Chapter 15

all smokers are the same

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Women Smokers • The Sacrificial Mother • The Truth About Casual Smokers • Occasional Smokers • Stoppers And Starters • The Secret Smoker

The addictive personality myth feeds the belief that some smokers are more susceptible to the nicotine trap than others and some can control their smoking better than others. So let’s try to identify which type of smoker you are and what you can do about it.

WOMEN SMOKERS

Tobacco companies don’t claim that cigarettes keep you slim because they can’t – it’s not true. Advertising, for all its vices, still has to carry at least a modicum of truth. All they can do is perpetuate the myth by putting their products in the hands of slender film stars, models and other female icons. Sadly, the marketing works.

Not so long ago, women smokers were very much in the minority. Now, in many countries, they outnumber men.

You could put this down to a shift in the social structure, which has seen women embrace many of the behaviours of men. The idea of gender roles is fast becoming outmoded, and so perhaps you consider it quite natural that women should smoke just as much as men. But that would suggest that, in the past,

society was full of male smokers with wives and girlfriends who wished they could smoke too. In truth, those male smokers often did their smoking in secret because their wives and girlfriends were constantly pleading with them to stop. They could see it was a filthy, disgusting thing to do and that it was swallowing the household budget and threatening to leave them a widow. Quite simply, women didn’t smoke because they had too much sense!

So why, now that fewer men are smoking, have we seen such soaring smoking statistics among women? Quite simply, the tobacco industry has made a concerted effort to hook women. Back in the 1970s, the proportion of men who smoked was roughly double the proportion of women. To an industry like Big Tobacco, a whole section of society that rejects its product like that is a potential new market. And so Big Tobacco began to make some of its products more feminine. Menthol flavouring, more elegant packaging, slimmer cigarettes and rumours that smoking made you thin and helped to ease stress abounded. There was even a female-targeted brand called ‘Slims’.

Women were taking on more and more demanding lifestyles, combining full-time careers with motherhood and, in many cases, still being the ones who cooked dinner, made the children’s lunches, ironed the shirts and cleaned the house. Brainwashed with the myth that smoking eases stress and keeps you slim, no wonder they reached for a cigarette whenever they found five minutes to themselves! So have women become more susceptible to the nicotine trap? Not at all. All that’s happened is that Big Tobacco has gone after women with a vengeance, perpetuating the myths that lure us into the trap and keep us there until we find the key to escape.

The key is seeing through the illusions and understanding the true picture: that smoking does not relieve stress, or provide any

kind of crutch at all; nor does it suppress your appetite and help you stay slim. The truth is exactly what women used to tell their smoking husbands before they themselves were lured into the trap:

Smoking does nothing for you whatsoever

THE SACRIFICIAL MOTHER

I mentioned motherhood. This brings me to a major problem that is specific to women – smoking and pregnancy. It’s long been known that smoking when pregnant harms the baby. Some women are lucky and find that just as nature alters their eating habits to benefit both mother and unborn child, it also takes away their desire to smoke when pregnant. It’s another example of the incredible machine constantly working to protect you.

Other women, however, are not so lucky. They make a conscious effort to stop but fail.

They spend the entire pregnancy feeling guilty and, even if the baby is born healthy, they can be left with a feeling of guilt for the rest of their lives. To allow young women to become hooked on nicotine and then make them feel guilty if they don’t quit when pregnant is one of society’s more shameful acts of hypocrisy. Even when an expectant mother does succeed in quitting, it’s usually only for the duration of the pregnancy. Some light up the moment the cord is cut!

You can imagine why. The birth has gone well, mother and baby are fine, the anxiety is over, the pain and suffering are momentarily forgotten and the mother’s mood switches from exhaustion to the highest of highs: the two extremes that most strongly trigger the Big Monster to say, ‘I need a cigarette.’ Moreover, after all those months of resisting the temptation to smoke, and after going through the challenge of childbirth, the

mother believes she deserves one – and who is going to tell her she’s wrong!

Some new mothers resist the initial impulse but are caught out at a later date. Regrettably, very few women stop smoking permanently because of pregnancy. The blame doesn’t lie with them. Addiction doesn’t care if you’re the expectant mother of a child.

A major problem for women smokers who stop during pregnancy is that they’re quitting not for their own sake but for the sake of the baby. If you try to quit for the sake of someone else, you will believe that you’re making a sacrifice and will feel deprived. When you stop smoking it should be for the purely selfish reason that you’re going to enjoy life a whole lot more as a non-smoker – you’re not ‘giving up’ anything, and you will be happy to be free.

