Easy Way to Stop Smoking (4 page)

I had reached the stage where I gave up even trying to stop. It wasn't even that I enjoyed smoking. At some stage in their lives most smokers suffer from the illusion that they enjoy some cigarettes, but I didn't. I always detested the taste and smell, but I thought that a cigarette helped me to relax. It gave me courage and confidence, and I was always miserable when I tried to stop, never being able to visualize an enjoyable life without smoking.

During those awful years as a smoker I thought that my life depended on cigarettes and I was prepared to die rather than be without them. Today, over twenty-five years after I finally broke free from the slavery of smoking, people still ask me whether I ever have the odd pang. I truthfully answer: ‘Never, never, never'—just the reverse. I've had a marvelous life. If I had died through smoking I couldn't have complained. I have been a very lucky man, but the most marvelous thing that has ever happened to me is being freed from that nightmare, the slavery of having to go through life systematically destroying my own body and paying through the nose for the privilege.

Let me make it quite clear from the beginning: I am not a mystical figure. I do not believe in magic or fairies. I have a scientific, rational brain, and for quite a while after I quit, I couldn't understand why I found it to be so easy. It seemed like magic, but it couldn't have been. I started to read books on smoking, hypnosis and psychology. Nothing I read seemed to adequately explain what had happened. Why had it been so ridiculously easy to stop, whereas previously it had been week after agonizing week of torture and dark depression?

It took me a long time to work it all out, basically because I was going about it back-to-front. I was trying to work out
why it was so easy to stop, whereas the real question ought to be: ‘Why should quitting be difficult?' Smokers talk about the terrible physical withdrawal pangs, but when I looked back and tried to remember those awful pangs, they didn't exist for me. There was no physical pain. It was all in the mind.

My full-time job for the last twenty-five years has been to help other people to stop smoking. I'm very, very successful. Every year 30,000–50,000 smokers attend our seminars. I have personally helped to cure many tens of thousands of smokers. Let me emphasize from the start: there is no such thing as a ‘confirmed' smoker. I have yet to meet anybody who was as badly hooked (or, rather,
thought
he was as badly hooked) as myself. Anybody can not only stop smoking but also find it easy. That is a fact. We prove this day-in, day-out at our seminar centers, which routinely help the hardest of hardcore smokers escape from the smoking trap easily and permanently. It is basically fear that keeps us smoking: the fear that life will never be quite as enjoyable without cigarettes and the fear of feeling deprived. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Not only is life just as enjoyable without them but it is infinitely more so. Incredibly, better health and a vastly improved financial position are the least of those gains.

All smokers can find it easy to stop smoking—even you! All you have to do is read the rest of the book with an open mind. The more you understand, the easier you will find it. Even if you do not understand every word, provided you follow the instructions you will find it easy. Most important of all, you will not go through life moping for cigarettes or feeling deprived. The only mystery will be why you didn't stop years ago.

At this point, let me issue a warning. There are only two reasons for failure with my method:

1. Failure to Carry Out Instructions.
Some people find it annoying that I am so dogmatic about certain recommendations. For example, I will tell you not to try cutting
down or using substitutes, especially substitutes that contain nicotine (e.g. e-cigarettes, nicotine gum, patches etc.) The reason I am so dogmatic is because I know my subject. I do not deny that many people have succeeded in stopping using such tools, but they have succeeded in spite of, not because of them. There are people who can make love standing on a hammock, but it is not the easiest or the most enjoyable way. Everything I tell you has a purpose: to ensure your success by making it easy and enjoyable to stop.

2. Failure to Understand.
Please don't take anything for granted. Question not only what I tell you but also your own preconceptions and attitudes and what society has led you to believe about smoking and quitting. For example, if you think smoking is ‘just a habit', ask yourselves why other habits, some of them extremely enjoyable ones, are easy to break, yet a habit that tastes awful, costs us a fortune and kills us is so difficult. If you think you enjoy smoking, ask yourself why you absolutely
have
to smoke that cigarette, but can take or leave other things in life, which are infinitely more enjoyable.

T
he aim of this book is to get you into the frame of mind whereby instead of starting out on your smoke-free life with a feeling of doom, gloom, misery and depression, you can start right away with a feeling of elation, as if you have been cured of a terrible, life-threatening disease.

Smokers thinking about quitting are often intimidated by what they perceive to be the scale of the task they face. They feel as if they are attempting to scale Mount Everest single-handed. They believe that they will need to suffer terrible physical withdrawal pangs, that they are giving up their best friend and that they will, in all likelihood, fail anyway. Who could think of a worse frame of mind with which to take on this, or any other project? The smoker has already programmed him or herself to fail. But if you are able to replace those negative thoughts and feelings with an attitude of excitement and anticipation, then the task is made far easier. In fact, with the right frame of mind, it is not only easy, but also incredibly enjoyable to stop
smoking. From then on, the further you go through life the more you will look at cigarettes and wonder how you had ever believed you needed to smoke. You will look at smokers with pity as opposed to envy.

