Hello, everybody! I wrote this book for you to be HEALTHY!
Let me introduce myself. My name is Andrey, at the time of writing this book I am 49 years old, of which 35 years I spent smoking. I have made countless attempts to kick this addiction, my non-smoking periods lasted from three hours to one-and-a-half-years. I have tried it all:
– reducing the number of cigarettes;
– the “last pack” method;
– reading the book by Allen Carr (I did it twice) and books by other authors;
– and so on and so forth.
Not all of these attempts were painful, but they all ended in a complete fiasco. However, during my “smoking” experience, there were amazing curiosities when, without noticing it, I stopped smoking for a month or two, and most surprisingly, I understood this only when my fellow smokers, with whom I had smoked like a chimney some time ago, told me about it with admiration.
In this book, I want to tell you about everything I have learned about smoking over those 35 years, the desire to be independent of my nicotine addiction arose as soon as I became aware of its existence, but the awareness occurred after a month of only occasional smoking.
There was one reason for gathering the information in this instruction book: I wanted to quit smoking myself. Now I am sharing this information with you.
It took me 4 weeks to type the text of the book. The collection of material, research, surveys, and experiments took place over 5 years.
Let’s get going!!!
1. Why Allen Carr did not help us
Allen Carr “helps” some smokers and they turn into his zealous supporters. Others are partially influenced: even people, who were completely addicted to nicotine yesterday, easily tolerate the absence of cigarettes for a short time (from one to five or ten hours), but cannot refrain from smoking when there are cigarettes around. There are some smokers who were not influenced by it at all. In this chapter, we’ll study the reasons why Allen Carr influences us in different ways, or (in line with the book title) why he doesn't.
1.1. The first reason. We have a high threshold of suggestibility resistance
Suggestibility is a degree of susceptibility to suggestion, determined by the subjective willingness to be subject to and obey an external suggestive impact. It is an individual personality trait (this is a scientific definition –author’s note).
The essence of this personality trait is this: the whole “easy way to quit smoking” could not change your worldview, acquired instincts, and information stored in your memory. Simply put, you are more difficult to control than those whom he “helped”.
1.2. The second reason. Associations
Association (interrelation) in psychology and philosophy is a naturally occurring connection between individual events, facts, objects, phenomena, or words reflected in the consciousness of an individual and fixed in their memory. In the case of an associative connection between the mental phenomena “A” and “B”, the appearance of the phenomenon “A” in the consciousness naturally entails the appearance of phenomenon “B” in the consciousness (this is also a scientific definition – author's note).
In relation to solving the studied problem, the “easy way” quit-smoking attitudes could be ineffective for a very simple reason: the word “smoking” isn’t associated with the act of “smoking” (inhalation of smoke from lit cigarettes). Why? There are many reasons.
– For some people, this could be due to the fact that they previously argued about their not smoking. Try and remember if you’ve had any of these situations:
* you told your parents (even as an adult) that you were not a smoker to keep them from getting mad;
* you told others that you did not smoke (for example, at a new job) in order to create an incentive (reason) to quit smoking;
– You call this pastime (smoking) something else.
– You have long considered smoking shameful, have wanted to break this addiction for a long time and, at the subconscious level, DO NOT SMOKE (it means you do not admit it to yourself). Well, there are such strange cases.
– Other reasons similar to the above.
So, in order to exclude the possibility of the existence of this reason, the action of “smoking” hereinafter will be referred to as the “inhalation of smoke from lit cigarettes”.
Passive or secondhand smoking is a very tricky thing, and my gratitude goes to the government that has passed new laws prohibiting the inhalation of smoke from lit cigarettes in public places, or rather from exhaling them. The consequences of secondhand inhalation of smoke from other people’s lit cigarettes are very harmful, even more harmful than the inhalation of smoke from a lit cigarette in your hand.
What’s insidious about passive inhalation of smoke from lit cigarettes is that people who do not have a nicotine addiction become nicotine addicts, gradually, day after day inhaling other people’s tobacco smoke. That’s when it seems as if one cigarette could push a person to become a regular smoker, but in reality, it did not happen in one day or all at once. Secondhand smoking (
