I found it not only easy but unbelievably enjoyable to stay stopped' Sir Anthony Hopkins. It has helped millions of smokers from all over the world quit instantly, easily, painlessly and permanently.
Stop Smoking Now is the new, cutting-edge presentation of the method. Updated and set out in a clear, easy-to-read format, this book makes it simpler than ever before to get free. Allen Carr's Easyway does not rely on willpower as it removes your desire to smoke.
It eliminates the fears that keep you hooked and you won't miss cigarettes. It works both for heavy and casual smokers and regardless of how long you've been smoking. There are no gimmicks or scare tactics, you won't put on weight, and you can even smoke when you read. Allen Carr's books have sold over 15 million copies to date in more than 40 different languages and Stop Smoking Now is the newest presentation of the Easyway message, updated for the 21st century but still centred on the world's most effective stop-smoking programme—the tried and tested Easyway method, 'the one that works'.
The Allen Carr method has been presented here in a lively, informative and streamlined way. This book brings the original Easyway concept bang up do date, incorporating lessons that have been learned from those who teach in the global network of Allen Carr clinics.
No one has more experience of helping smokers quit. Score: 4. It is the world's bestselling book on how to give up smoking. And this is the original and still the best edition of his classic book on how to give up smoking the easy way.
THE unique method: No scare tactics No weight-gain The psychological need to smoke disappears as you read Feel great to be a non-smoker Join the 25 million men and women that Allen Carr has helped give up smoking.
I found it not only easy but unbelievably enjoyable to stay stopped' Sir Anthony Hopkins 'This guy's brilliant. Having cured his own addiction he went on to write a series of bestselling books, most famously The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. His books have sold more than 13 million copies worldwide. Allen's lasting legacy is a dynamic, ongoing, global publishing programme and an ever-expanding worldwide network of clinics which help treat a range of issues including smoking, weight, alcohol and "other" drug addiction.
The Easyway method really works. Allen Carr has sold over 15 million books and helped countless more to quit through his network of clinics. All of this through recommendation and word of mouth.
His method removes the need for willpower, and people don't suffer pangs or weight gain. Allen Carr's books have sold over 15 million copies to date in more than 25 different languages and Stop Smoking Now is the newest presentation of the Easyway message, updated for the 21st century but still centred on the world's most effective stop-smoking programme the tried and tested Easyway method, 'the one that works'.
This inspirational pack contains a fully up to date version of The Easyway to stop smoking, Allen Carr's globally best selling title, together with a specially recorded CD which amounts to a private consultation with Allen himself, Stop easily, immediately, permanently. The Easyway method has now been applied to the problem of emotional eating. With Allen Carr's Easyway method, you can eat as much of your favorite foods as you want, whenever you want, as often as you want, and be the exact weight you want to be, without dieting, special exercise, using willpower or feeling deprived.
Do you find that difficult to believe? Read this book. You'll soon be able to: - Achieve the right frame of mind to quit - Avoid weight gain - Quit without dependence on rules or gimmicks - Enjoy the freedom and choices that non-smokers have in life - Quit without willpower It's time to begin your new life as a non-smoker with Allen Carr's The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently.
A guide to stopping smoking, adapted for women, from the author's Easyway method. Eat as much of your favourite foods as you want, whenever you want, as often as you want, and be the exact weight you want to be without dieting, special exercise, using willpower or feeling deprived. Allen Carr's Easyway is the most successful stop-smoking method of all time. It has helped millions of smokers from all over the world quit instantly, easily, painlessly and permanently.
Stop Smoking Now is the new, cutting-edge presentation of the method. Updated and set out in a clear, easy-to-read format, this book makes it simpler than ever before to get free. Allen Carr's Easyway does not rely on willpower as it removes your desire to smoke. It eliminates the fears that keep you hooked and you won't miss cigarettes. It works both for heavy and casual smokers and regardless of how long you've been smoking.
There are no gimmicks or scare tactics, you won't put on weight, and you can even smoke when you read. Allen Carr's books have sold over 15 million copies to date in more than 40 different languages and Stop Smoking Now is the newest presentation of the Easyway message, updated for the 21st century but still centred on the world's most effective stop-smoking programme—the tried and tested Easyway method, 'the one that works'.
