Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [86]
Although the change in society’s attitude to smoking is the main reason why so many want to quit, it doesn’t make it easier for them to do so. In fact, it makes it a great deal harder. Today in the US every smoker who leaves his or her house is subjected to severe restrictions on where and therefore when he or she can smoke. The restrictions are so severe that the smoker becomes obsessed with planning the next opportunity to smoke. This has the effect of making every cigarette seem precious, and this of course feeds the illusion that there is some pleasure in smoking. The reality is that all the smoker is ‘enjoying’ is removing the feeling of deprivation and temporarily feeling like a non-smoker.
These periods of enforced abstinence don’t even substantially reduce the amount a smoker smokes; they just mean that the smoker chain-smokes during the few occasions he or she can smoke unhindered. The smoker is ‘loading up’ because they don’t know when their next opportunity will come around.
The tighter the smoking restrictions and the more profound the disdain society displays towards smokers, the more the smoker has to change his lifestyle to revolve around the cigarette and the more ostracized he feels.
Society has made the mistake of demonizing the victim instead of the disease. Out of the many tragedies that surround the subject of smoking, surely this is one of the most tragic.
It’s strange that even though heroin addicts are technically criminals in law, our instinct as a community is to try to help them in any way we can. Let us adopt the same attitude with smokers. Smoking isn’t a choice; it’s an addiction. The smoker smokes because he doesn’t think he can stop. The smoker endures year after exhausting year of addiction and mental and physical slavery. We always say that a quick death is better than a slow one, so do not envy the poor smoker. He deserves to be treated with sensitivity, respect and dignity. And he also deserves your pity.
CHAPTER 44
ADVICE TO NON–SMOKERS
Help Get Your Smoking Friends or Relatives to Read This Book
First study the contents of this book yourself and try to put yourself in the place of the smoker.
Do not attempt to force him to read this book or try to stop him smoking by telling him that he is ruining his health or wasting his money. He already knows this better than you do. Smokers do not smoke because they enjoy it or because they want to. They say this to themselves and others in order to retain some degree of self-respect. They smoke because they feel utterly dependent on cigarettes, because they think that the cigarette helps them relax and cope with stress and because they sense that life will never be enjoyable without smoking. If you try to force a smoker into quitting, this will make him want to smoke more. This makes each cigarette appear precious which in turn makes it harder to quit.
Instead, concentrate on the other side of the coin. Get him into the company of ex-smokers (there are more than sixty million of them in the US). It will do him good to realize that there are millions of people who have been through this exact same experience. When I was a smoker it never occurred to me that all smokers felt the way I did; and that all ex-smokers had felt like this before they quit. Once he sees that there is life after quitting smoking, and that a smoke-free life is infinitely better than the half-life that smokers live, maybe he’ll begin to feel a little less intimidated by the prospect of escaping.
Once you have him believing that maybe he can stop, his mind will start