Many doctors, with the best of intentions, advise women to try to cut down on their smoking if they’re finding it impossible to quit during pregnancy. The thinking is that a little of the poison will do less damage than a lot of it. This seems logical, but the truth is that it’s actually harder to cut down than it is to quit smoking altogether.

Instead of being free from nicotine withdrawal after a few days, mother and baby are subjected to it for the whole nine months. Meanwhile, the illusion is ingrained in the mother’s mind that she is making a sacrifice and each cigarette is incredibly precious. Once the baby is born, her motivation to go on depriving herself is gone and, like the dieter who reaches her target weight, she embarks on a binge to ‘reward’ herself. Sadly, because of cutting down, many young mothers end up more hooked after giving birth than they were before the pregnancy. The lucky ones stop smoking as soon as they know they’re pregnant.

There is a common belief among all smokers that people who smoke less are better off. This is a myth, as I will explain, but the

fact that all smokers believe it proves that no smoker is happy that they smoke.

I have explained why the tendency with all addictions is to take more, not less. As your body builds a tolerance to the toxin, you require bigger doses of the drug to feel the same effect. It is only external restrictions, such as money and opportunity, that prevent all smokers from becoming heavy smokers.

Yet no one sets out to become a heavy smoker. We all assume we can control our intake, smoking only when we want to. What we don’t realize, at least not when we first land in the trap, is that the addiction makes you want to smoke all the time.

The slightly empty, insecure feeling of nicotine withdrawing from your body is what makes you smoke the next cigarette and, while that gives you the illusion of relief, it is not complete and it is only temporary.

The feeling returns soon after you put out your cigarette – the Little Monster starts crying for its next fix – and the Big Monster immediately starts nagging you to oblige. Cutting down increases the value we place on each cigarette and decreases our desire to quit.

So anyone who restricts the amount they smoke is going against the compulsion of their addiction and will feel they are making a sacrifice. Heavy smokers smoke as much as they feel they want to, yet they envy other smokers who smoke less than they do. Weird, isn’t it?

Exercise: TWO QUESTIONS

Think about this carefully.

When it comes to deciding what type of smoker, vaper or nicotine addict you want to be, there are two questions you should ask yourself

How much would you smoke or vape if you could choose your ideal amount?

Having decided how often you would like to smoke, the next question is: Why don’t you smoke, vape, imbibe that much now?

No one forces you to smoke, or vape, or snus or chew tobacco. It is only you who takes the nicotine from the pack. If you want to do it less often, who’s stopping you?

Smokers envy anyone who smokes less than they do because they think they’re getting the best of both worlds: they’re getting their pleasure or crutch and they don’t appear to be enslaved by smoking. In short, they appear to be in control of their smoking.

In fact, both beliefs are false. There is no pleasure or crutch from smoking and light smokers suffer just as much in the nicotine trap as heavy smokers. In fact, they suffer more because they are constantly fighting the urge to smoke more. The same goes for vapers.

Any smoker who has tried to cut down knows that attempting to restrict the amount you smoke through willpower works for only a limited period.

When your smoking is restricted by factors such as smoking bans, it’s easy to go without because there is no question of smoking. Just like the student in the exam, when you know that smoking is not an option, the Big Monster doesn’t bother you. It’s only when you can smoke but try to stop yourself from doing so that the Big Monster begins to torment you.

Some ex-smokers fall into the trap again because they grow overconfident and think they can have ‘just the one’ without getting hooked. They still believe they have made a sacrifice, they think they deserve a reward and they think they can control

their smoking. It’s the same delusion that leads to smokers getting hooked in the first place. Even if you think you have many strong reasons for lighting up, you wouldn’t light that one cigarette if you knew you would have to continue smoking for the rest of your life.

Be very clear about this:

There is no such thing as ‘just the one’

If you smoke one cigarette, what’s to stop you smoking the next and the next and the next? It doesn’t matter how heavy a smoker you are…

The next cigarette could be the one that kills you; there is always another and another and another

A WORD TO THE WISE ABOUT ‘JOINTS’

Apologies to the many readers who have never/would never touch illicit drugs under any circumstances – you can feel free to skip this small section, especially if you find the subject distasteful. I make no apologies for covering it, though, purely because it’s an issue that arises for many, many smokers. At our centres around the world, we’re often (rather sheepishly) asked by clients whether they have to stop smoking ‘grass’, ‘weed’, cannabis or marijuana. To be clear, we don’t encourage, endorse or recommend the use of any illicit drug, but as long as the smoker avoids mixing their drug with nicotine (more of a European practice than a US one) they’re perfectly able to carry on smoking those other drugs once they’ve quit, using a pipe, a bowl or hot-knifing it, instead of mixing it with tobacco

.

