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So what went
wrong?
Your body told you that it did
not like smoking, you know it tasted awful, you felt dizzy and sick
and yet you still did it again. Why? To look cool? To be like your
friends? Because your parents smoked? To look more grown up? To
be like your film idols? There could be any number of reasons for
starting and to be honest it doesn't matter what the reason was.
The fact is that you smoked again and again until you had done two
things:
- You
got your body used to the sensation and taste of inhaling smoke
- You got your brain addicted
to nicotine
What you were doing during the
first few smokes was to train your body to accept or 'normalise'
the horrible experience of smoking in order to allow your brain
to get its fix of nicotine. But what were you actually getting out
of it? That's right it was to look cool - I bet you think you look
cool now when you get out of breath from just climbing a flight
of stairs, or when you cough your lungs up with your smoker's cough.
Or was it because your friends smoke? Is anything else in your life
dictated by those same friends? Probably not. So it now seems a
bit of a weak reason for resigning yourself to a shortened life
of expense and poor health. Or did you smoke to look older? If you're
not regretting that reason yet you soon will be. When your hair
starts to turn grey and the wrinkles appear before they should,
you will soon wish that you could lose the years you had earlier
put on.
But let's not dwell on the reasons
why you started - they will probably be meaningless to you now,
any way. What I am interested in is the reasons that you give yourself
now for continuing to smoke. See if any of these sound familiar
(click on a link to go straight to that section):
"Smoking relaxes me"
This is the feeling that you get
when you have a cigarette simply because of the way nicotine acts
on your body. When you smoke it satisfies your body's craving for
nicotine. Remember your first smoke? You didn't have a craving for
nicotine so your body's reaction was to feel sick. Now your brain
wants wants the nicotine - you are addicted to it.
Once you have finished a smoke
the nicotine very quickly starts to filter from your body. In about
an hour most of the nicotine has gone and you start to feel the
withdrawal symptoms. These symptoms include stress and anxiety.
So the next time you smoke it will relax you, but only because it
removes the stress caused by the withdrawal from nicotine. If you
could remove this withdrawal then smoking a cigarette would give
you no benefit at all.
Remember - smoking can do nothing
more than temporarily remove the symptoms caused by smoking itself.
"I'm addicted to the nicotine"
You are at the moment - but only
for three weeks. After that, the physical addiction that your body
feels will have totally disappeared. If you think that it is impossible
to get past that addiction stage, just have a look at other ex-smokers
(or talk to them in the SmokeWorm chat-room) and see how they have
done it. By the time you have finished reading the advice and information
on this site, you will be convinced that the unpleasantness you
feel from the nicotine pangs will not only be worth while in the
long term but also enjoyable in the short-term. I know that sounds
unlikely - especially if you have tried stopping smoking previously
by using a different method. But just trust me - it works.
So how do all of these other people
manage to stop smoking and you find it so difficult? Because they
have more willpower? It has nothing to do with willpower - it has
everything to do with will:
- You will have less stress
- You will be healthier
- You will enjoy life more
- You will be happier
- You will have better concentration
- You will have a higher standard
of living
And these are not just phrases
plucked from the air. As you read through the information and advice
at SmokeWorm.com you will be convinced that each one of these statements
is true. You will also learn that the benefits from smoking are
all in your mind and are simply created by temporarily removing
the depression that smoking itself creates. Remove smoking from
your life and you will remove that depression.
"I have a stressful job"
If you have a stressful job, you
add to this stress by smoking and feeding your body's craving for
nicotine. Each time the nicotine from your last smoke filters out
of your body, the withdrawal process starts again. The main physical
symptom of the withdrawal is anxiety - stress, so by being addicted
to nicotine you are unnaturally increasing the amount of stress
put on your body. Unfortunately, your brain cannot differentiate
between the stress from your job and the stress from nicotine withdrawal
- it simply compounds the two. But because you know you have a stressful
job, you think that your job is the sole cause of your stress. After
all, you enjoy smoking - how could that possibly cause stress?
