Chapter 17

There is nothing to fear

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Smoking Does Nothing For You • Real Vs Imaginary Fears • No Need For A Safety Net • Make Your Choice • Cigarettes Give You Nothing • Rewire Your Brain • Free From The Filthy Nightmare

As you approach the moment when you smoke your final cigarette, it’s natural to feel butterflies in your stomach and mistake this for the fear of success. Remember, fear plays a valuable role in your survival toolkit, but fear of being a non-smoker is completely irrational.

NICOTINE DOES NOTHING FOR YOU

When you first picked up this book you were under the impression that you derived some pleasure or benefit from smoking, vaping or using other nicotine products and you were looking for help in overcoming your need for that pleasure or crutch. As you’ve read through the book, you have turned your understanding of nicotine on its head, so you should now be clear on a number of facts that are the complete opposite of what smokers believe, such as:

Smoking or vaping or any other form of nicotine consumption doesn’t relieve your craving; it causes i

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Nicotine doesn’t ease stress; it is a major cause of stress

You don’t control nicotine; it controls you

We provide smoke breaks at our Easyway Seminars, and we are often asked, ‘If smoking does nothing for you whatsoever, why tell us to keep smoking until the final cigarette?’

It is a sensible question.

Again, you need to turn it on its head. It is important for you to keep smoking as you read the book, not because of what smoking does for you but for what happens to you when you are in the throes of wanting a cigarette but can’t have one.

The Big Monster tells you ‘I want a cigarette’ at a time when the nicotine from the previous cigarette is withdrawing from your body.

If you’re not allowed to smoke, you become fidgety and distracted. This inability to concentrate is caused by nicotine, so we need to make sure that you aren’t distracted from the task in hand because of that.

Once you’ve had your final cigarette, your concentration will no longer be disturbed by nicotine, but until that time it’s important that you continue to smoke or vape or dip snus or JUUL.

REAL

vs . IMAGINARY FEARS

Nicotine addicts don’t need anybody to tell them that it’s ‘a mug’s game’. That’s an old English expression for ‘you’re the victim in the scam.’ They are perfectly capable of weighing

up the advantages and disadvantages and concluding that they would be much better off not being addicted, yet they also know that the force that compels them to carry on is very real. Moreover, they know what it feels like when they don’t respond to that force.

No one wants to spend the rest of their life feeling the way a nicotine addict feels when they can’t have their drug and this is why they fear the thought of becoming free.

What they don’t realize is that it’s nicotine that causes the feeling and the only way to be completely rid of it is to stop taking the drug.

Fear is the force that keeps you in the trap. It feeds on all the brainwashing and myths you’ve been bombarded with from an early age. It’s important to recognize that this fear is caused by the addiction to nicotine, as distinct from the genuine, instinctive fears that form a vital part of your survival toolkit.

The instinctive fears that protect us from fire, falling, drowning, etc., are all perfectly logical. The fear of not being able to smoke is completely illogical. It is a fear based on your imagination, which is clouded by illusions. People who don’t smoke don’t suffer with it at all.

Allen Carr was a visionary who saw the answer [to smoking] in a flash of light. He just solved the puzzle like Sherlock Holmes. Unlike e-cigarettes, his method carries 0 per cent chance of its own health risk, 0 per cent toxicity, 0 per cent uncertainty over its relationship with pneumonia or cancer, and – after you spend a tiny sum on his book (or some people do a course) – is completely free for ever.

Victoria Coren Mitchel

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The fear of being free of nicotine was created when you started smoking

For smokers still caught in the nicotine trap, however, this fear is very real. The willpower method advises them to fight through the fear, when it’s obvious that what they really need is to have their eyes opened to the fact that the fear is not founded in reality. Easyway removes the fear by showing you that there is nothing to fear, there is no sacrifice, no deprivation, no pain or discomfort whatsoever. Nicotine does absolutely nothing for you at all and when you stop, all the things you think you’re going to miss evaporate.