There are three important caveats to this advice:

1. It would be far better, from a health point of view, to find a less toxic way of taking the drug – in tea, for example.

2. Never, ever let the fact that you ‘get away’ with smoking neat joints encourage you to be so confident of your freedom that, at some point in the future, you casually share a joint containing tobacco at a social event. If you do, you’ll be smoking again in no time at all. GUARANTEED! Don’t do it!

3. Don’t use joints as substitutes. If you attempt to replace cigarettes with neat joints, you’ll lose your job, your partner, your house and your whole purpose in life, seemingly without a care in the world! My tongue is firmly in my cheek on this point, but please don’t let that detract from this warning: Any substitute of any sort, let alone one containing one of the drugs mentioned, will lead to you smoking again.

We offer one-to-one treatment for cannabis and cocaine addiction, and a host of other drugs, at our London centre, with online treatment via live videolink to anywhere in the world. The first thing we ask those who seek our help is that they separate the drug from the cigarette (when nicotine is involved in the drug-taking). It is only then that we can deal with the drug in question.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CASUAL SMOKERS

Casual smokers give the impression of being in control because it suits them to do so. No one wants the world to know they’re pathetic slaves. If only all smokers would take their heads out of the sand and declare their hatred of smoking, it would be extinct in no time. It’s only the illusion that other people are enjoying

smoking that makes it difficult to stop.

There is no reason to envy casual smokers for the limited amount of smoking they do. Think about it: you’re really envying them for the amount of smoking they don’t do. Some people who smoke for the first time are lucky and they don’t get hooked. The unlucky ones become smokers. Heads you gain nothing; tails you lose everything. It makes you wonder why anyone lights that first cigarette… Unless you believe that there is a third option, an idyllic middle ground where you can be neither a non-smoker nor a smoker who’s hooked for life.

A happy casual smoker. This is the delusion that fools everyone who smokes ‘just the one’.

If this is the type of smoker you would like to be, let me ask you a simple question: Why are you not one already? And if you claim to be one, why are you reading this book? Let’s get rid of these illusions about casual smokers once and for all.

If I said I could fix it so you could smoke just two cigarettes a day for the rest of your life, would you go for it? Better still, suppose you could control your smoking so you smoked only when you really wanted to. That’s a pretty exciting prospect, isn’t it? But that’s what you already do! Has anyone ever forced you to light a cigarette? Every cigarette you’ve ever smoked has been because you’ve chosen to smoke it, even though part of your brain wished that you didn’t.

So I take it that you’ll settle for just the two cigarettes a day. Well, if that’s what you want, you can do just that. Who’s stopping you? In fact, why haven’t you been smoking just two a day for your entire smoking life? Could it be that you wouldn’t have been happy smoking just two a day? Of course, you wouldn’t. Nor is any other smoker.

Sure, there are plenty of smokers who restrict themselves to

smoking just two cigarettes a day. They appear to be in control because they try very hard to give that impression, just as they have to try very hard to limit their smoking… every day… for the rest of their lives. Remember these three facts:

1. The tendency is to smoke more, not less.

2. All smokers wish they had never started.

3. All smokers lie to themselves as well as to others.

ALLEN CARR’S CASEBOOK: Would you envy someone who smokes five cigarettes a day?

A man rang me late at night, desperate to see me as soon as possible. His opening words were, ‘Mr Carr, I want to stop smoking before I die.’ He explained that he had already lost his legs through smoking, now had throat cancer, and had been told that he had to stop or he would be dead within a few months. He said he couldn’t go ‘cold turkey’, so he was cutting down gradually. He had gone from forty to five a day but couldn’t cut down any further. I told him to smoke whenever he wanted and come and see me in a few days.

The man began to cry over the phone. He explained it had taken him a year of tremendous willpower and misery to get from forty to five and it had left him a broken man. He spent every minute of every day obsessed with waiting for the few minutes’ reprieve when he could have one of his five cigarettes. I booked him into our next available appointment.

Fear keeps smokers hooked and when they’ve already crippled themselves, they’re even more frightened. Cutting down makes you feel more uptight because you have to wait for your fix, and it increases the illusion of pleasure by making each cigarette seem more precious. This all serves to increase the panic and fear, which is one of the biggest barriers to communication.

It took two sessions to convince the man to open his mind, understand

the trap and get free. One of the key points for him was the joy of no longer being controlled by the drug. When he was on forty a day, he was hardly even conscious of smoking them, but on five a day his entire life was dominated by cigarettes. Day in, day out, it was sheer torture.

