The Easy Method to stop smokingThe object of this book is to get you into the frame of mind in which, instead of the normal method
of stopping whereby you start off with the feeling that you are climbing Mount Everest and spend the
next few weeks craving a cigarette and envying other smokers, you start right away with a feeling
of elation, as if you had been cured of a terrible disease. From then on, the further you go through life
the more you will look at cigarettes and wonder how you ever smoked them in the first place. You
will look at smokers with pity as opposed to envy.
Provided that you are not a non-smoker or an ex-smoker, it is essential to keep smoking until you
have finished the book completely. This may appear to be a contradiction. Later I shall be explaining
that cigarettes do absolutely nothing for you at all. In fact, one of the many conundrums about smoking
is that when we are actually smoking a cigarette, we look at it and wonder why we are doing it. It is
only when we have been deprived that the cigarette becomes precious. However, let us accept that,
whether you like it or not, you believe you are hooked. When you believe you are hooked, you can
never be completely relaxed or concentrate properly unless you are smoking. So do not attempt to stop
smoking before you have finished the whole book. As you read further your desire to smoke will
gradually be reduced. Do not go off half-cocked; this could be fatal. Remember, all you have to do is
to follow the instructions.
With the benefit of twelve years' feedback since the book's original publication, apart from chapter
28, 'Timing', this instruction to continue to smoke until you have completed the book has caused me
more frustration than any other. When I first stopped smoking, many of my relatives and friends
stopped, purely because I had done it. They thought, 'If he can do it, anybody can.' Over the years, by
dropping little hints I managed to persuade the ones that hadn't stopped to realize just how nice it is to
be free! When the book was first printed I gave copies to the hard core who were still puffing away. I
worked on the basis that, even if it were the most boring book ever written, they would still read it,
if only because it had been written by a friend. I was surprised and hurt to learn that, months later,
they hadn't bothered to finish the book. I even discovered that the original copy I had signed and given
to someone who was then my closest friend had not only been ignored but actually given away. I was
hurt at the time, but 1 had overlooked the dreadful fear that slavery to the weed instills in the smoker.
It can transcend friendship. I nearly provoked a divorce because of it. My mother once said to my wife,
'Why don't you threaten to leave him if he doesn't stop smoking?' My wife said, 'Because he'd leave
me if I did.’ I’m ashamed to admit it, but I believe she was right, such is the fear that smoking creates. I
now realize that many smokers don't finish the book because they feel they have got to stop smoking
when they do. Some deliberately read only one line a day in order to postpone the evil day. Now I am
fully aware that many readers are having their arms twisted, by people that love them, to read the
book. Look at it this way: what have you got to lose? If you don't stop at the end of the book, you are no
worse off than you are now. YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO LOSE AND SO MUCH
TO GAIN! Incidentally, if you have not smoked for a few days or weeks but are not sure whether you
are a smoker, an ex-smoker or a non-smoker, then don't smoke while you read. In fact, you are
already a non-smoker. All we've now got to do is to let your brain catch up with your body. By the
end of the book you'll be a happy non-smoker.
Basically my method is the complete opposite of the normal method of trying to stop. The normal
method is to list the considerable disadvantages of smoking and say, 'If only I can go long enough
without, a cigarette, eventually the desire to smoke will go. I can then enjoy life again, free of slavery
to the weed.'
This is the logical way to go about it, and thousands of smokers are stopping every day using
variations of this method. However, it is very difficult to succeed using this method for the following
reasons:
1 Stopping smoking is not the real problem. Every time you put a cigarette out you stop smoking.
You may have powerful reasons on day one to say, 'I do not want to smoke any more' - all smokers
have, every day of their lives, and the reasons are more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
The real problem is day two, day ten or day ten thousand, when in a weak moment, an
inebriated moment or even a strong moment you have one cigarette, and because it is partly
drug addiction you then want another, and suddenly you are a smoker again.
2 The health scares should stop us. Our rational minds say, 'Stop doing it. You are a fool,' but
in fact they make it harder. We smoke, for example, when we are nervous. Tell smokers that it is
killing them, and the first thing they will do is to light a cigarette. There are more dogends
outside the Royal Marsden Hospital, the country's foremost cancer treatment establishment, than
any other hospital in the country.
3 All reasons for stopping actually make it harder for two other reasons. First, they create a sense
of sacrifice. We are always being forced to give up our little friend or prop or vice or pleasure,
whichever way the smoker sees it. Secondly, they create a 'blind'. We do not smoke for the
reasons we should stop. The real question is 'Why do we want or need to do it?'
The Easy Method is basically this: initially to forget the reasons we'd like to stop, to face the
cigarette problem and to ask ourselves the following questions:
1 What is it doing for me?
2 Do I actually enjoy it?
3 Do I really need to go through life paying through the nose just to
stick these things in my mouth and suffocate myself?
The beautiful truth is that it does absolutely nothing for you at all. Let me make it quite clear, I do
not mean that the disadvantages of being a smoker outweigh the advantages; all smokers know that all
their lives. 1 mean there are not any advantages from smoking. The only advantage it ever had was the
social 'plus'; nowadays even smokers themselves regard it as an antisocial habit.
Most smokers find it necessary to rationalize why they smoke, hut the reasons are all fallacies and
illusions.
The first thing we are going to do is to remove these fallacies and illusions. In fact, you will
realize that there is nothing to give up. Not only is there nothing to give up but there are marvelous,
positive gains from being a non-smoker, and health and money are only two of these gains. Once the
illusion that life will never be quite as enjoyable without the cigarette is removed, once you realize
that not only is life just as enjoyable without it but infinitely more so, once the feeling of being
deprived or of missing out are eradicated, then we can go back to reconsider the health and money -
and the dozens of other reasons for stopping smoking. These realizations will become positive
additional aids to help you achieve what you really desire to enjoy the whole of your life free from
the slavery of the weed.