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Allen Carr: My Experience with Smoking
Excerpts from: The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, Selected with an introduction by Ellopos
21 Pages
Page 12
It is smokers who make it difficult by using the Willpower Method. I define the Willpower Method as any method that forces the smoker to feel he is making some sort of sacrifice. Although the smoker knows that he will be better off as a non-smoker, he does believe that he is making a sacrifice. Although it is an illusion, it is a powerful illusion. The smoker doesn't know why, but he believes that during the good times and the bad times of life the cigarette does appear to help. Before he starts the attempt he has the brainwashing of our society, reinforced by the brainwashing of his own addiction. To these must be added the even more powerful brainwashing of how difficult it is to give up.
The misery that the smoker is suffering has nothing to do with withdrawal pangs. True, they trigger them off, but the actual agony is in the mind and it is caused by doubt and uncertainty. Because the smoker starts by feeling he is making a sacrifice, he begins to feel deprived - this is a form of stress. One of the times when his brain tells him, 'Have a cigarette,' is a time of stress. Therefore as soon as he stops, he wants a cigarette. But now he can't have one because he has stopped smoking. This makes him more depressed, which sets the trigger off again.
Jaspers, Truth is in communication * Kierkegaard, My work as an author * Emerson, Reading and writing as self-knowledge * Francis Bacon, Reading & writing as moral activities * Tom Schulman, Dead Poets Society * Gibson - MacRury, The man without a face * Dostoevsky, The dream of ridiculous man