Provided that you are not already 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 something of a contradiction. Later I shall be explaining that cigarettes do absolutely nothing for you at all. In fact, one of the many puzzles about smoking is that when we are smoking a cigarette, we look at it and wonder what on earth we are doing: it is only when we can't smoke that the cigarette becomes precious or desirable.

However, let us accept that, whether you like it or not, you believe you need to smoke and that you can't relax 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 until it disappears entirely. Let the book do its work. Remember, all you have to do is to follow the instructions.

With the benefit of more than twenty years' feedback since the book's original publication, apart from
Chapter 28
(‘Timing'), this instruction to continue to smoke has caused me more frustration than any other. When I first stopped smoking, many of my friends and relatives stopped, purely because I had done it. They thought ‘If he can do it, anyone can.' Over the years, by dropping little hints I managed to persuade the ones who hadn't stopped to realize just how nice it was to be free! When the book was first printed I gave copies to the hard core that were still puffing away. I worked on the basis that, even if it was 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 read it. 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 I 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 smokers suffer when confronted with the prospect of having to stop.

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 what they perceive to be the ‘evil' day. Now I am fully aware that many readers are only reading this book because they have had their arm twisted to do so by people that love them. 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 yet 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 have 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 so-called ‘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 subside. I then might be able to enjoy life again.'

On the surface, this appears to be a logical way to go about it, however, the truth is that over 95% of such quit attempts end in failure for the following reasons:

1.
By focusing on the disadvantages of smoking we are addressing the wrong issue. We should be focused on why
we smoke, not why we shouldn't smoke. Smokers already know they shouldn't smoke, and if this knowledge were going to make them stop, it would have done so long ago. The real challenge is to understand the illusory reasons we do smoke, and deal with them.

2.
Some of the things we use to motivate us to abstain do make us want to quit, but some of them also make us want to smoke. This sounds illogical but it isn't. Take the biggest reason that smokers want to stop: health. If you see an anti-smoking commercial highlighting the dangers of smoking, for example showing a throat cancer sufferer continuing to smoke through a hole in her throat, it provokes an emotional response based around the fear and anxiety that the same might happen to you. This in turn creates stress and the smoker's first response to stress is to want to light a cigarette. This is why so many quit smoking campaigns make it harder, not easier, for smokers to stop.

3.
It perpetuates the myth that the smoker is sacrificing something or depriving himself of something when he stops. This sense of deprivation makes us feel miserable and vulnerable, which in turn makes the cigarette appear desirable. We have to use willpower not to give in to this desire and we enter that familiar cycle of wanting to smoke but not being allowed to. This deepens the misery and stress, which of course further heightens the desire to smoke, and so it continues until we can eventually take no more, admit defeat and light up. The problem here is not the cigarette itself, but the desire to smoke. If the smoker retains the desire to smoke then so long as he is not smoking, he will be miserable. This poor soul doesn't ever become a true non-smoker, but remains forever a smoker who is not allowed to smoke, a bit like the AA's ‘dry drunk'.

The EASYWAY is basically this: to forget, for a time, the reasons we want to stop, to turn to face the cigarette and to ask ourselves the following questions:

1.
What does the cigarette really do for me?

2.
Do I really 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. I mean there are NO advantages whatsoever to smoking. The only benefit it ever had was a dubious one to begin with—as a social lubricant—has long gone. Nowadays even smokers themselves regard it as antisocial.

All smokers attempt to rationalize why they smoke but all of the reasons we use to justify our smoking are excuses or based on myths, fallacies and illusions.

The first thing we are going to do is to address and remove these myths, fallacies and illusions. In fact, you will quickly realize that there is nothing to give up. Not only is there nothing to give up, but there are many marvelous positive gains to be had from becoming a non-smoker, and health and money are just 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 is eradicated, then we can reconsider health and money—and the dozens of other amazingly positive reasons for stopping smoking. These realizations will become powerful additional aids to help you achieve what every smoker really wants—to enjoy the whole of your life free from the slavery of smoking.

A
s I explained earlier, I got interested in this subject because of my own addiction. When I finally stopped smoking, it was like magic. When I had tried to stop previously there were weeks of dark depression. There would be odd days when I was comparatively cheerful but the next day I would invariably sink back into the misery and depression. It was like clawing your way out of a slippery pit—you feel that you are nearing the top; you can see the sunshine—and then find yourself sliding back down again. Eventually, to end the misery, you light a cigarette. It tastes awful, makes you even more depressed and you try to work out why you keep doing this to yourself. The first thing you want to do is to quit again.