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

answer is the same for all smokers, but the variety of replies is infinite. All smokers know in their heart of hearts that they have been scammed. They know that they had no need to smoke before they became hooked. Most of them can remember that their first cigarette tasted awful and that they had to work hard to tolerate the disgusting smell and taste. Smokers are intelligent, rational human beings. They know that they are taking enormous risks with their health and their family’s future and that they spend a fortune on cigarettes in their lifetime. Therefore it is necessary for them to develop a rational explanation to justify their smoking.
    The actual reason why smokers continue to smoke is a subtle combination of the factors I will elaborate on in the next two chapters. They are:
    1. NICOTINE ADDICTION
    2. BRAINWASHING

C HAPTER 6
N ICOTINE A DDICTION
    N icotine, a colorless, oily compound, is the drug contained in tobacco that addicts the smoker. It is the most addictive drug known to mankind, and it can take just one cigarette to become hooked. One drag of one cigarette is enough for former smokers to get hooked again.
    Every drag of a cigarette delivers, via the lungs to the brain, a small dose of nicotine that acts more rapidly than the dose of heroin the addict injects into his veins. In fact, this comparison is one that the tobacco companies themselves use. In an internal memorandum dated 1971, a Philip Morris executive wrote:
‘The cigarette should be conceived not as a product but as a package. The product is nicotine. Think of the cigarette pack as a storage container for a day’s supply of nicotine. Think of a cigarette as a dispenser for a dose unit of nicotine.’
    Nicotine is a very fast-acting drug, which sounds frightening, but is actually good news because it means that it not only enters the body quickly but also leaves the body quickly. Immediately after putting out a cigarette, nicotine levels begin to fall. There is enough nicotine in each cigarette to make the average smoker feel the need to smoke about every forty-five minutes. Incidentally, this explains why most smokers smoke around twenty cigarettes per day.
    As soon as the smoker puts out the cigarette, the nicotine starts to leave the body and the smoker goes into withdrawal.
    At this point I must dispel a common illusion that smokers have about withdrawal. Most believe that withdrawal pangs are the terrible trauma that is experienced when a smoker isn’t able to smoke, or is attempting to quit. This is not true. These pangs are, in fact, mainly mental and are caused by the illusion that the smoker is depriving himself of his pleasure or crutch.
    The actual pangs of withdrawal from nicotine are so slight that most smokers have lived and died without even realizing they are drug addicts. Fortunately it is an easy drug to kick, once you understand the nature of the addiction and accept that you are, in fact, addicted. This point was quite a revelation when this book was first published. Now it is universally accepted.
    There is no physical pain in the withdrawal from nicotine. It is merely a slightly empty, restless feeling, the feeling that something isn’t quite right, or that something is missing, which is why many smokers think it is a feeling of needing something to do with their hands. If it is prolonged, the smoker becomes increasingly anxious, insecure, agitated and irritable. It is like hunger—for a poison, NICOTINE.
    Within seven seconds of lighting up the nicotine contained in that cigarette reaches the brain and the ‘craving’ ends, along with the feelings of anxiety and irritability, resulting in the feeling of relaxation and security that the cigarette appears to giveto the smoker. This is an illusion though. The feeling of ‘relief’ is really just the ending of the state of tension that was created by the previous cigarette.
    In the early days, this whole process of withdrawal and