Smoking & HealthThis is the area where the brainwashing is the greatest. Smokers think they are aware of the health risks. They are not. Even in my case, when I was expecting my head to explode any moment and honestly believed I was prepared to accept the consequences, I was still kidding myself, If in those days 1 had taken a cigarette out of the packet and a red bleeper started to sound, followed by a warning voice saying, 'OK, Allen, this is the one! Fortunately you do get a warning, and this is it. Up to now you have got away with it, hut if you smoke another cigarette your head will explode,' do you think I would have lit that cigarette? If you are in doubt about the answer, just try walking up to a main road with busy traffic, stand on the kerb with your eyes closed and try to imagine you have the choice of either stopping smoking or walking blindfolded across the road before taking your next cigarette. There is no doubt what your choice would be. I had been doing what every smoker does all his smoking life: closing my mind and keeping my head in the sand, hoping that I would wake up one
morning and just not want to smoke any more. Smokers cannot allow themselves to think of the
health risks. If they do, even the illusion of enjoying the 'habit' goes.
This explains why the shock treatment used by the media on National No-Smoking Days is so
ineffective. It is only non-smokers who can bring themselves to watch. It also explains why smokers,
recalling Uncle Fred who smoked forty a day and lived until he was eighty, will ignore the
thousands of people who are brought down in their prime because of this poisonous weed.
About six times a week I have the following conversation with smokers (usually the younger ones):
MEL Why do you want to stop? SMOKER: I can't afford it.
ME: Aren't you worried about the health risks'.'
SMOKER: No, I could step under a bus tomorrow.
ME: Would you deliberately step under a bus? SMOKER: Of course not.
ME: Do you not bother to look left and right when you cross the road? SMOKER: Of course I do.
Exactly. The smoker goes to a lot of trouble not to step under a bus, and the odds are hundreds of
thousands to one against it happening. Yet the smoker risks the near certainty of being crippled by
the weed and appears to be completely oblivious to the risks. Such is the power of the brainwashing.
I remember one famous British golfer who wouldn't go on the American circuit because he was afraid
of flying. Yet he would chain-smoke round the golf course. Isn't it strange that, if we felt there was
the slightest fault in an airplane, we wouldn't go up in it, even though the risks are hundreds of
thousands to one against death, yet we take a one-in-four certainty with the cigarette and are
apparently oblivious to it. And what does the smoker get out of it?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
Another common myth about smoking is the smoker's cough. Many of the younger people who
come to see me are not worried about their health because they do not cough. The true facts are just
the reverse. A cough is one of nature's fail-safe methods of dispelling foreign matter from the lungs.
The cough itself is not a disease; it is just a symptom. When smokers cough it is because their lungs
are trying to dispel cancer-triggering tars and poisons. When they do not cough those tars and
poisons remain in their lungs, and that is when they cause cancer. Smokers tend to avoid exercise
and get into the habit of shallow breathing in order not to cough. I used to believe that my permanent
smokers' cough would kill me. By expelling much of the filth from my lungs, it possibly saved my life.
Just think of it this way. If you had a nice car and allowed it to rust without doing anything about
it, that would be pretty stupid, as it would soon be a heap of rust and would not carry you about.
However, that would not be the end of the world; it is only a question of money and you could always
buy a new one. Your body is the vehicle that carries you through life. We al! say that our health is
our most valued asset. How true that is, as sick millionaires will tell you. Most of us can look back at
some illness or accident in our lives when we prayed to get better. (HOW SOON WE FORGET.) By
being a smoker you are not only letting rust get in and doing nothing about it; you are
systematically destroying the vehicle you need to go through life, and you only get one.
Wise up. You don't have to do it, and remember: it is doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR
YOU.
Just for a moment take your head out of the sand and ask yourself, if you knew for certain that the
next cigarette would he the one to trigger off cancer in your body, whether you would actually
smoke it. Forget the disease (it is difficult to imagine it), but imagine you have to go to the Royal
Marsden to suffer those awful tests - radium treatment, etc. Now you are not planning the rest of your
life. You are planning your death. What is going to happen to your family and loved ones, your plans
and dreams?
I often see the people that it happens to. They didn't, think it would happen to them either, and
the worst thing about it isn't the disease itself but the knowledge they have brought it on
themselves. All our lives as smokers we are saying, ‘I’ll stop tomorrow.' Try to imagine how those
people feel who 'hit the button'. For them the brainwashing is ended. They then see the 'habit' as it
really is and spend the remainder of their lives thinking, 'Why did I kid myself I needed to smoke? If
only I had the chance to go back!'