The Allen Carr method has been presented here in a lively, informative and streamlined way. This book brings the original Easyway concept bang up do date, incorporating lessons that have been learned from those who teach in the global network of Allen Carr clinics. No one has more experience of helping smokers quit. Allen Carr's Easyway method is the most effective stop-smoking method of all time and this book is a super-fast, yet comprehensive, version of the method.
Allen Carr is without doubt one of the most potent weapons in the world's fight against nicotine addiction. Having sold over 13 million books and establishing a chain of clinics spanning the globe, Allen Carr's Easyway is the most successful stop smoking method of all time.
Smaller, more concise than the original but lacking none of its pu Allen Carr's Easyway a global phenomenon. It has helped millions of smokers from all over the world. By explaining why you feel the need to drink and, with simple step-by-step instructions to set you free, he shows you how to escape from the alcohol trap.
Allen Carr established himself as the world's greatest authority on helping people stop smoking, and his internationally best-selling Easy Way to Stop Smoking has been published in over 40 languages and sold more than 10 million copies. In this classic guide Allen applies his revolutionary method to drinking. With startling insight into why w If you are a non-smoker purchasing for loved ones all you have to do is persuade them to read the book. If you cannot persuade them, then read the book yourself, and the last chapter will advise you how to get the message across - also how to prevent your children from starting.
Do not be fooled by the fact that they hate it now. All children do before they become hooked. Perhaps, like the majority of smokers, the mere thought of stopping fills you with panic and although you have every intention of stopping one day, it is not today. If you are expecting me to inform you of the terrible health risks that smokers run, that smokers spend a small fo rtune during their smoking lives, that it is a filthy, disgusting habit and that you are a stupid, spineless, weak-willed jellyfish, then I must disappoint you.
Those tactics never helped me to quit and if they were going to help you, you would already have quit. Some of the things that I am about, to say, you might find difficult to believe. However by the time you've finished the book, you'll not only believe them, but wonder how you could ever have been brainwashed into believing otherwise. There is a common misapprehension that we choose to smoke. Smokers no more choose to smoke than alcoholics choose to become alcoholics, or heroin addicts choose to become heroin addicts.
It is true that we choose to light those first experimental cigarettes. I occasionally choose to go to the cinema, but I certainly didn't choose to spend my whole life in a cinema. Please reflect on your life. Did you ever make the positive decision that at certain times in your life, you couldn't enjoy a meal or a social occasion without smoking, or that you couldn't concentrate or handle stress without a cigarette?
At what stage did you decide that you needed cigarettes, not just for social occasions, but that you needed to have them permanently in your presence, and felt insecure, even panic-stricken without them? Like every other smoker, you have been lured into the most sinister subtle trap that man and nature have combined to devise. There is not a parent on this planet, whether they be smoker or non- smoker, that likes the thought of their children smoking. This means that all smokers wish they had never started.
Not surprising really, no one needs cigarettes to enjoy meals or cope with stress before they get hooked. At the same time all smokers wish to continue to smoke. After all, no one forces us to light up, whether we understand the reason or not, it is only smokers themselves that decide to light up. If there were a magic button that smokers could press to wake up the following morning as if they never lit that firs cigarette,.
The only thing that prevents us from quitting is: FEAR! Fear that we will have to survive an indeterminate period of misery, deprivation and unsatisfied craving in order to be free.
Fear that a meal or social occasion will never be quite as enjoyable without a cigarette. Fear that we'll never be able to concentrate, handle stress or be as confident without our little crutch. Fear that our personality and character will change. But most of all, the fear of 'once a smoker always a smoker,' that we will never be completely free and spend the rest of our lives at odd times craving the occasional cigarette. If, as I did, you have already tried all the conventional ways to quit and been through the misery of what I describe as the willpower method of stopping, you will not only be affected by that fear, hut convinced you can never quit.