But you don’t have to wait until you are a non-smoker to make the fear vanish. You can easily remove it by approaching the subject with an open mind and trying to be relaxed, logical and rational. Then you will see the truth through all the illusions and you will have no reason to fear life without smoking.

NO NEED FOR A SAFETY NET

Once they realize it’s just fear that prevents them from stopping, some smokers try to set their fear aside by telling themselves that they can always start smoking again if they’re finding it hard – quitting doesn’t have to be final. This is a big mistake. If you start off with that attitude, you’re very likely to be dragged back into the trap.

High-wire artists who don’t use a safety net may be adding an extra element of drama to their act, but there is more to it than that. During practice, they will use a safety net because they are not yet certain that they have perfected their routine; however, by the time of the performance they are so certain of their act and their ability to carry it off that the presence of a safety net

would be a hindrance – sowing a seed of doubt in their mind can actually throw them off balance.

The same applies with your own great act – escape from the nicotine trap. In order to walk free easily, painlessly and permanently, you must have complete certainty about what you’re doing. Telling yourself you can always take up smoking again if you’re struggling is like quitting with a safety net.

The whole point of a safety net is that it should go unused. The great thing about becoming free is that there’s no danger.

You’re not going to fall and hurt yourself; nothing bad is going to happen to you at all. You simply don’t need a safety net any more than you would need a handrail to walk across an empty room.

The certainty you need is in your hands. Perhaps you think nothing in life is ever certain. After all, the chances of being hit by a meteorite are infinitesimally small, yet there remains a possibility that it could happen. OK, that’s true. But here’s the difference. If a meteorite is going to hit you, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. It’s not your decision, whereas smoking a cigarette is entirely your decision. So you can be absolutely certain that it won’t happen.

Q: Why does anyone ever light up a cigarette?
A: Because they want to

Wait a minute! At the beginning of this chapter I restated the fact that you don’t control smoking; smoking controls you. Doesn’t this go against the above statement, that you only smoke because you want to?

This brings us to the key to quitting with Easyway. As a smoker, you choose when you smoke every single cigarette. Nobody else

forces you to do it. Yet it’s what controls the choices you make that makes the difference. As a smoker, it’s nicotine addiction that controls your choice to smoke.

Free from addiction, it’s easy to make the choice not to smoke. It’s in your hands. When you put out your final cigarette, you can be absolutely certain that you will never smoke another cigarette again. All you have to do is make sure you are never again sidetracked by the thought ‘I want a cigarette.’ You can achieve this by making sure you have three vital facts ingrained in your mind:

1. Smoking, vaping or using any nicotine product does absolutely nothing for you. You must understand why this is. That way you will have no feeling of deprivation.

2. You don’t need to go through any transitional period (often referred to incorrectly as the ‘withdrawal period’) before the craving goes completely. Craving is mental, not physical, and yours will be gone by the time you’ve finished reading this book. The physical withdrawal is so slight it’s hardly perceptible.

3. There is no such thing as ‘one cigarette’ or ‘the occasional cigarette’. Never think in terms of one cigarette; think of a hundred thousand cigarettes, a lifetime’s chain of filth, disease, and misery.

MAKE YOUR CHOICE

A lot of smokers find it hard to believe that they have a choice about whether to crave cigarettes or not. They are trapped by the misconception that you either crave something or you don’t, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Fortunately, they’re wrong. Your body will continue to experience nicotine withdrawal for a few days after quitting as the Little Monster goes through its

death throes, but that doesn’t mean you have to be miserable or crave a cigarette.

How you respond to the Little Monster dying is completely up to you. The physical feeling is very slight, the mildest feeling you can imagine: no more alarming than, out of the corner of your eye, noticing a bit of fluff on your shoulder. At first it might surprise you, but after a moment you’d simply respond by gently brushing the fluff away. You wouldn’t panic, nor would you worry about the next piece of fluff that might land on your shoulder.