Each time you smoke and relieve
some of your stress and you are fooled into thinking that smoking
is helping you deal with the stress created by your job. In fact,
smoking can only help you to remove that part of your stress that
is actually caused by smoking. If you can take away the yo-yo effect
that smoking has on your stress levels, your ability to deal with
the stress from your job will be so much better.
"Smoking helps me deal
with hard times"
The fact is that smoking makes
hard times even harder. 'Hard times' can be substituted for 'stress'
in the above paragraph and exactly the same explanation applies.
You trust your habit to help you deal with various aspects of your
life. What you need to appreciate is that smoking causes far more
problems than it solves and even the ones that it appears to solve
are only the problems caused by smoking in the first place.
"It's just a habit now"
You may think of it as a habit
but at £80,000 for the average lifetime of smoking (not including
tax increases above the rate of inflation) is it really worth it?
Just think what else you could buy for that kind of money. People
phone Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in their millions for a chance
to win a fortune. And when asked 'How much would you be happy with?'
the answer is always '32,000 would really make a difference to my
life'. Imagine being able, without even lifting the phone, to put
yourself on the show, get into the hot seat, and walk away with
64,000. It almost defies belief, and yet you could do better than
that right now - guaranteed. And as a bonus, you will make so many
other areas of your life better and you will be healthier and be
happier. Money can't buy you happiness, but stopping smoking can.
As for the habit - do you think
you could easily switch to some other habit? Do you think you could
find something else to do with your hands? You probably think not.
This is because the habit is complicated by your addiction to nicotine.
The nicotine withdrawal makes the habit seem much more difficult
to stop than it really is. If you do see smoking as a habit try
doing something else with your hands. I can guarantee that this
won't take the place of smoking because it will not address the
unavoidable nicotine addiction. You need to also appreciate that
you will have to deal with the addiction as well as the habit if
you want to stop smoking for good.
"I can afford it"
Okay, so money obviously is not
an issue and the financial benefits of stopping smoking may not
be as much of an incentive to you, but the financial benefits are
just the icing on the cake - the real benefits can't be bought for
any price - the ability to relax, concentrate, deal with stress
and enjoy non-smoking situations such as travelling on the tube,
plane journeys, being at work or going to the cinema or theatre.
These are situations that you either want to enjoy but can't because
you are thinking about your next smoke or they are necessary evils
(e.g. long journeys) that are not a pleasure to begin with and are
made worse because you are not allowed to smoke.
When you think you can afford it
you are only thinking of the cost in terms of the financial outlay.
The other costs associated with smoking are unaffordable no matter
how much money you have. The health costs are staggering - and not
only in terms of the one in three chance of dying from smoking but
also in terms of the guarantee of having less energy, lower libido,
higher stress and a reduced ability to concentrate. If you are one
of the 33% of smokers who die from smoking you may be lucky and
just have a heart attack - a quick and simple death. Or if you are
unlucky you might get cancer. If this happens you can look forward
to a long and slow death - one that will be painful until you are
permanently on morphine. And what about your grandchildren? Will
they see you in that state or are they kept away from you for the
last few months so that they don't see you in a half-dead state?
"I want to smoke - I enjoy
smoking"
Think about that first smoke again
- How much did you enjoy that? Since then you have become addicted
to nicotine and the only way you have known to satisfy that addiction
is smoking. You know that smoking relaxes you, that it allows you
to concentrate and deal with stress and that it relieves the anxiety
caused by nicotine withdrawal. Because these are things that make
you feel temporarily better you associate smoking with pleasure.
Each time you light up you feel better and you associate the benefit
directly with smoking - and because you have trained your body to
accept the taste and sensation of smoking, you associate these with
pleasure as well. The problem now is that you cannot remember what
it was like to be a non-smoker - so you cannot possibly imagine
how it would feel to be one again. All that you see is the weeks
of 'hell' required to stop and the years of hell after that as you
long to be a smoker once more. Trust me when I say that the feeling
you get from stopping smoking using the SmokeWorm method is better
than any feeling you could ever have as a smoker. Because you will
want to stop by the time you have your last smoke there will
be no feeling of missing out - you will not feel the same sense
of sacrifice that smokers who use willpower feel.