If you are apprehensive, panic-sticken or feel that the time is not right for you to give up, then let me assure you that your apprehension or panic is caused by fear. You didn't decide to fall into the nicotine trap. But like all traps, it is designed to ensure that you remain trapped. Ask yourself, when you lit those first experimental cigarettes, did you decide to remain a smoker as long as you have?
So when are you going to quit? Next, year? Stop kidding yourself! The trap is designed to hold you for life. Why else do you think all these other smokers don't quit before it kills them?
This book was first published by Penguin a decade ago and has been a bestseller every year since then, I now have ten years' feedback. As you will soon be reading, the feedback has revealed information that has exceeded my wildest aspirations of the effectiveness of my method. The second I will he covering later.
The first arose from the letters that I have received. I give three typical examples: I didn't believe the claims you made and I apologize for doubting you.
It was just as easy and enjoyable as you said it would be. I've given copies of your book to all my smoking friends and relatives, but I can't understand why they don't read it, I was given your book eight years ago by an ex-smoking friend, I've just got around to reading it.
My only regret is that I wasted eight years. I know it has only been four days, but I feel so great, I know I'll never need to smoke again. I first started to read your book five years ago, got half-way through and panicked.
I knew that if I went on reading I would have to stop. Wasn't I silly? No, that particular young lady wasn't silly. I've referred to a magic button. Let me make it quite clear, EASYWAY isn't magic, but for me and the hundreds of thousands of ex-smokers who have found it so easy and enjoyable to quit. This is the warning. We have a chicken and egg situation. Every smoker wants to quit and every smoker can find it easy and enjoyable to quit.
It's only fear that prevents smokers from trying to quit. The greatest gain is to be rid of that fear. But you won't be free of that fear until you complete the book. On the contrary, like the lady in the third example, that fear might increase as you read the book and this might prevent you from finishing it.
You didn't decide to fall into the trap, but he clear in your mind, you won't escape from it unless you make a positive decision to do so. You might already be straining at the leash to quit. If at the end of the book you decide that you wish to continue to smoke, there is nothing to prevent you from doing so. You don't even have to cut down or stop smoking while you are reading the book, and remember, there is no shock treatment. On the contrary, I have only good news for you.
Can you imagine how the Count of Monte Cristo felt when he finally escaped from that prison? That's how I felt when I escaped from the nicotine trap.
That's how the millions of ex-smokers who have used my method feel. She thought that I had flipped. Understand able if you consider that she had watched me fail on numerous attempts to quit. The most recent had been two years previously.
I'd actually survived six months of sheer purgatory before I finally succumbed and lit a cigarette. I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried like a baby.
I was crying because I knew that I was condemned to he a smoker for life. I'd put so much effort into that attempt and suffered so much misery that I knew I would never have the strength to go through that ordeal again. I'm not a violent man, but if some patronizing non-smoker had been stupid enough at that moment to suggest to me that all smokers can find it easy to quit, immediately and permanently, I would not have been responsible for my actions.
However, I'm convinced that any jury in the world, comprised of smokers only, would have pardoned me on the grounds of justifiable homicide. Perhaps you too find it impossible to believe that any smoker can find it easy to quit. If so, I beg you not to cast this book into the rubbish bin. Please trus t me. I assure you that even you can find it easy to quit. Anyway, there I was two years later, having just extinguished what I knew would be my final cigarette, not only telling my wife that I was already a non-smoker, but that I was going to cure the rest of the world.
I must admit that at the time I found her skepticism somewhat irritating. However, in no way did it diminish my feeling of exaltation, 1 suppose that my exhilaration in knowing that I was already a happy non-smoker distorted my perspective somewhat. With the benefit of hindsight, I can sympathize with her attitude, I now understand why Joyce and my close friends and relatives thought I was a candidate for the funny farm.
As I look back on my life, it seems that my whole existence has been a preparation for solving the smoking problem. Even those hateful years of training and practicing as a chartered accountant were invaluable in helping me to unravel the mysteries of the smoking trap.
They say you can't fool all the people all of the time, but I believe the tobacco companies have done just that for years. I also believe that I am the first to really understand the smoking trap. If I appear to be arrogant, let me hasten to add that it was no credit to me, just the circumstances of my life.
