Chapter 13

what about the ‘high?’

IN THIS CHAPTER

• What’s The Word? • The Science Bit: ‘Smoking Raises My Dopamine Levels’ • Decision Time • Substitutes

What do the tobacco companies say about cigarettes, vaping, JUULing, dipping, chewing and snusing and what’s the word to describe the pleasure?

Pick up your cigarette pack or whatever nicotine product it is that you use. Take a careful look at the pack. With your smartphone, I want you to take a photo of the packaging where it says: ‘This is a relaxant, it relieves stress and it can aid weight loss as part of a calorie-controlled diet.’ Send the photo to me via www.allencarr.com – I doubt you’ll find any such claims on the pack. Forgive me for appearing facetious, but it’s an important point.

The tobacco companies are governed by laws that are designed to ensure that all advertising must be factual, honest and correct. These companies are unable to print a claim unless they are able to prove it.

But don’t take my word for this; you can call them yourself. Try any tobacco company, or JUUL, or whatever brand it is that you buy. Call them up, tell them that you’re over 18 years of age and that you have just decided to take up smoking or vaping or JUULing or whatever. Tell them you’re very excited to be doing some research on which nicotine product to use, and ask if could they put you through to the relevant department to discuss the benefits their

products offer to someone who is not a nicotine addict.

Do you have any idea what they might say?

No doubt you’ll be greeted with suspicion and told that there’s no one to take your call – or they’ll refer you to their website.

That must be unique, surely. A company of that size with all the money, marketing and resources they have available to them and they cannot spare five minutes for a potential customer who is about to make more than a £100,000 lifetime ‘investment’ in their highly addictive product. What does that tell you loud and clear about the benefits of their product? Easyway is watching companies like JUUL and will not hesitate to litigate in the event that they make positive claims about nicotine. And we will win.

WHAT’S THE WORD?

The English language is a rich, deep, varied language that has evolved over many centuries. Let’s use that fact to probe further.

If you were to drink alcohol, there is a word, actually there are many, to describe the effect, the perceived pleasure, of doing so. Words such as ‘tipsy, merry, sloshed, or inebriated’ – there are many, many more:

Someone who takes heroin would say they get ‘smacked up’.

Someone who takes cocaine might be ‘wired’ or ‘coked up’.

Someone who takes ecstasy might claim to feel ‘loved up’.

Users of cannabis would say they’re ‘stoned’, or ‘high’, or ‘baked’, or ‘blazed’.

So bearing all that in mind – what is the unique word or phrase to describe the pleasure or the high that you achieve from smoking a cigarette or taking nicotine in any form? As I mentioned earlier, some smokers who attend our seminars say they get ‘a buzz or

a high’ from their first cigarette after a long period of not having had one. Yet that isn’t a buzz or a high – it’s simply ‘dizzy’… it’s caused by the poison going into your body and starvation of oxygen going to the brain. You can get exactly the same sensation by holding your breath for 30 seconds or spinning around while you count to 10.

Don’t do it: it isn’t much fun and you’ll make yourself feel awful. It’s not a high. So bearing all that in mind: What is the unique word or phrase to describe the pleasure or high that you achieve from smoking a cigarette or taking nicotine in any form?

There isn’t one!

The English language is a rich and diverse language, a language that provides us with 14 words for rain, yet there is not one unique word in the entire English language that describes the pleasure obtained from smoking a cigarette. Why not?

Because it doesn’t exist

It’s perfectly natural to have doubts. But bear in mind that the English language does not have any doubts at all.

AN EXERCISE

EVEN IF IT’S ILLUSORY, SURELY FEELING BETTER WHEN YOU HAVE A CIGARETTE IS LIKE A BOOST? DOES IT REALLY MATTER IF IT ISN’T REAL?

Put your hands in the air. As high as you can go, so it’s a little uncomfortable. Now I’d like you to consider two options, and please

consider both before making your decision regarding which one to take.

Option One: You are welcome to put your hands straight down.

Option Two: You can keep your hands up high for the next 15 minutes and then put them down, thereby obtaining the wonderful illusory pleasure of doing so. Make up your mind now, please. You can either put them straight back down or keep them up for 15 minutes.

(If you’re dismissing this exercise and maintaining that at least an illusory boost is better than no boost at all, then please keep your hands up high, so it’s a little uncomfortable, for a further 14.5 minutes before proceeding with the book.)

Of course there’s no point in putting your hands up for 15 minutes for the sake of putting them down… that’s like wearing tight shoes just for the relief of taking them off. Painful and pointless.

