What am I Giving Up?ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! The thing that makes it difficult for us to give up is fear. The fear that we are being deprived of our pleasure or prop. The fear that certain pleasant situations will never be
quite the same again. The fear of being unable to cope with stressful situations. In other words, the effect of brainwashing is to delude us into believing that there is a weakness in us, or something inherent in the cigarette that we need, and that when we stop smoking there will be a
void. Get it clear in your mind: CIGARETTES DO NOT FILL A VOID. THEY CREATE IT!
These bodies of ours are the most sophisticated objects on this planet. Whether you believe in a
creator, a process of natural selection or a combination of both, whatever being or system devised
these bodies of ours, it is a thousand times more effective than man! Man cannot create the smallest
living cell, let alone the miracle of eyesight, reproduction, our circulatory system or our brains. If
the creator or process had intended us to smoke, we would have been provided with some filter
device to keep the poisons out of our bodies and some sort of chimney.
Our bodies are, in fact, provided with failsafe warning devices in the form of the cough, dizziness,
sickness, etc., and we ignore these at our peril.
The beautiful truth is - there is nothing to give up. Once you purge that little monster from your
body and the brainwashing from your mind, you will neither want cigarettes nor need them.
Cigarettes do not improve meals. They ruin them. They destroy your sense of taste and smell.
Observe smokers in a restaurant, smoking between courses. It is not the meal that they are enjoying;
they cannot wait for the meal to be over, as it is interfering with the cigarettes. Many of them do it in
spite of the fact that they know it causes offence to non-smokers. It is not that smokers are generally
inconsiderate people; it is just that they are miserable without the cigarette. They are between the
devil and the deep blue sea. They either have to abstain and be miserable because they cannot smoke, or
smoke and be miserable because they are offending other people, feel guilty and despise themselves
for it.
Watch smokers at an official function where they have to wait for the loyal toast. Many of them
develop weak bladders and have to sneak off for a crafty puff. That is when you see smoking for the
true addiction that it is. Smokers do not smoke because they enjoy it. They do it because they are
miserable without it.
Because many of us start smoking on social occasions when we are young and shy, we acquire the
belief that we cannot enjoy social occasions without a cigarette. This is nonsense. Tobacco takes
away your confidence. The greatest evidence of the fear that cigarettes instill in smokers is their
effect on women. Practically all women are fastidious about their personal appearance. They
wouldn't dream of appearing at a social func tion not immaculately turned out and smelling
beautiful. Yet knowing that their breath smells like a stale ashtray does not seem to deter them in the
least. I know that it bothers them greatly - many hate the smell of their own hair and clothes - yet it
doesn't deter them. Such is the fear that this awful drug instills in the smoker.
Cigarettes do not help social occasions; they destroy them. Having to hold a drink in one hand and
a cigarette in the other, trying to dispose of the ash and the continual chain of dogends, trying not to
breathe smoke and fumes into the face of the person you are conversing with, wondering whether
they can smell your breath or see the stains on your teeth.
Not only is there nothing to give up, but there are marvelous positive gains. When smokers
contemplate quitting smoking they tend to concentrate on health, money and social stigma. These
are obviously valid and important issues, but I personally believe the greatest gains from stopping
are psychological, and for varying reasons they include:
1 The return of your confidence and courage.
2 Freedom from the slavery.
3 Not to have to go through life suffering the awful black shadows at
the back of your mind, knowing you are being despised by half
of the population and, worst of all. despising yourself,
Not only is life better as a non-smoker but it is infinitely more enjoyable. I do not only mean you will
be healthier and wealthier. I mean you will be happier and enjoy life far more.
The marvelous gains from being a non-smoker are discussed in the next few chapters.
Some smokers find it difficult to appreciate the concept of the 'void', and the following analogy may
assist you.
Imagine having a cold sore on your face. I've got this marvelous ointment. I say to you, 'Try this
stuff.' You rub the ointment on, and the sore disappears immediately. A week later it reappears. You
ask, 'Do you have any more of that ointment?' I say, 'Keep the tube. You might need it again.' You
apply the ointment. Hey presto, the sore disappears again. Every time the sore returns, it gets larger
and more painful and the Interval gets shorter and shorter. Eventually the sore covers your whole
face and is excruciatingly painful. It is now returning every half hour. You know that the ointment
will remove it temporarily, but you are very worried. Will the sore eventually spread over your whole
body? Will the interval disappear completely? You go to your doctor. He can't cure it. You try other
things, but nothing helps except this marvelous ointment.
By now you are completely dependent on the ointment. You never go out without ensuring that you
have a tube of the ointment with you. If you go abroad, you make sure that you take several tubes with
you. Now, in addition to your worries about your health, I'm charging you £100 per tube. You have
no choice but to pay.
You then read in the medical column of your newspaper that this isn't happening just to you; many
other people have been suffering from the same problem. In fact, pharmacists have discovered that
the ointment doesn't actually cure the sore. All that it does is to take the sore beneath the surface of
the skin. It is the ointment that has caused the sore to grow. All you have to do to get rid of the sore is
to stop using the ointment. The sore will eventually disappear in due course.
Would you continue to use the ointment?
Would it take will power not to use the ointment? If you didn't believe the article, there might be a
few days of apprehension, but once you realized that the sore was beginning to get better, the need or
desire to use the ointment would go,
Would you be miserable? Of course you wouldn't. You had an awful problem, which you thought
was insoluble. Now you've found the solution. Even if it took a year for that sore to disappear
completely, each day, as it improved, you'd think. 'Isn't it marvelous? I'm not going to die.'
This was the magic that happened to me when I extinguished that final cigarette. Let me make one
point quite clear in the analogy of the sore and the ointment. The sore isn't lung cancer, or arterial
sclerosis, or emphysema, or angina, or chronic asthma, or bronchitis, or coronary heart disease. They
are all in addition to the sore. It isn't the thousands of pounds that we burn, or the lifetime of bad
breath and stained teeth, the lethargy, the wheezing and coughing, the years we spend choking
ourselves and wishing we didn't, the times when we are being punished because we are not
allowed to smoke. It isn't the lifetime of being despised by other people, or, worst of all, despising
yourself. These are all in addition to the sore. The sore is what makes us close our minds to all
these things. It's that panic feeling of 'I want a cigarette.' Non-smokers don't suffer from that
feeling. The worst thing we ever suffer from is fear, and the greatest gain you will receive is to be
rid of that fear.
It was as if a great mist had suddenly lifted from my mind. I could see so clearly that that panic
feeling of wanting a cigarette wasn't some sort of weakness in me, or some magic quality in the
cigarette. It was caused by the first cigarette; and each subsequent one, far from relieving the
feeling, was causing it. At the same time I could see that all these other 'happy' smokers were
going through the same nightmare that I was. Not as bad as mine, but all putting up phoney
arguments to try to justify their stupidity.
IT'S SO NICE TO BE FREE!