It’s the Big Monster in your mind that reacts to that mild feeling by creating a mental process which, in turn, causes more troubling physical feelings. The great news is that, once you’ve changed your mental reaction to the mild physical feelings, the thought processes become enjoyable rather than bothersome.

The discomfort you’ve experienced in the past has been based on the following thought process, triggered by the mild withdrawal feeling:

‘I want a cigarette! I can’t have one! AAARGH!’

If there is no pleasure, benefit or crutch obtained from smoking, then you won’t want a cigarette. True? Of course, it is.

If you ‘don’t want a cigarette’, then you won’t feel that you ‘can’t have one’, and then you won’t have that ‘AAARGH!’ feeling. True? Of course, it is. I don’t want Brussels sprouts with my Sunday lunch. I’m not interested in sprouts. I can guarantee that at no point in my life will the thought of me not having sprouts make me feel ‘AAARGH’.

Now whether you love Brussels sprouts or loathe them, don’t let that stand in the way of understanding where I’m coming from. If you understand that something has absolutely nothing to offer

you, it takes no effort whatsoever to abstain from it.

If you understand that, just on principle, then you’re on the verge of becoming a happy non-smoker.

If after you quit you ever feel that you’re having that ‘I want a cigarette’ thought, please don’t worry. After years of smoking, it wouldn’t be surprising. Remember, it’s just like spotting a bit of fluff out of the corner of your eye on your shoulder. Just brush it off and don’t let it send you into a panic.

All it means is that you momentarily forgot that you quit; it doesn’t mean you want to smoke. No more than nearly taking a wrong turn on your way home from work towards your old apartment means that you want to move out of the amazing apartment you moved into recently. It just takes some time for our brains to get used to our new situation. I’ll come back to this issue later on, and then I’ll explain why thinking about cigarettes – thinking ‘I want a cigarette’ – may have made it hard, or even impossible, to quit in the past, and how, by rewiring your brain, you’re all set to find it easy this time.

The willpower method encourages smokers to fixate on the craving by making it the focus of their resistance. They have to use their willpower to try to avoid thinking about smoking and resist reaching for cigarettes. If you’ve ever made a conscious effort to NOT think about something, you’ll know what a futile exercise this is.

CIGARETTES GIVE YOU NOTHING

With Easyway, you can choose to brush off the Little Monster completely. It’s really not hard – the feeling is so slight. Or you can choose to rejoice in the feeling; after all, it signals the death of a mortal enemy. This is a very important point. Many smokers are convinced that cigarettes are their friend, their crutch, their source of confidence and courage, even part of

their identity. They fear that quitting will hit them like losing a close friend and maybe even a part of themselves. That’s why these smokers become whining ex-smokers. But their behaviour is very different from genuine grief.

When you lose a close friend, you mourn, you suffer shock, and there’s a huge sense of loss at the initial tragedy. But, to an extent, you recover from this shock and get on with life. The loss leaves a void in your life that can never be filled, you rightly keep your special memories of your friend alive and look back fondly, but you have no choice other than to accept the situation – and eventually you do.

But you’re not losing a friend. As a friend it would be most peculiar; it stinks, controls your every move, steals your money, won’t leave you alone and is trying to kill you. That’s not a friend. It’s an enemy!

When you rid yourself of a mortal enemy, there is no mourning. On the contrary, you can celebrate right from the start… and continue celebrating for the rest of your life, rejoicing every time the thought of that evil monster enters your mind.

So get it perfectly clear in your mind: The cigarette is not your friend and never has been. Nicotine in any form is not your friend and never has been. It has done absolutely nothing for you, ever, but it has harmed you constantly since the day you first started. It is your worst enemy and you are sacrificing nothing by cutting it out of your life, just making fantastic positive gains.

So if you’re wondering when the craving will go, the simple truth is…

The craving goes whenever you choose

You could spend the next few days, and possibly the rest of your

life, continuing to believe that cigarettes were your friend and wondering when you’ll stop grieving for them. Do that and you’ll feel miserable, the craving may never go and you’ll either feel deprived for the rest of your life, or, more likely, you’ll end up smoking again and feeling even worse.