Stop kidding yourself. You have the chance. It's a chain reaction. If you smoke the next cigarette,
it will lead to the next one and the next. It's already happening to you.
At the beginning of the book I promised you no shock treatment. If you have already decided you
are going to stop smoking, this isn't shock treatment for you. If you are still in doubt, skip the
remainder of this chapter and come back to it when you have read the rest of the book.
Volumes of statistics have already been written about the damage that cigarettes can cause to the
smoker's health. The trouble is that until the smoker decides to stop he doesn't want to know. Even
the government health warning is a waste of time because the smoker puts blinkers on, and if he
inadvertently reads it, the first thing he does is light up a cigarette.
Smokers tend to think of the health hazard as a hit-and- miss affair, like stepping on a mine. Get it
into your head: it is already happening, Every time you puff on a cigarette you are breathing cancertriggering
tars into your lungs, and cancer is by no means the worst of the killer diseases that
cigarettes cause or contribute to. They are also a powerful contributory cause of heart disease,
arteriosclerosis, emphysema, angina, thrombosis, chronic bronchitis and asthma.
While 7 was still smoking, I'd never heard of arteriosclerosis or emphysema. I knew the permanent
wheezing and coughing and the ever-increasing asthma and bronchitis attacks were a direct
result of my smoking. But though they caused me discomfort there was no real pain and I could
handle the discomfort.
I confess that the thought of contracting lung cancer terrified me, which is probably why I just
blocked it from my mind. It's amazing how the fear of the horrendous health risks attached to
smoking are overshadowed by the fear of stopping. It's not so much that the latter is a greater fear,
but that if we quit today the fear is immediate, whereas the fear of contracting lung cancer is a fear
of the future. Why look on the black side? Perhaps it won't happen. I'm bound to have quit by then
anyway.
We tend to think of smoking as a tug-of-war. On one side fear: it's unhealthy, expensive, filthy and
enslaving. On the other side the pluses: it's my pleasure, my friend, my crutch. It never seems to occur
to us that this side is also fear. It's not so much that we enjoy them, but that we tend to be miserable
without them.
Think of heroin addicts deprived of their heroin: the abject misery they go through. Now picture
their utter joy when they are allowed to plunge a needle into their veins and end that terrible
craving. Try to imagine how anyone could actually believe they get pleasure from sticking a
hypodermic syringe into a vein.
Non-heroin addicts don't suffer that panic feeling. Heroin doesn't relieve the feeling, on the
contrary, it causes it. Non-smokers don't feel miserable if they are not allowed to smoke after a meal.
It's only smokers that suffer that feeling. Nicotine doesn't relieve it, on the contrary it causes it.
The fear of contracting lung cancer didn't make me quit because I believed it was rather like
walking through a minefield. If you got away with it - fine. If you were unlucky you stepped on a mine.
You knew the risks you were taking and if you were prepared to take the risk, what had it to do with
anyone else?
So if a non-smoker ever tried to make me aware of those risks, I would use the typical evasive
tactics that all addicts invariably adopt.
'You have to die of something.'
Of course you do, but is that a logical reason for deliberately shortening your life?
Quality of life is more important than longevity.'
Exactly, but you are surely not suggesting that, the quality of life of an alcoholic or a
heroin addict is greater than that of someone that isn't addicted to alcohol or heroin? Do
you really believe that the quality of a smoker's life is better than a non-smoker's?
Surely the smoker loses on both counts his life is both shorter and more miserable.
‘My lungs probably suffer more damage from car exhausts than from smoking;
Even if that were true, is that a logical reason for punishing your lungs further? Can you
possibly conceive of anyone being stupid enough to actually put their mouth over an exhaust
pipe and deliberately inhale those fumes into their lungs?
THAT'S WHAT SMOKERS EFFECTIVELY DO!
Think of that next time you watch a poor smoker inhale deeply on one of those 'precious'
cigarettes!
T can understand why the congestion and the risks of contracting lung cancer didn't help me to
quit. I could cope with the former and block my mind to the latter. As you are already aware, my
method is not to frighten you into quitting, but the complete opposite - to make you realize just
how more enjoyable your life will be when you have escaped.
However, I do believe that if I could have seen what was happening inside my body, this would
have helped me to quit. Now I'm not referring to the shock technique of showing a smoker the
color of a smoker's lungs. It was obvious to me from my nicotine-stained teeth and fingers that
my lungs weren't a pretty sight. Provided they kept functioning, they were less embarrassment
than my teeth and fingers - at least nobody could see my lungs.
