Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [72]
Remember that you have traded in a life of fear, misery and slavery for one of health, happiness and freedom. Remember the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars that one cigarette would cost you and ask yourself whether you would pay this money just to be a slave to something that you detest and will most likely kill you in the most terrible way imaginable.
Some smokers fear that they will have to go through the rest of their lives reversing these conditioned responses that smokers have in certain situations. In other words, they see themselves as having to use psychological tricks to kid themselves into believing that they don’t need to smoke. This is not so. I am not asking you to use mindless optimism to drown out rational thought; I’m asking you to use rational thought to drown out fear and confusion. There is a saying that the optimist sees the bottle as half-full and the pessimist sees it as half-empty. In the case of smoking, the bottle is empty and the smoker sees it as full. It is the smoker who has been brainwashed, not the rest of society! Once you start telling yourself that you don’t need to smoke, and letting yourself be happy about not having to smoke, it’s amazing how quickly this replaces the conditioned response of the brainwashed smoker. The reason that this ‘takes’ so easily is because it is the truth. You do not need to smoke. It’s the last thing you need to do; make sure it isn’t the last thing you do.
CHAPTER 34
JUST ONE DRAG
This is the undoing of many smokers who try to stop using Willpower. They will go through three or four days smoke-free and then have the odd couple of drags, ‘just to tide them over’. They do not realize the devastating effect this has on their frame of mind.
For the vast majority of relapsing smokers, the first drag is disgusting, and this gives them a conscious boost. They think, ‘Good, it wasn’t enjoyable. I’m losing the urge to smoke.’ The point is that CIGARETTES WERE NEVER ENJOYABLE. Enjoyment wasn’t the reason you smoked; if it was, nobody would ever smoke more than one cigarette.
The only reason you smoked was to feed that ‘little monster’ again. You were a drug addict. Just think: you had starved him for three or four days and he was, to all intents and purposes, dead. Then you threw him a lifeline. How precious that one cigarette or puff must have been to him! Now he alive again, craving nicotine. You may not be consciously aware of it, but the fix your body received will be communicated to your subconscious mind and all your sound preparation will be undermined. There will be a little voice at the back of your mind saying, ‘In spite of all the logic, they are precious. I want another one.’
That single drag has two damaging effects.
1. It keeps the ‘little monster’ alive in your body, craving nicotine.
2. It keeps the big monster—the brainwashing—alive in your mind, wanting a cigarette. If you take a drag, what’s to stop you taking another one? Or one hundred, or one million?
Don’t play this dangerous game. There is only one loser—you. I absolutely guarantee you that you will be back smoking regularly before you know it. Just one cigarette is exactly how every smoker on the planet started, and it is also how every single ex-smoker on the planet relapsed.
Don’t play games with yourself over something this important. If you have one drag, you will be smoking for the rest of your life.
CHAPTER 35
WILL IT BE HARDER FOR ME?
The combinations of factors that will determine how easy each individual smoker will find it to quit are infinite. To start with, each of us has his own character, personal circumstances, motivation, timing, etc.
In my experience, people from certain professions tend to find it harder than others, because they find it difficult to let go of the brainwashing.
An example might be work that combines short bursts of intense, stressful activity with extended periods of inactivity. Car salesmen for example have a lot of ‘downtime’ when they are bored and they tend to