The only problem with this method
is that it is so effective that you will try to tell other smokers
about it and you will want them to see how much better life is.
Take a tip from me - you mention it once, let them know that there
is a quick, easy and enjoyable way to stop smoking and then leave
it. If you harp on about it you will only get their back up!
:)
"I don't want to live
a long life"
I love this one - the most selfish
excuse ever for smoking. You will hear people say "I don't
want to live into my eighties, go senile and be a burden to my family.
I would rather die when I am still aware of the world around me
and still recognise my family".
What you don't realise is that
most smokers who die from smoking related diseases don't just curl
up their toes and die quietly. There is a high likelihood that you
would have a long and slow death. To begin with you probably wouldn't
even realise you were dying, because you have been on a gradual
decline for years. Your stride will get shorter, you will have to
rest regularly to catch your breath, your circulation will worsen,
the disease will take over and eventually you will be bedridden.
As your disease worsens, so does the pain and you are given morphine
to deal with it. At this point you will need 24 hour care and not
be able to recognise those looking after you and yet you will be
completely dependant on them. This will go on possibly for months
before you actually die - so this idea of not being a burden to
the family is total nonsense. Your family's life will be on hold
until you actually die and the strain caused by your constant need
for care and supervision will take its toll on the rest of the family.
Or of course, euthanasia could
be legal by then - then you won't have to worry.
I am sorry to sound bitter about
this, but when you have seen people deteriorate and die of cancer
in front of you and in such distress, it is difficult to imagine
how a person could make a conscious decision to risk such a death
- especially when you know that the thing that puts them at such
a risk is doing nothing for them.
"Well something's got to kill you"
How often have you heard
a smoker justify their habit by saying 'I could get hit by a bus
tomorrow'. These people are putting the risks of death by smoking
into the same category as the risk of death in a freak accident.
As a smoker there is a one in three chance of smoking killing you.
If, statistically, there was a one in three chance of dying from
crossing the road, how many of us would be happy to do it? The deaths
that cause public fear are the ones over which we have no, or little,
control - murder, terrorism, AIDS, aeroplane crashes and road traffic
accidents etc. Smoking
kills more than all of these things combined and yet we show not
the slightest concern.
I once did a parachute jump for
charity. Just as I started walking towards the plane for the actual
jump, a spectator said to me 'Good luck. You're going to need it!'.
He had a cigarette in his hand at the time. He was quite clearly
terrified by the idea of jumping out of an aeroplane and yet he
was totally happy to put his life at greater risk by smoking. The
frightening thing was that he was seemingly oblivious to the risk.
Just before you jump out of the plane for a parachute jump your
heart pounds, your hands begin to sweat the adrenaline is pumping
and there is an amazing feeling of excitement caused by the perceived
danger involved. Do you get the same feeling when you light up?
No, simply because there is no perceived risk in what you are doing.
If you did think of it as a death-defying pursuit you would feel
like the parachutist.
In order for you to 'enjoy' smoking, you brain
fools itself into thinking there is no risk. But in other areas
of life, for some reason, you take precautions to reduce the risk
of things killing you - you probably wear a seat-belt when travelling
in a car, you look both ways when you cross the road, you take basic
hygiene precautions when you cook, you wouldn't handle dirty syringes
or any other object with another person's blood on it - so why don't
you apply the 'Well, something's got to kill you' approach to these
areas of your life? Could it be that you are not as recklessly fatalistic
as you thought you were. The truth is that this attitude is simply
another excuse that you use when non-smokers try to preach to you
about the risks of smoking - but you don't really believe it.
You have nothing to lose by attempting
to stop smoking - even if you decide, after reading all of the SmokeWorm
plan, that you still want to smoke, all you need do is continue
smoking. Or even if you stop for a while but decide that your life
was better as a smoker you can always start again. But the biggest
mistake is to not even think about it - your life could be so much
better.
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Unless
you are one of these people who actually enjoys smoking... |
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