Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr Read Free Book Online

that habits are hard to break. We do it every day with no bother whatsoever.
    So why do we find it difficult to break a ‘habit’ that tastes awful, that kills us, costs us a fortune, that is filthy and disgustingand that we would love to break anyway, when all we need to do is to stop doing it? The answer is that smoking is not a habit: IT IS NICOTINE ADDICTION! Perhaps you feel this explanation explains why it
is
difficult to ‘give up’? It certainly explains why so many smokers believe that it has to be difficult. This misconception arises because most smokers do not understand drug addiction and it persists because they have been brainwashed into believing that they get some genuine pleasure or crutch from smoking. They therefore believe that they are making a genuine sacrifice when they quit.
    The beautiful truth is that once you understand nicotine addiction and the real reasons you smoke it is easy to stop smoking. A few weeks from now the only mystery will be why you found it necessary to smoke for as long as you have, and why you cannot persuade other smokers of HOW NICE IT IS TO BE A NON-SMOKER!

C HAPTER 4
T HE S INISTER T RAP
    S moking is the most subtle, sinister trap that man and nature have ever combined to devise. What or who gets us into the trap in the first place? The thousands who have already fallen into it. They even warn us not to start. That smoking is a filthy, disgusting habit that will eventually destroy us and cost us a fortune, but still we cannot believe that they are not enjoying it. One of the most tragic aspects of smoking is how hard we have to work in order to become hooked.
    It is the only trap in nature which has no lure, no bait. What springs the trap is not that cigarettes taste so marvelous; it’s that they taste so awful. If that first cigarette tasted wonderful, alarm bells would ring and, as intelligent human beings, we could then understand why so many get hooked and spend the rest of their lives smoking. But because that first cigarette tastes so awful, our young minds are reassured that we could neverbecome hooked on something so disgusting, and we think that because we are not enjoying them we can stop whenever we want to. But by that stage we are already hooked.
    Nicotine is the only drug in nature that has the opposite effect to that which is desired. Boys usually start because they want to appear tough or cool—like Mel Gibson in
Lethal Weapon
or Bruce Willis in the
Die Hard
movies. In reality, tough is the last thing you feel when smoking your first cigarette. You dare not inhale, and if you do, you start to feel dizzy, then sick—usually within seconds. All you want to do is get away from the other boys and throw the filthy things away. We don’t even need the health warnings. Our bodies tell us in no uncertain terms—GET THIS POISON OUT OF ME!
    With girls or young women, the aim is to be the sophisticated modern young lady. We have all seen them taking little drags on a cigarette, looking absolutely ridiculous. Trying to copy Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Julia Roberts or Sarah Jessica Parker, or in years gone by, Bette Davis or Marlene Dietrich—epitomes of successful, attractive women.
    By the time the boys have learned to look tough and the girls sophisticated, they wish they had never started in the first place. Actually, I’m now of the view that no woman looks sophisticated when they smoke. Notice how pictures of these beautiful, glamorous smokers never show them actually smoking, but just holding the lit cigarette. It seems to me that there is no intermediate stage between the obvious beginner and the wrinkled, pinched look of a hardcore smoker.
    After we get hooked we then spend the rest of our lives trying to justify to ourselves why we do it, telling our children not to get caught in the trap and, at odd times trying to escape ourselves.
    The trap is so designed that we only try to stop when we have stress in our lives,