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But eating itself is not a habit. Neither is smoking. The only reason any smoker lights a cigarette is to try to end the empty, insecure feeling that the previous cigarette created. It is true that different smokers are in the habit of trying to relieve their withdrawal pangs at different times but smoking itself is not a habit.
Society frequently refers to the smoking habit and in this book, for convenience, I sometimes also refer to the ‘habit’. However, be constantly aware that smoking is not habit, on the contrary it is no more nor less than DRUG ADDICTION!
As I said, the ‘habit’ doesn’t exist. The real reason why every smoker goes on smoking is because of that little monster that feels like it’s inside his stomach. Every now and again he has to feed it. The smoker himself will decide when he does that, and it tends to be on four types of occasion or a combination of them. They are: BOREDOM/CONCENTRATION – two complete opposites! STRESS/RELAXATION – two complete opposites!
What magic drug can suddenly reverse the very effect it had twenty minutes before? If you think about it, what other types of occasion are there in our lives; apart from sleep? The truth is that smoking neither relieves boredom and stress nor promotes concentration and relaxation. It is all just illusion.
The human body is the most sophisticated object on our planet. No species, even the lowest amoeba or worm, can survive without knowing the difference between food and poison.
Through a process of natural selection over thousands of years, our minds and bodies have developed techniques for distinguishing between food and poison and fail-safe methods for rejecting the latter. All human beings are averse to the smell and taste of tobacco until they become hooked. If any animal or child inhales cigarette smoke before it becomes hooked, it will cough and splutter.
‘If you cannot get your normal brand of cigarette and can only obtain a brand you find distasteful, do you stop smoking?’ No way. A smoker will smoke old rope rather than abstain, and it doesn’t matter if you switch to roll-ups, mentholated cigarettes, cigars or a pipe; to begin with they taste awful but if you persevere, you will learn to like them. Smokers will even try to keep smoking during colds, flus, sore throats, bronchitis and emphysema.
How or why do we start smoking in the first place? To understand this fully you need to examine the powerful effect of the subconscious mind or, as I call it, the ‘sleeping partner’. We all tend to think we are intelligent, dominant human beings determining our paths through life. In fact, 99 per cent of our make-up is moulded. We are a product of the society that we are brought up in – the sort of clothes we wear, the houses we live in, our basic life patterns, even those matters on which we tend to differ, e.g. political leanings.
‘The most precious thing on this earth, my last thought and action, will be the smoking of a cigarette.’ In every war film the injured man is given a cigarette.
If you do a small survey among your friends and colleagues, you will find that most smokers are, in fact, strong-willed people. They tend to be self-employed, business executives or in certain specialized professions, such as doctors, lawyers, policemen, teachers, salesmen, nurses, secretaries, housewives with children, etc – in other words, anybody leading a stressful existence. The main delusion of smokers is that smoking relieves stress and tends to be associated with the dominant type, the type that takes on responsibility and stress, and, of course, that is the type that we admire and
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Start looking behind these glossy packets at the filth and poison beneath. Do not be fooled by the cut-glass ashtrays or the gold lighters or the millions who have been conned. Start asking yourself: Why am I doing it? Do I really need to? NO, OF COURSE YOU DON’T. I find this brainwashing the most difficult aspect of smoking to explain. Why is it that an otherwise rational, intelligent human being becomes a complete imbecile about his own addiction? It pains me to confess that out of the millions of people that I have assisted in kicking smoking, I was the biggest idiot of all.
As I have already stated, it is fear that keeps people smoking, the fear of that empty, insecure feeling that you get when you stop supplying the nicotine. Because you are not aware of it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. You
As I have already said, eventually the cigarette ceases to relieve the withdrawal pangs, and even when you are smoking the cigarette there is still something missing. This is the terrible frustration of the chain-smoker. Whenever you need the boost, you are already smoking, and this is why heavy smokers often turn to drink or other drugs. But I digress.
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 fail-safe warning devices in the form of the cough, dizziness, sickness, etc, and we ignore these at our peril.
They’re not enjoying the meal. In fact, they can’t wait for the meal to be over as it’s interfering with their smoking.
Obviously, the less you smoke the better off you are, but, as a stepping stone to stopping, cutting down is fatal. It is our attempts to cut down that keep us trapped all our lives.
In order to make it easy to stop smoking there are certain fundamentals to get clear in your mind. We have already dealt with three of them up to now: There is nothing to give up. There are only marvellous positive gains to achieve. Never see the odd cigarette. It doesn’t exist. There is only a lifetime of filth and disease. There is nothing different about you. Any smoker can find it easy to stop.
