NEWS: Age Blogs - 'The only way to give up smoking?'

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In honour of International No Tobacco Day, an interesting read, hopefully it and the user comments are helpful for anyone trying to kick the habit

The only way to give up smoking?
Sam de Brito
Posted May 31, 2007 12:04 AM

Today is International No Tobacco Day and if you smoke durries, this will probably be the last paragraph you read of this post because you just don't want to hear about it, do you?

That's the thing with smoking; if you're not mentally retarded, you know it's bad for you, you know it's slowly killing you, you know it's expensive, it stinks, it's soooo stoopid but you keep doing it and all the shock advertisements, statistics, dying relatives, sneers from non-smokers and charcoal loogies in the shower aren't going to stop you.

Why? Plain and simple because you're an addict and addicts will ignore everyone and do anything to keep their addiction in play.

I know this because I was a smoker for more than 18 years and nothing, including my dad dying of cancer, my step-dad being diagnosed with the disease, girlfriends threatening to leave me or chronic asthma could convince me to quit.

And then I picked up a book ...

An ex-girlfriend of mine once dubbed my smoking habit "the crazy cigarette" because I used to smoke just one a day before I'd go to sleep and how crazy is that?

I was one cigarette a day from being a non-smoker but I kept the embers of addiction glowing and, sure as a bushfire in a breeze, my smoking increased.

Like all addicts I had a good reason; I told myself I couldn't sleep without that cigarette which, seeing nicotine is a stimulant, makes as much sense as someone saying beer helps them drive straight.

Every smoker has some variation of this "good reason"; it helps them relax, it helps them concentrate (kinda contradictory don't you think?), it's something to do when they're bored, it's a social thing, they deserve one vice ... blah, blah, blah.

That's the insidious nature of addiction, but it wasn't until I picked up a book by Allen Carr, The Easy Way To Stop Smoking (thanks to recommendations from many readers of this blog) that the pathetic nature of my rationalisation hit me full force.

Carr famously tells readers they should continue to smoke while reading his book, which I did; unfortunately, I continued to smoke after I'd finished reading it as well.

This is not to discount the power of The Easy Way as it's helped thousands and thousands of people stop smoking by stripping away the little lies they tell themselves; it's just it didn't strip away mine - that smoking helped me sleep.

After another month of puffing away, I decided to upgrade; Carr had written another book The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently in which he expanded on his methods, chipping away more intricately at the idiocy of the habit.

Carr claims that, contrary to perception, smokers do not receive a boost from busters: smoking only relieves the withdrawal symptoms from the previous ciggie, which in turn creates more withdrawal symptoms once finished. This is how the addiction perpetuates itself.

He asserts that the "relief" smokers feel on sucking down a ciggie, the feeling of being "back to normal", is the feeling experienced by non-smokers all the time. So smokers, when they light up, are really trying to achieve a state that non-smokers enjoy their whole lives.

Makes sense?

It did for me and this time it worked. I stopped smoking for 16 days then, weirdly, decided to have "just one ciggie" and within days I was back at it again, smoking as heavily as ever, loathing myself for my weakness, an insect flirting with a pitcher plant.

Around this time, I remembered that Carr also ran seminars, which have been so successful they are now operating in 38 countries, endorsed by former-smokers he'd helped kick the habit like Anthony Hopkins, Richard Branson and Ruby Wax.

I gotta say, I felt like a bit of a sucker. Having bought both of Carr's books, there I was approaching his clinics for more of the same but I was truly desperate. I had tried to quit using will-power so many times and always it came back to the same thought - it's just one cigarette, it helps me sleep, it's not that bad.

Walking into the Sydney seminar, the first thing I saw was a massive pile of cigarette packets - hundreds and hundreds, scattered in the middle of the room, dead soldiers left by smokers who'd taken previous seminars and won their battle against tobacco.

The person who'd be conducting my class was an English woman named Natalie and when I tried to minimise my habit as just a few cigarettes she said "if you can see the benefit in one, you can see the benefit in a thousand."

Sitting down and staring at all those packets, that's all I could think of; how the decision to smoke "just one ciggie" had led to thousands and thousands more, easily as many as the revolting landmass of death that lay in front of me.

The seminar attendees were a mix of races, ages and social groups and we all had different reasons for wanting to quit - health, spouses, disgust - and we all had one thing in common, we were slaves to a habit we despised.

As Natalie began to run through the contents of both Carr's books, I wondered how this 'live' format was going to be any different. At intervals we were allowed to go outside to smoke on the balcony and it was during one of these breaks something clicked for me.

It's rare nowadays to be in a group where everyone has to step out for a smoke, so the pathos was magnified when all 15 of us were suddenly there, puffing away, slaves to the weed, yet paying hundreds of dollars to be shown why we shouldn't.

It was insanity.

By way of disclaimer, let me say that I did not pay for my seminar and it struck me at the time that many people who did quit because of Allen Carr's class might do so because they felt stupid paying $480 to give up, then go straight back onto ciggies.

That thought lasted until the next break.

This time, Natalie asked us to stay silent while we smoked, to dispel one of the more persistent myths about the habit - that smoking is social. Standing in the open air with the rest of the seminar attendees, the ludicrousness of that idea hammered home.

Cigarettes aren't social, people are social.

And with that, the other myths began to shatter: cigarettes, don't calm you down, they make you anxious; they don't relieve boredom, they're boring as batshit; and they certainly don't help you sleep.

Any excuse I had given myself for smoking was just that, an excuse, a little boy's attempt to rationalise not wanting to grow up, not taking responsibility for his actions.

I stubbed out my ciggie with a good inch of it to go. What a moron I was. I just wanted this nightmare over and in a rush of clarity I realised it was.

Natalie continued the tail-end of the seminar but it was already complete for me, I didn't need further convincing. As we again trailed outside to the balcony to smoke our final, ritual cigarette, I did it angrily.

I rolled mine in my fingers, pissed off with Peter Stuyvesant, pissed off with tobacco, but most of all, pissed off with the lies I'd told myself for so many years.

I would never do this again.

As I write this, it's been five weeks without a ciggie, the longest I've gone in almost a decade - and the difference is I'm not struggling, I'm powering.

I don't feel like I'm giving up anything, in fact I've gotten something back; my self-respect, my lungs; my sense of control over my life.

While this might sound like a very long advertisement for Carr's books and seminars, I'm only too happy to recommend them. And while they may not be the only way to give up smoking, they were certainly the only way that worked for me.

DISCLAIMER

I attended the Allen Carr Easy Way to Sop Smoking seminar for free. The usual cost is A$480.

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