Prior to calling me, he had been to see his doctor, who had prescribed him a chewing gum containing precisely the drug that he was so desperate to kick. If you’re imagining some weak man crying his eyes out, you can forget it. He was an army veteran and he was as hard as nails, but smoking had brought him to his knees. A few minutes ago, you might have casually envied him or even aspired to be a five-a-day smoker. Don’t.

All smokers fear they will kill themselves, yet they tell themselves it will never happen to them. They’re burying their head in the sand. Millions of smokers each year suffer the trauma of discovering they’ve made themselves ill by smoking. Not one of them thought it was going to happen to them.

It’s amazing how a smoker will buy, for example, a lottery ticket in the hope that they will win. Now, in the UK Euromillions Lottery, the chances of winning the jackpot are 1 in 140 million. ONE chance in ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY MILLION! Why do they buy a ticket? The thought process is: ‘Someone has to win it – IT COULD BE ME!’

Yet tell a smoker that there’s a one in two chance that smoking will kill them 10, 20 or 30 years before their time, and what will they think?

‘It won’t be me!’

Think about it. A 1 in 140 million chance of being a

multimillionaire and we’ll not only buy a ticket but keep our fingers crossed, and check the result with a sense of excitement, expectation and hope. Yet there’s a one in two chance that smoking will destroy us and what do we think? ‘It won’t be me.‘ Can you see the anomaly here?

I’m not telling you this to worry you, and certainly not to scare you. I just want to make sure that you are beginning to see the smoking trap for what it is, and all the amazing, fantastic bonuses you’re set to enjoy once you’re free. You don’t have to worry about any of this any more.

If you’re reading this worrying you might have ‘done all the damage already’, please stop. There is not an illness or disease known to man where quitting smoking doesn’t dramatically improve the prognosis many, many times over, to quite an extraordinary extent.

ALLEN CARR’S CASEBOOK: The Guilty Solicitor

Such is the power of the myths around smoking that a highly intelligent person can still take it up after losing both parents to lung cancer. A lady lawyer phoned and insisted on paying for a private session. She had been smoking for 12 years, since her parents died, but had vowed never to smoke more than two cigarettes a day because she was terrified of contracting lung cancer herself.

Most smokers would think that being able to smoke just two a day would be a dream come true. This is part of the myth. We assume that casual smokers are in control. People who knew the lady lawyer thought she was a happy casual smoker in full control. She wouldn’t cry or show her fear in their company. Like all smokers, she felt helpless and stupid and put on a very convincing show to conceal her inadequacy. In truth, she was living a nightmare

.

For 12 years, she craved nicotine, but her fear of contracting cancer gave her the immense willpower and discipline required to resist the craving for all but the 20 minutes when she was smoking those two cigarettes each day. She hated being a smoker but kept her hatred to herself out of shame. While other smokers envied her apparent control, she was constantly battling her addiction.

This lady’s apparently casual smoking was controlled entirely by fear. Yet she just couldn’t bring herself to quit completely. Her self-imposed restriction was her biggest hindrance. The less she smoked, the less likely she was to fall ill and the more precious the cigarette appeared to be. Thus her motivation to quit was diminished and her fear of deprivation increased, making it impossible for her to quit. Only when she was able to understand this and see that those two cigarettes a day were doing absolutely nothing for her was she able to stop smoking completely.

The nicotine trap is unrelenting: the more you consume, the more you want to consume; the less you consume, the more you want to consume. It’s like tying someone up, so that the slightest movement tightens the rope around their neck.

OCCASIONAL SMOKERS

But what about those casual smokers who seem so cool and relaxed that it’s impossible to believe they’re suffering? I’m talking about the ones that can go for days without smoking and just have a cigarette every now and then. In the eyes of other smokers, these lucky people really have got their smoking under control. They seem to have been spared the misery of addiction. The truth is very different and you can unveil it by asking one simple question:

WHAT’S THE POINT

?

If they think they’re getting some genuine pleasure or crutch from these occasional cigarettes, why wait so long in between? If they don’t, why smoke at all?

If you’re a heavy smoker who envies occasional smokers, have you ever tried cutting down to one or two a day yourself? If so, what was it like? Every time I ask a heavy smoker the same question, they reply that it was hell, or words to that effect.

Smokers who go for weeks without a cigarette don’t even suffer the illusion of getting pleasure or a crutch from smoking; they just go through the motions to be part of the company. All smokers started off like that, convinced they would never get hooked. They’re like a fly hovering around the lip of the pitcher plant.

