Why is it Difficult to Stop smoking?As I explained earlier, I got interested in this subject because of my own addiction. When I finally
stopped it was like magic. When I had previously tried to stop there were weeks of black depression.
There would be odd days when I was comparatively cheerful but the next day back with the
depression. It was like clawing your way out of a slippery pit, you feel you are near the top, you see
the sunshine and then find yourself sliding down again. Eventually you light that cigarette, it tastes
awful and you try to work out why you have to do it.
One of the questions I always ask smokers prior to my consultations is 'Do you want to stop
smoking?' In a way it is a stupid question. All smokers (including members of FOREST) would love
to stop smoking. If you say to the most confirmed smoker, 'If yo u could go back to the time before
you became hooked, with the knowledge you have now, would you have started smoking?', 'NO WAY'
is the reply.
Say to the most confirmed smoker - someone who doesn't think that it injures his health, who is not
worried about the social stigma and who can afford it (there are not many about these days) - 'Do you
encourage your children to smoke?', 'NO WAY' is the reply.
All smokers feel that something evil has got possession of them. In the early days it is a question
of 'I am going to stop, not today but tomorrow.' Eventually we get to the stage where we think either
that we haven't got the willpower or that there is something inherent in the cigarette that wu must
have in order to enjoy life.
As I said previously, the proble m is not explaining why it is easy to stop; it is explaining why it is
difficult. In fact, the real problem is explaining why anybody does it in the first place or why, at one
tune, over 60 per cent of the population were smoking.
The whole business of smoking is an extraordinary enigma. The only reason we get on to it is
because of the thousands of people already doing it. Yet every one of them wishes he or she had not
started in the first place, telling us that it is a waste of time and money. We cannot quite believe
they are not enjoying it. We associate it with being grown up and work hard to become hooked
ourselves. We then spend the rest of our lives telling our own children not to do it and trying to kick
the habit ourselves.
We also spend the rest of our lives paying through the nose. The average twenty-a-day smoker
spends £50.000 in his or her lifetime on cigarettes. What do we do with that money? (It wouldn't be so
bad if we threw it down the drain.) We actually use it systematically to congest our lungs with
cancerous tars, progressively to clutter up and poison our blood vessels. Each day we are increasingly
starving every muscle and organ of our bodies of oxygen, so that each day we become more lethargic.
We sentence ourselves to a lifetime of filth, bad breath, stained teeth, burnt clothes, filthy ashtrays
and the foul smell of stale tobacco. It is a lifetime of slavery. We spend half our lives in situations in
which society forbids us to smoke (churches, hospitals, schools, tube trains, theatres, etc.) or, when
we are trying to cut down or stop, feeling deprived. The rest of our smoking lives is spent in
situations where we are allowed to smoke but wish we didn't have to. What sort of hobby is it that
when you are doing it you wish you weren't, and when you are not doing it you crave a cigarette? It's a
lifetime of being treated by half of society like some sort of leper and, worst of all, a lifetime of an
otherwise intelligent, rational human being going through life in contempt. The smoker despises
himself, every Budget Day. every National Non-Smoking Day, every time he inadvertently reads the
government health warning or there is a cancer scare or a bad-breath campaign, every time he gets
congested or has a pain in the chest, every time he is the lone smoker in company with non-smokers.
Having to go through life with these awful black shadows at the back of his mind, what does he get
out of it? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! Pleasure? Enjoyment? Relaxation? A prop? A boost? All
illusions, unless you consider the wearing of tight shoes to enjoy the removal of them as some sort of
pleasure!
As 1 have said, the real problem is trying to explain not only why smokers find it difficult to stop
but why anybody does it at all.
You are probably saying, 'That's all very well. I know this, but once you are hooked on these things
it is very difficult to stop.' But why is it so difficult, and why do we have to do it? Smokers search for
the answer to these questions all of their lives.
Some say it is because of the powerful withdrawal symptoms. In fact, the actual withdrawal
symptoms from nicotine are so mild that most smokers have lived and died without
ever realizing they are drug addicts.
Some say cigarettes are very enjoyable. They aren't. They are filthy, disgusting objects. Ask any
smoker who thinks he smokes only because he enjoys a cigarette if, when he hasn't got his own brand
and can only obtain a brand he finds distasteful, he stops smoking? Smokers would rather smoke old
rope than not smoke at all. Enjoyment has nothing to do with it. I enjoy lobster but I never got to the
stage where I had to have twenty lobsters hanging round my neck. With other things in life we enjoy
them whilst we are doing them but we don't sit feeling deprived when we are not.
Some search for deep psychological reasons, the 'Freudian syndrome', 'the child at the mother's
breast'. Really it is just the reverse. The usual reason why we start smoking is to show we are grown
up and mature. If we had to suck a dummy in public, we would die of embarrassment.
Some think it is the reverse, the macho effect of breathing smoke or fire down your nostrils. Again
this argument has no substance. A burning cigarette in the ear would appear ridiculous. How much
more ridiculous to breathe cancer-triggering tars into your lungs.
Some say, 'It is something to do with my hands!' So, why light it?
'It is oral satisfaction,' So, why light it?
:It is the feeling of the smoke going into my lungs.' An awful feeling -it is called suffocation.
Many believe smoking relieves boredom. This is also a fallacy. Boredom is a frame of mind. There
is nothing interesting about a cigarette.
For thirty-three years my reason was that it relaxed me, gave me confidence and courage. I also
knew it was killing me and costing me a fortune. Why didn't I go to my doctor and ask him for an
alternative to relax me and give me courage and confidence? I didn't go because I knew he would
suggest an alternative. It wasn't my reason; it was my excuse.
Some say they only do it because their friends do it. Are you really that stupid? If so, just pray that
your friends do not start cutting their heads off to cure a headache!
Most smokers who think about it eventually come to the conclusion that it is just a habit. This is
not really an explanation but, having discounted all the usual rational explanations, it appears to be
the only remaining excuse. Unfortunately, this explanation is equally illogical. Every day of our
lives we change habits, and some of them are very enjoyable. We have been brainwashed to believe
that smoking is a habit and that habits are difficult to break. Arc habits difficult to break? In the UK
we are in the habit of driving on the left side of the road. Yet when we drive on the Continent or in
the States, we immediately break that, habit with hardly any aggravation whatsoever. It is clearly a
fallacy that habits are hard to break. The fact is that we make and break habits every day of our lives.
So why do we find it difficult to break a habit that tastes awful, that kills us, that costs us a fortune,
that is filthy and disgusting and that we would love to break anyway, when all we have to do is to stop
doing it? The answer is that smoking is not habit: IT IS NICOTINE ADDICTION! That is why it
appears to be so difficult to 'give up'. Perhaps you feel this explanation explains why it is difficult to
'give up'? It does explain why most smokers find it difficult to 'give up'. That is because they do not
understand drug addiction. The main reason is that smokers are convinced that they get some genuine
pleasure and/or crutch from smoking and believe that they are making a genuine sacrifice if they
quit.
The beautiful truth is that once you understand nicotine addiction and the true reasons why you
smoke, you will stop doing it just like that - and within three weeks the only mystery will be why yo\i
found it necessary to smoke as long as you have, and why you cannot persuade other smokers HOW
NICE IT IS TO BE A NON-SMOKER!