The momentous day was 15 July , I didn't escape from Colditz, but I imagine those who did felt the same sense of relief and exhilaration as I did when I extinguished that final cigarette. I realized 1 had discovered something that every smoker was praying for: an easy way to stop smoking. After testing out the method on smoking friends and relatives, I gave up accountancy and became a full-time consultant, helping other smokers to get free.
I wrote the first edition of this book in One of my failures, the man I describe in chapter 25, was the inspiration. He visited me twice, and we were both reduced to tears on each occasion. He was so agitated that I couldn't get him to relax enough to absorb what I was saying. I hoped that if I wrote it all down, he could read it in his own good time, as many times as he wanted to, and this would help him to absorb the message. However, when I contemplated putting the method into book form, I was apprehensive.
I did my own market research. What I need is willpower! Often at the clinics it became obvious that a client had misunderstood an important point that I was making. I was able to correct the situation. But how would a book be able to do that? I remembered well the times when I studied to qualify as an accountant, when I didn't understand or agree with a particular point in a book, the frustration because you couldn't ask the book to explain, I was also well aware, particularly in these days of television and videos, that many people arc not accustomed to reading.
Added to all these factors, I had one doubt that overrode all the rest. I wasn't a writer and was very conscious of my limitations in this respect. I was confident that I could sit down face to face with a smoker and convince that smoker how much more enjoyable social occasions to regard it as their failure. We regard it as our failure, we failed to convince those smokers just how easy and enjoyable it is to quit. I dedicated the first edition to the smokers that I had failed to cure.
That failure rate was based on the money-hack guarantee that we give at our clinics. The average current failure rate of our clinics world-wide is under 5 per cent.
That means a success rate of over 95 per cent, Although I was aware that I had discovered something marvelous, I never in my wildest dreams expected to achieve such rates. You might well argue that if I genuinely believed that I would cure the world of smoking, I must have expected to achieve per cent.
No, I never ever expected to achieve per cent. Snuff-taking was the previous most popular form of nicotine addiction until it became antisocial and died. However, there are still a few weirdoes that continue to take snuff and probably, there always will be. Amazingly, the Houses of Parliament are one of the last bastions of snuff-taking.
I suppose this is not so surprising when you think about it, politicians are generally about a hundred years behind the times. So there will always be a few weirdoes that will continue to smoke, I certainly never expected to have to cure every smoker personally. Amazingly, my chief stumbling blocks were the very institutions that I thought would be my greatest allies: the media, the Government, organizations like ASH, QUIT and the established medical profession.
You've probably seen the film Sister Kenny. In case you haven't, it was about the time when infantile paralysis or polio was the scourge of our children. I vividly remember that the words engendered the same fear in me as the word cancer does today. The effect of polio was not only to paralyze the legs and arms but to distort the limbs. The established medical treatment was to put those limbs in irons and thus prevent the distortion.
The result was paralysis for life. Sister Kenny believed the irons inhibited recovery and proved a thousand times over that the muscles could be re-educated so that the child could walk again. However, Sister Kenny wasn't a doctor, she was merely a nurse. How dare she dabble in a province that was confined to qualified doctors? It didn't seem to matter that Sister Kenny had found the solution to the problem and had proved her solution to be effective.
The children that were treated by Sister Kenny knew she was right, so did their parents, yet the established medical profession not only refused to adopt her methods but actually prevented her from practicing.
It took Sister Kenny twenty years before the medical profession would accept the obvious. However, it was equally obvious that Hollywood had used a large portion of poetic license. Sister Kenny couldn't possibly have dis covered something that the combined knowledge of medical science had failed to discover. Surely the established medical specialists weren't the dinosaurs they were being portrayed as? How could it possibly have taken them twenty years to accept the facts that were staring them in the face?
They say that fact is stranger than fiction, I apologize for accusing the makers of Sister Kenny for using poetic license. Even in this so-called enlightened age of modern communications, after fourteen years, even having access to modern communications, I've failed to get my message across.
Oh, I've proved my point, the only reason that you are reading this hook is because another ex-smoker has recommended it to you.