The Science bit: ‘Smoking raises my dopamine levels’

Smokers use all kinds of excuses and reasoning to justify their continued smoking or vaping. In a desperate attempt to explain their continued addiction (and failure to quit), they seek solace in scientific explanations of what it is they might enjoy about nicotine.

These often involve talk of nicotine raising dopamine levels – I’ll come to that in a moment.

As mentioned, some smokers claim that the feeling of dizziness or light-headedness after they haven’t smoked for a while is like a ‘high’ – but when you think about it, it isn’t, is it? You just feel dizzy and you can get exactly the same feeling by spinning around

on the spot for ten seconds. Even as a chain-smoker, I used to get that feeling when I lit my first one of the day; in most cases, it made me feel instantly lousy.

Please don’t be deterred by some of the complex argument that follows – to quit smoking easily you don’t need to understand the workings of brain function with regard to nicotine addiction any more than you need to understand the complex workings of the internal combustion engine to learn to drive a car. Look at the road – not under the hood; let the method work for you, and you’ll be a happy non-smoker and non-nicotine addict in no time at all.

Some people claim that smoking helps with depression and anxiety, but if this were true then surely smokers would be less anxious and less depressed than non-smokers? Yet research shows the exact opposite – that they are much more anxious and more depressed than non-smokers. Tragically, there’s no doubt that a good portion of people who live with depression and anxiety are drawn into smoking by the flawed belief that nicotine might help them handle their condition; that’s all part of the brainwashing.

There’s a little-known tribe in Africa who believe that, if you draw a chalk circle around them, they are unable to move outside it. There’s no physical barrier, but their belief is enough to keep them captive. It’s all in their minds. The same can be said of the nicotine addict’s beliefs in support of their continued addiction. Correcting those beliefs is key to getting free and staying free and, more importantly, doing so while feeling fabulous.

If, for whatever reason, you begin to feel you want or need more dopamine, why not just listen to some great music, hug your kids or your partner or a friend, or watch a funny film, make love or do some exercise? These activities are not only great

fun, but they’re positively beneficial for dopamine production.

Back when smoking was at its peak, we didn’t know how nicotine and other drugs affected the brain. Since then, we have learned a great deal about a function of the brain known as the reward pathways.

Dopamine: in the brain, dopamine functions as a neurotransmitter, a chemical released by neurons (nerve cells) to send signals to other nerve cells. The reward pathways play a major role in the motivational component of reward-motivated, or reinforced, behaviour. Can you imagine the disruption that can be caused to this natural, instinctive process by the introduction of a highly addictive drug, one which appears to relieve the discomfort created by the first dose, and then repeats the process with every subsequent dose?

It’s of tremendous comfort to everyone working within Easyway, people who for decades have been working tirelessly to cure addiction all over the world, that as more and more becomes known about the way nicotine influences dopamine, science confirms what Easyway has been asserting for more than 35 years.

In 2019, one of the world’s leading academics in the field of nicotine addiction, Professor Robert West, stated publicly: ‘Nicotine causes dopamine release by nerve cells in the nucleus accumbens , a part of the brain involved in learning to do things. The dopamine release tells the brain to pay attention to the situation and what the smoker was just doing – and do the same thing next time they’re in that same situation. So a link is forged between the impulse to smoke and situations in which smoking normally happens.’ Importantly, Professor West went on to add: ‘Crucially, the smoker doesn’t have to feel any pleasure or enjoyment for this to work.

’

A smoker’s first experience of nicotine is normally at worst extremely unpleasant, and at best a little unpleasant. For the sake of understanding this, smokers have to ignore the feelings aroused by the circumstances surrounding their first cigarette: the peer pressure and praise, the feeling of rebelliousness, the desire to fit in, the sense of appearing stylish, sophisticated or macho. None of those are caused by the introduction of nicotine to the body; they’re all to do with the environment and the circumstances in which it was administered.

Most smokers remember the actual physical effect of their first cigarettes as being unpleasant and this alone disproves any notion that nicotine’s initial introduction to the body and brain causes ‘pleasure’. Whatever impact nicotine has on dopamine levels when first introduced to the body, it’s certainly not pleasurable.

In fact, most people’s first cigarette is so unpleasant and unrewarding it convinces them they could never become addicted. The reason smokers develop a deep-seated belief that smoking IS pleasurable is explained perfectly by Professor West.

POINT A

Nicotine withdrawal is the result of the first-ever cigarette a nicotine addict smoked. It is momentarily ‘relieved’ by the next cigarette. The brain concludes unconsciously, ‘Next time you feel nicotine withdrawal – do that again!’ In other words, the behaviour of lighting a cigarette in response to experiencing nicotine withdrawal is reinforced every time a smoker lights a cigarette regardless of the fact that the next cigarette will also cause nicotine withdrawal.