OR

You could recognize the cigarette and nicotine for the evil enemy that it really is. Then you need neither crave a cigarette, nor wait for anything to happen. Instead, whenever the thought of smoking enters your head, you can rejoice: ‘Hurrah! I’m a non-smoker!’

REWIRE YOUR BRAIN

During the first few days after your final cigarette, the Little Monster will be crying out, sending messages to your brain that it wants you to interpret as ‘I want a cigarette.’

Now that you understand the true picture, instead of feeling compelled to smoke, or feeling uptight because you can’t, you know there’s no need to panic. Pause for a moment. Take a deep breath and simply brush it away as if it were a piece of fluff on your shoulder.

Throughout this book you have reprogrammed your brain to enable yourself to see the true picture and to respond to the various triggers with a logical mindset, instead of the illogical, addicted mindset that you began with.

Previously your mind interpreted the withdrawal pangs of the Little Monster as ‘I want a cigarette’, because it had been filled with misinformation, convincing it that a cigarette would satisfy the empty, insecure feeling. But now your brain is equipped with different information – the truth – and you understand that, far from relieving that feeling, cigarettes cause it.

So just relax, keep your mind open, and accept the feeling

for what it is: the Little Monster fading away. In this frame of mind, these become moments of real pleasure rather than moments of struggle.

Now you need to prepare your mind for other triggers that may occur, particularly during the first few days after your final cigarette or shot of nicotine. You might find, for example, that you forget you’ve quit. This can happen at any time.

It often occurs first thing in the morning when you’re coming around from sleep. You find yourself thinking, ‘I’ll get up and have a smoke.’ Then you remember that you’ve quit and you may feel shaken, worried that your mind is relapsing into the mindset of a smoker.

A similar thing may happen when you’re socializing. Suddenly there’s a pack of cigarettes thrust under your nose and you instinctively reach out to take one. Then you catch yourself and withdraw your hand. ‘Aha!’ say the smokers around you, ‘I thought you’d quit.’ They’re almost gleeful, as if their main aim is to catch you out and drag you back into the trap.

Both these situations can be disconcerting and doubts can creep in if you’re not prepared, so make sure you’re ready in advance. There will be times when you forget that you’re a non-smoker and something will trigger your old thought process. This is actually a good sign. It shows that you’re not obsessed with smoking or not smoking; you’re just getting on with life like any other non-smoker. It is not a sign that part of you still wants a cigarette.

Prepare yourself for these situations so you see them coming and are ready to remain calm and react with total confidence, laughing off your action and thinking, ‘Isn’t it great? I don’t need to smoke any more. I’m free!’ These situations are no more concerning than taking the wrong turn to your old apartment

shortly after you’ve moved. Smokers will envy you because every single one of them would love to be like you.

FREE FROM THE FILTHY NIGHTMARE

Other triggers could be after a meal, when having a drink, after making love… any of the occasions when you used to think the cigarette was ‘special’. Although you have freed your mind from the illusion that these cigarettes were special, the association between these occasions and smoking can linger as a habitual reaction that turns your thoughts to smoking. Again, see these moments as a cause for celebration. Rejoice that you are now able to enjoy and genuinely cherish these moments rather than interrupt the fun to have a cigarette and choke yourself to death.

This interruption of relaxing moments (after a meal), social moments (with a drink), or moments of pure unbridled passion and pleasure (after lovemaking) occurs only when someone smokes cigarettes, or vapes, or uses any other nicotine product. Being free from that is priceless. If your partner smokes, don’t worry. Let it happen, and let them take their smoking breaks when they need to. Do your best not to make them feel bad about it and they’ll see how easy you’ve found it to be free and will, in time, be likely to emulate you.

Once you’re prepared, you won’t be tripped up. Where you once had fear, you will have an incredible sense of freedom, the freedom of being a happy non-smoker.