Like Sister Kenny, I'm a lone individual. Like her. I'm only famous because rny system works. I'm already regarded as the number-one guru on helping smokers to quit. Like Sister Kenny, I've proved my point. But Sister Kenny proved her point. What good did that do if the rest of the world was still adopting procedures which were the direct opposite to what they should be? The last sentence of this book is identical to that in the original manuscript: There is a wind of change in society, A snowball has started that I hope this book will help turn into an avalanche.
From my remarks above, you might have drawn the conclusion that I am no respecter of the medical profession. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of my sons is a doctor and I know of no finer profession. Indeed we receive more recommendations to our clinics from doctors than from any other source, and surprisingly, more of our clients come from the medical profession than any other single profession.
In the early years, I was generally regarded by the doctors as being somewhere between a charlatan and a quack. I believe that I am the first non- qualified doctor to receive such an honor.
The invitation itself is a measure of the progress that I have made. It's equivalent to saying to a heroin addict: don't smoke heroin, smoking is dangerous, try injecting it into your vein don't try this with nicotine, it will kill you instantly. Because the medical profession and the media haven't a clue about helping smokers to quit, they concentrate on telling smokers what they already know: smoking is unhealthy, it's filthy and disgusting, it's antisocial and expensive.
It never seems to occur to them that smokers do not smoke for the reasons that they shouldn't smoke. The real problem is to remove the reasons that they do smoke.
On national no-smoking days, the medical experts say something like: This is the day that every smoker tries to quit! Because they don't completely understand smokers themselves or how to make it easy for smokers to quit, their attitude is 'Try this method.
If it doesn't work try another: Can you imagine if there were ten different ways of treating appendicitis? Nine of them cured 10 per cent of the patients, which means they killed 90 per cent of them and the tenth way cured 95 per cent.
Imagine that knowledge of the tenth method had been available for over fourteen years, but the vast majority of the medical profession was still recommending the other nine. One of the doctors at the conference raised a very pertinent point that hadn't occurred to me. He pointed out that doctors might well find themselves liable to a legal action for malpractice, by not advising their patients of the best way to quit smoking.
Ironically he was a great advocate of nicotine replacement therapy nicotine gums, patches, etc. They might just as well have wasted it on trying to persuade them that motorbikes can kill you. Do they not realize that youngsters know that one cigarette won't kill them and that no youngster ever expects to get hooked?
The link between smoking and lung cancer has been established for over forty years. Yet more youngsters are becoming hooked nowadays than ever before. Youngsters don't need to watch smoking horrors on TV. Smokers tend to avoid such, programmes anyway. Practically every youngster in the country has witnessed the actual devastation that smoking causes within their own family. I watched my father and my sister destroyed by the weed; that didn't prevent me from falling into the trap.
I appeared on a national TV programme with a doctor from Ash who had never smoked in her life and had never cured a single smoker, categorically informing the nation how this campaign would prevent youngsters from becoming hooked. I truly believe that the snowball has become a football. But after fourteen years that is still a spit in the ocean.
I'm grateful to the thousands of ex-smokers who have visited my clinics, read my books, watched my videos and recommended EASYWAY to their friends, rela tives and anyone who will listen to them, and 1 pray that you continue to do so. I don't expect you to believe me at this stage, but by the time you have finished the book, you will understand. Even the comparatively few failures that we have say something like: 'I haven't succeeded yet, but your way is better than any I know.
That will start the avalanche and if I live to witness it, I will die a happy man. Do you have a feeling of doom and gloom?
Forget it. I've achieved some marvelous things in my life. By far the greatest was to escape from the slavery of nicotine addiction. I escaped over fourteen years ago and still cannot get over the joy of being free. There is no need to feel depressed, nothing bad is happening, on the contrary, you are about to achieve something that every smoker on the planet would love to achieve : TO BE FREE!
No, I am not a doctor or a psychiatrist; my qualifications are far more appropriate. I spent thirty-three years of my life as a confirmed smoker.