If you think it sounds appealing to want only one cigarette every now and then, wouldn’t it be even better never to want one at all? All smokers who restrict their smoking are creating a number of serious problems for themselves:

1. They keep themselves physically addicted to nicotine. This keeps their brain craving cigarettes.

2. They wish their lives away waiting for the next fix.

3. Instead of smoking whenever they feel like it and partially relieving their craving most of the time, they force themselves to suffer constant mental aggravation and conflict.

4. They reinforce the illusion that smoking is enjoyable.

Cutting down increases the illusion of pleasure because the longer you desire nicotine, the more wonderful it feels when you relieve the craving. ‘What’s so bad about that?’ you might ask. Because it’s not genuine pleasure; it’s relief from discomfort, like wearing tight shoes for the pleasure of taking them off. The only way to increase the illusion of pleasure is to increase the discomfort

.

No smoker enjoys that discomfort – and casual smokers have to endure it longer than other smokers. Casual smoking is rarely sustainable. The addiction makes you want to scratch the itch, not suffer it, and the tendency is to smoke more and more.

Casual smoking is a terrible form of slavery. You’re constantly using willpower to restrict the amount you smoke and constantly thinking about whether or not you will allow yourself to smoke. Get it clear in your mind:

You don’t control your smoking; it controls you

Most smokers know from experience that cutting down doesn’t help you quit. On the contrary, it usually leaves you more addicted. It’s much easier to escape the trap by stopping outright. There’s no need for half measures. Even if you switched to vaping for the rest of your life, why would you want to when you can be free of the whole filthy nightmare?

STOPPERS AND STARTERS

Casual smokers and occasional smokers have the worst of both worlds: they can neither smoke when they want to, nor do they have the wonderful joy of being free. The same is true of smokers who are always stopping and starting again.

This type of smoker is also envied by heavier smokers because they appear to have control over their smoking, in the same way that occasional smokers do. Not wanting to appear stupid, they encourage the misconception, but, of course, it’s a lie.

Think about it: If these smokers truly enjoy being smokers, why do they keep stopping? And if they don’t enjoy being smokers, why do they keep starting again? The answer is very obvious: they don’t enjoy being smokers and they don’t enjoy being non-

smokers either. How tragic! Trapped in a kind of purgatory, repeatedly going through the trauma of quitting and the misery and self-loathing of starting again.

To be a happy non-smoker for the rest of your life, you need to achieve the right frame of mind. If you believe you’re making a sacrifice, you will always feel deprived. If you regard just one puff on a cigarette as a pleasure or crutch, you’ll remain vulnerable for the rest of your life.

Easyway makes it easy to quit completely and permanently by helping you to remove any desire to smoke. That doesn’t mean you can smoke the occasional cigarette and use the method to get free again. If you feel the desire for ‘just the one’ cigarette, then the Big Monster is still alive, you haven’t removed the brainwashing and you still believe the myth.

Our mission is to remove your desire to take even a single puff of a cigarette because if you want one you will want a million. Even if you resist the temptation to have that single puff but merely desire it, you will not be a happy non-smoker. You will be a miserable ex-smoker. Eventually, when your willpower runs out, you will cease to be a miserable ex-smoker and will become an even more miserable smoker.

And the most miserable smoker of all is the secret smoker.

THE SECRET SMOKER

Secret smokers can’t even pretend that they enjoy smoking. They steal furtive drags when nobody is looking, then try to remove the smell with peppermints, air freshener and other futile means. They’re not kidding anyone except themselves.

Does that ring a bell? You tell your loved ones you’re going to quit but don’t and then start lying to cover it up. Breaking the promise is bad enough, but to compound that by lying is the ultimate humiliation

.

If you smoke openly, you can at least claim that you smoke because you choose to. As a secret smoker, you have to admit to yourself that you’re a pathetic slave to nicotine. Secret smokers go through life despising themselves. People with great integrity find themselves lying to conceal their shame. They even start believing their own lies, despite the obvious signs: the yellow stains on their fingers, lips and teeth, the smell on their breath, in their hair and on their clothes.

This is what the addiction does to you. When you’ve tried as hard as you can to cut down or quit and still you find yourself helplessly drawn back to smoking, the confusion, despair and shame make a liar of you. But although you lie to your loved ones and to yourself, underneath you remain acutely aware of the painful truth: you’re a slave to nicotine, a miserable, pathetic drug addict.

All smokers are the same

It doesn’t matter what type of smoker you think you are, all smokers have something fundamental in common: they all wish they had never started. You have no reason to envy any of them. They are all victims of the trap from which you are trying to escape. And you’re doing well.

Every type of smoker would love to wake up in the morning in the position you’ll be in shortly…

Free