What I am referring to is the progressive gunging- up of our arteries and veins and the gradual
starving of every muscle and organ of our bodies of oxygen and nutrients and replacing them
with poisons and carbon monoxide (not just from car exhausts but also from smoking).
Like the majority of motorists, I don't like the thought of dirty oil or a dirty filter in my car
engine. Could you imagine buying a brand-new Rolls Royce and never changing the oil or the oil
filter? That's what we effectively do to our bodies when we become smokers.
Many doctors are now relating all sorts of diseases to smoking, including diabetes, cervical
cancer and breast cancer. This is no surprise to me. The tobacco industry has labored the fact
that the medical profession has never scientifically proved that smoking is the direct cause of
lung cancer.
The statistical evidence is so overwhelming as not to need proof. No one ever scientifically
proved to me exactly why, when I bang my thumb with a hammer, it hurts. I soon got the message.
I must emphasize that I am not a doctor, but just like the hammer and the thumb, it soon
became obvious to me that my congestion, my permanent cough, my frequent asthma and
bronchial attacks were directly related to my smoking. However, I truly believe that the greatest hazard
that smoking causes to our health is the gradual and progressive deterioration of our immune system
caused by this gunging-up process.
All plants and animals on this planet are subjected to a lifetime of attack from germs, viruses,
parasites, etc. The most powerful defense we have against disease is our immune system. We all suffer
infections and diseases throughout our lives. I believe we all suffer from some form of cancer during
our lives. However, I do not believe that the human body was designed to be diseased, and if you are
strong and healthy, your immune system will fight and defeat these attacks. How can your immune
system work effectively when you are starving every muscle and organ of oxygen and nutrients and
replacing them with carbon monoxide and poisons? It's not so much that smoking causes these other
diseases, it works rather like AIDS, it gradually destroys your immune system.
Several of the adverse effects that smoking had on my health, some of which I had been suffering
from for years, did not become apparent to me until many years after I had stopped smoking.
While I was busy despising those idiots and cranks who would rather lose their legs than quit
smoking, it didn't even occur to me that I was already suffering from arteriosclerosis myself. My
almost permanently grey complexion I attributed to my natural coloring or to lack of exercise. It
never occurred to me that it was really due to the blocking up of my capillaries. I had varicose veins
in my thirties, which have miraculously disappeared since I stopped smoking. I reached the stage
about five years before I stopped when every night 1 would have this weird sensation in my legs. It
wasn't a sharp pain or like pins and needles, just a sort of restless feeling. I would get Joyce to massage
my legs every night. It didn't occur to me until at least a year after I had stopped that I no longer
needed the massage.
About two years before I quit, I would occasionally get violent pains in my chest, which I feared
must be lung cancer but now assume to have been angina. I haven't had a single attack since I quit.
When I was a child I would bleed profusely from cuts. This frightened me. No one explained to me
that bleeding was in fact a natural and essential healing process and that the blood would clot when
its healing purpose was completed. I suspected that I was a hemophiliac and feared that I might bleed to
death. Later in life I would sustain quite deep cuts yet hardly bleed at all. This browny-red gunge
would ooze from the cut.
The color worried me. I knew that blood was meant to be bright red and I assumed that I had some
sort of blood disease. However I was pleased about the consistency, which meant that 1 no longer
bled profusely. Not until after I had stopped smoking did I learn that smoking coagulated the blood
and that the brownish color was due to lack of oxygen. I was ignorant of the effect at the time, but in
hindsight, it was this effect that smoking was having on my health that most fills me with horror.
When I think of my poor heart trying to pump that gunge around restricted blood vessels, day in and
day out, without missing a single beat, I find it a miracle that I didn't suffer a stroke or a heart
attack. It made me realize, not how fragile our bodies are, but how strong and ingenious that
incredible machine is!
I had liver spots on my hands in my forties. In case you don't know, liver spots are those brown or
white spots that very old people have on their face and hands, I tried to ignore them, assuming that
they were due to early senility caused by the hectic lifestyle that I had led. It was five years after I
had quit that a smoker at the Raynes Park clinic remarked that when he had stopped previously, his
liver spots disappeared. I had forgotten about mine, and to my amazement, they too had disappeared.