In the later years I smoked a hundred a day on a bad day, and never less than sixty. During my life I had made dozens of attempts to stop. I once stopped for six months, and I was still climbing up the wall, still standing near smokers trying to get a whiff of the tobacco, still traveling in the smokers' compartments on trains.
With most smokers, on the health side, it's a question of 'I'll stop before it happens to me. I had a permanent headache with the pressure of the constant coughing.
I could feel the continuous throbbing in the vein that runs vertically down the centre of my forehead, and I honestly believed that any moment there would be an explosion in my head and I would die from a brain hemorrhage. It bothered me, but it still didn't stop me. I had reached the stage where I gave up even trying to stop. It was not so much that I enjoyed smoking. Some time in their lives most smokers have suffered from the illusion that they enjoy the odd cigarette, but I never suffered from that illusion.
I have always detested the taste and smell, but I thought 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 a cigarette. Eventually my wife sent me to a hypnotherapist. I must confess that I was completely skeptical, knowing nothing about hypnosis in those days and having visions of a Svengali-type figure with piercing eyes and a waving pendulum.
I had all the normal illusions that smokers have about smoking except one I knew that I wasn't a weak-willed person. I was in control of all other aspects of my life but cigarettes controlled me.
I thought that hypnosis involved the forcing of wills, and although I was not obstructive like most smokers, I dearly wanted to stop , I thought no one was going to kid me that I didn't need to smoke. The whole session appeared to be a waste of time.
The hypnotherapist tried to make me lift my arms and do various other things. Nothing appeared to be working properly. I didn't lose consciousness. I didn't go into a trance, or at least I didn't think I did, and yet after that session not only did I stop smoking but I actually enjoyed the process even during the withdrawal period. Now, before you go rushing off to see a hypnotherapist, let me make something quite clear.
Hypnotherapy is a means of communication. If the wrong message is communicated, you won't stop smoking. I'm loath to criticize the man whom I consulted because I would be dead by now if I hadn't seen him. But it was in spite of him. Neither do I wish to appear to be knocking hypnotherapy; on the contrary, I use it as part of my own consultations.
It is the power of suggestion and a powerful force that can be used for good or evil. Don't ever consult a hypnotherapist unless he or she has been personally recommended by someone you respect and trust.
During those awful years as a smoker I tho ught that my life depended on cigarettes, and I was prepared to die rather than be without them. Today people ask me whether I ever have the odd pang. The answer is, '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, that 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 have a scientific brain, and I couldn't understand what appeared to me like magic. I started reading up on hypnosis and on smoking. Nothing I read seemed to explain the miracle that had happened. Why had it been so ridiculously easy to stop, whereas previously it had been weeks of black 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 had been so easy to stop, whereas the real problem is trying to explain why smokers find it difficult to stop. Smokers talk about the terrible withdrawal pangs. There was no physical pain. It was all in the mind. My full-time profession is now helping other people to kick the habit. I'm very, very successful. I have helped to cure thousands of smokers.
Let me emphasize from the start: there is no such thing as a confirmed smoker. I have still not met anybody who was as badly hooked or, rather, thought he was as badly hooked as myself. Anybody can not only stop smoking but find it easy to stop.
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 in many ways and extra health, energy and wealth are the least of the advantages.
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 can understand, the easier you will find it. Even if you do not understand a 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 did it for so long. Let me issue a warning. For example, I will tell you not to try cutting down or using substitutes like sweets, chewing gum, etc. The reason why I am so dogmatic is because I know my subject. I do not deny that there are many people who have succeeded in stopping using such ruses, 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 way. Everything I tell you has a purpose: to make it easy to stop and thereby ensure success. Question not only what I tell you but also your own views and what society has taught you about smoking.
For example, those of you who think it is just a habit, ask yourselves why other habits, some of them enjoyable ones, are easy to break, yet a habit that tastes awful, costs us a fortune and kills us is so difficult to break. Those of you who think you enjoy a cigarette, ask yourselves why other things in life, which are infinitely more enjoyable, you can take or leave.
Why do you have to have the cigarette and panic sets in if you don't? 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. 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? 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. 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 disadvant ages 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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? 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? 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?
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. 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.
0コメント