smokers acknowledge that smoking is anti-social. When I was a smoker you could still light up in most places including offices, trains, pubs, clubs, cinemas and even friend’s houses. In those days the cigarette was the proud badge of the tough guy and the sophisticated lady.
Today the situation couldn’t be more different. Everyone knows that the only reason that smokers smoke is because they have failed to stop or they are too frightened to even try. Increasingly the smoker is marginalized and demonized by society. Apart from glass-walled airport ‘Smoking Rooms’ designed to humiliate the smoker and put him on display like a circus attraction, there are few indoor places for smokers to smoke. Even bars are choosing or being forced to go smoke-free. Smokers are sent outside in the wind and the rain and bitter cold. A traumatized smoker called to book into our Los Angeles seminar because someone had actually spat at her when she was smoking on the sidewalk. A New York woman—a beautiful, classy and elegant woman in her fifties, called to make a reservation after she had been asked to smoke in the alley behind a restaurant where she was eating, along with the trash cans and the rats.
This revolution is changing the way society looks at smokers and the way smokers see themselves. I’ve recently seen situations that I remember as a boy but I haven’t seen for years—like smokers flicking ash into their cupped hand or even their pocket because they are too embarrassed to ask for an ashtray.
I was in a restaurant years ago. It was midnight and everyone had long since stopped eating. At a time when the cigarettes and cigars are usually rife, not one person was smoking. I assumed that it must be a non-smoking restaurant but when I asked the waiter he said that they had no restrictions