As long as I can remember, I had spots flashing in front of my eyes if ever I stood up too quickly,
particularly if I were in a bath. I would feel dizzy, as if I were about to black out. I never related this
to smoking. In fact I was convinced that it was quite normal and that everyone else had a similar
reaction. Not until only five years ago, when an ex-smoker told me that he no longer had that
sensation did it occur to me that I no longer had it either.
You might conclude that I am somewhat of a hypochondriac. I believe that I was when I was a
smoker. One of the great evils about smoking is that it fools us into believing that nicotine gives us
courage, when in fact it gradually and imperceptibly dissipates it. I was shocked when I heard my
father say that he had no wish to live to be fifty. Little did I realize that twenty years la ter I would
have exactly the same lack of joie de vivre. You might conclude that this chapter has been one
of necessary, or unnecessary, doom and gloom. I promise you it is the complete opposite. I used to
fear death when I was a child. I used to believe that smoking removed that fear. Perhaps it did. If so,
it replaced it with something infinitely worse: A FEAR OF LIVING I
Now my fear of dying has returned. It does not bother me. I realize that it only exists because I
now enjoy life so much. I don't brood over my fear of dying any more than I did when I was a child.
I'm far too busy living my life to the full. The odds are against my living to a hundred, but I'll try to.
I'll also try to enjoy every precious moment!
There were two other advantages on the health side that never occurred to me until I had
stopped smoking. One was that I used to have repetitive nightmares every night. I would dream that!
was being chased. I can only assume that these nightmares were the result of the body being
deprived of nicotine throughout the night and the insecure feeling that would result. Now the only
nightmare that I have is that I occasionally dream that I am smoking again. This is quite a common
dream among ex-smokers. Some worry that it means that they are still subconsciously pining for a
cigarette. Don't worry about it. The fact that it was a nightmare means that you are very pleased
not to be a smoker. There is that twilight zone after any nightmare when you wake up and are not
sure whether it is a genuine catastrophe, but isn't it marvelous when you realize that it was only a
dream?
When I described being chased every night in a dream, I originally typed 'chaste'. Perhaps this
was just a 'Freudian slip', but it does give me a convenient lead into the second advantage. At
clinics, when covering the effect that smoking has on concentration, I would some times say: 'Which
organ in your body has the greatest need of a good supply of blood?' The stupid grins, usually on the
faces of the men, would indicate that they had missed the point. However, they were absolutely right.
Being a somewhat shy Englishman, I find the subject rather embarrassing, and I have no intention
of doing a miniature 'Kinsey' report by going into detail about the adverse effect that smoking had on
my own sexual activity and enjoyment, or that of other ex-smokers with whom I have discussed the
subject. Again, I was not aware of this effect until some time after I had stopped smoking and had
attributed my sexual prowess and activity, or rather lack of it, to advancing years.
However, if you watch natural-science films, you will be aware that the first rule of nature is
survival, and that the second rule is survival of the species, or reproduction. Nature ensures that
reproduction does not take place unless the partners feel physically healthy and know that they
have secured a safe home, territory, supply of food and a suitable mate. Man's ingenuity has enabled
him to bend these rules somewhat, however, I know for a fact that smoking can lead to impotency. I can
also assure you, that when you feel fit and healthy, you'll enjoy sex much more and more often.
Smokers also suffer the illusion that the ill-effects of smoking are overstated. The reverse is the
case. There is no doubt that cigarettes are the No. 1 cause of death in society. The trouble is that in
many cases where cigarettes cause the death or are a contributory factor, it is not blamed on
cigarettes in the statistics.
It has been estimated that 44 per cent of household fires are caused by cigarettes, and I wonder how
many road accidents have been caused by cigarettes during that split second when you take your eye
off the road to light up.
I am normally a careful driver, but the nearest I came to death (except from smoking itself) waswhen
trying to roll a cigarette while driving, and I hate to think of the number of times I coughed a
cigarette out of my mouth while driving it always seemed to end up between the seats. I am sure
many other smoking drivers have had the experience of trying to locate the burning cigarette with one
hand while trying to drive with the other.
The effect of the brainwashing is that we tend to think like the man who, having fallen off a 100-
storey building, is heard to say, as he passes the fiftieth floor, 'So far, so good!' We think that as we
have got away with it so far, one more cigarette won't make the difference.
Try to see it another way, the 'habit' is a continuous chain for life, each cigarette creating the
need for the next. When you start the habit you light a fuse. The trouble is, YOU DON'T KNOW
HOW LONG THE FUSE IS. Every time that you light a cigarette you are one step nearer to the
bomb exploding. HOW WILL YOU KNOW IF IT'S THE NEXT ONE?