Whether a smoker is in a happy situation, a concentration situation, a sad situation, a stress situation, a relaxing situation, a boring situation or a lonely situation, they simultaneously experience nicotine

withdrawal, and respond by lighting a cigarette, thereby immediately feeling better than a moment before and oblivious to the fact that that cigarette will perpetuate nicotine withdrawal once it has been smoked.

It’s no wonder they think cigarettes help them to be happy or to concentrate, or to cope with sadness and stress, and help them relax or cope with boredom or loneliness! It’s got nothing to do with genuine pleasure or genuine improvement of mood. And every single time they light a cigarette in one of those situations, the brain concludes, unconsciously, ‘Next time that happens – do that again!’

Non-smokers don’t have to deal with any of the mental and physical aggravation of being addicted to nicotine. They don’t suffer nicotine poisoning, nicotine withdrawal, or the unnatural impact nicotine has on dopamine and their behaviour.

POINT B

All a smoker is trying to achieve when they light a cigarette is to recapture the feeling of peace, calm and tranquilllity they enjoyed their entire lives before they lit their first experimental cigarette. In other words, a smoker smokes in order to feel like a non-smoker.

At our live seminars, once a nicotine addict gets Point A and Point B, we explain how nicotine addiction, irrespective of nicotine’s influence on dopamine levels, is actually extremely mild, and that the really unpleasant symptoms a smoker suffers when he or she tries to quit without Easyway’s help are the result of a mental struggle. That struggle is caused by the smoker feeling deprived of what they think is a genuine pleasure or crutch.

Easyway goes on to reveal how the smoker’s belief system towards smoking – that it helps them to relax, socialize, handle

stress, concentrate, enjoy alcohol, take a break from work and so on – is based on misinformation, misinterpretation of personal experiences and their addiction to nicotine.

The smoker then concludes that there aren’t any advantages to smoking and therefore there is no point in doing it. This leaves the smoker to handle the extremely mild symptoms of nicotine withdrawal without having to experience the discomfort of feeling that they are missing out on something they used to think they enjoyed or received benefit from.

This is hugely important as the former smoker develops new responses to any habitual triggers to smoke over the first few weeks of being a happy non-smoker. For example, if they used to light a cigarette as they left work in the afternoon, that might be a moment when the thought of smoking crosses their mind, but once they quit with Easyway, instead of consciously processing thoughts and feelings of loss, they can assert and process thoughts and feelings of release and freedom. They rewire their brain. And it’s not only easy – it’s enjoyable.

DECISION TIME

So it’s time to decide what you really want. All smokers dream of a substitute that gives you that feeling of relaxation you get when you light up, without any of the disadvantages – failing health, the cost, slavery, filth and stigma.

Good news!

This is exactly what you get when you quit smoking or vaping and get free from nicotine. That feeling of relaxation is what non-smokers have all the time. It is the feeling of relief from nicotine craving. Non-smokers don’t suffer from nicotine craving. The only

reason you smoke or vape is to feel the way a non-smoker or non-vaper feels ALL THE TIME.

In order to become a happy non-smoker or non-vaper, you do need to conquer two enemies, but habit has nothing to do with it and you won’t suffer any pain. One of those enemies is the Little Monster in your body, which feeds on nicotine and cries out when it’s hungry. The cries of the Little Monster are so slight as to be almost imperceptible. You don’t need a gradual weaning process to cope with the physical sensation of withdrawal.

The only threat from the Little Monster is that it wakes up the Big Monster in your brain, which interprets the Little Monster’s cries as ‘I want a cigarette.’ The Big Monster makes you fixate on having a cigarette and causes you to feel deprived and miserable if you can’t. Continue to feed the Little Monster, and you prolong the life of both your enemies.

SUBSTITUTES

Anything that you use as a substitute for smoking perpetuates the illusion that you’re making a sacrifice when you quit.

Sweets, chocolate and normal chewing gum are common substitutes used by smokers trying to quit. Whenever they feel the nicotine craving, they have sweets, chocolate or chewing gum instead of smoking. This is only moving the problem, not solving it. The empty, insecure feeling of the body withdrawing from nicotine feels the same as hunger, but food does not relieve it. It might take your mind off the craving for a little while, but it doesn’t remove the feeling of sacrifice. As long as the Big Monster is still alive in your brain, you will never be free of the desire to smoke. You should avoid all substitutes, even those that are nicotine-free and seemingly harmless. Using them can create and perpetuate a feeling of deprivation, which easily develops into craving.