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smokers' cough would kill me. By expelling much of the filth from my lungs, it possibly saved my life.
Just think of it this way. If you had a nice car and allowed it to rust without doing anything about
it, that would be pretty stupid, as it would soon be a heap of rust and would not carry you about.
However, that would not be the end of the world; it is only a question of money and you could always
buy a new one. Your body is the vehicle that carries you through life. We al! say that our health is
our most valued asset. How true that is, as sick millionaires will tell you. Most of us can look back at
some illness or accident in our lives when we prayed to get better. (HOW SOON WE FORGET.) By
being a smoker you are not only letting rust get in and doing nothing about it; you are
systematically destroying the vehicle you need to go through life, and you only get one.
Wise up. You don't have to do it, and remember: it is doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR
YOU.
Just for a moment take your head out of the sand and ask yourself, if you knew for certain that the
next cigarette would he the one to trigger off cancer in your body, whether you would actually
smoke it. Forget the disease (it is difficult to imagine it), but imagine you have to go to the Royal
Marsden to suffer those awful tests - radium treatment, etc. Now you are not planning the rest of your
life. You are planning your death. What is going to happen to your family and loved ones, your plans
and dreams?
I often see the people that it happens to. They didn't, think it would happen to them either, and
the worst thing about it isn't the disease itself but the knowledge they have brought it on
themselves. All our lives as smokers we are saying, I ll stop tomorrow.' Try to imagine how those
people feel who 'hit the button'. For them the brainwashing is ended. They then see the 'habit' as it
really is and spend the remainder of their lives thinking, 'Why did I kid myself I needed to smoke? If
only I had the chance to go back!'
Stop kidding yourself. You have the chance. It's a chain reaction. If you smoke the next cigarette,
it will lead to the next one and the next. It's already happening to you.
At the beginning of the book I promised you no shock treatment. If you have already decided you
are going to stop smoking, this isn't shock treatment for you. If you are still in doubt, skip the
remainder of this chapter and come back to it when you have read the rest of the book.
Volumes of statistics have already been written about the damage that cigarettes can cause to the
smoker's health. The trouble is that until the smoker decides to stop he doesn't want to know. Even
the government health warning is a waste of time because the smoker puts blinkers on, and if he
inadvertently reads it, the first thing he does is light up a cigarette.
Smokers tend to think of the health hazard as a hit-and-miss affair, like stepping on a mine. Get it
into your head: it is already happening, Every time you puff on a cigarette you are breathing cancer-
triggering tars into your lungs, and cancer is by no means the worst of the killer diseases that
cigarettes cause or contribute to. They are also a powerful contributory cause of heart disease,
arteriosclerosis, emphysema, angina, thrombosis, chronic bronchitis and asthma.
51
While 7 was still smoking, I'd never heard of arteriosclerosis or emphysema. I knew the permanent
wheezing and coughing and the ever-increasing asthma and bronchitis attacks were a direct
result of my smoking. But though they caused me discomfort there was no real pain and I could
handle the discomfort.
I confess that the thought of contracting lung cancer terrified me, which is probably why I just
blocked it from my mind. It's amazing how the fear of the horrendous health risks attached to
smoking are overshadowed by the fear of stopping. It's not so much that the latter is a greater fear,
but that if we quit today the fear is immediate, whereas the fear of contracting lung cancer is a fear
of the future. Why look on the black side? Perhaps it won't happen. I'm bound to have quit by then
anyway.
We tend to think of smoking as a tug-of-war. On one side fear: it's unhealthy, expensive, filthy and
enslaving. On the other side the pluses: it's my pleasure, my friend, my crutch. It never seems to occur
to us that this side is also fear. It's not so much that we enjoy them, but that we tend to be miserable
without them.
Think of heroin addicts deprived of their heroin: the abject misery they go through. Now picture
their utter joy when they are allowed to plunge a needle into their veins and end that terrible
craving. Try to imagine how anyone could actually believe they get pleasure from sticking a
hypodermic syringe into a vein.
Non-heroin addicts don't suffer that panic feeling. Heroin doesn't relieve the feeling, on the
contrary, it causes it. Non-smokers don't feel miserable if they are not allowed to smoke after a meal.
It's only smokers that suffer that feeling. Nicotine doesn't relieve it, on the contrary it causes it.
The fear of contracting lung cancer didn't make me quit because I believed it was rather like
walking through a minefield. If you got away with it - fine. If you were unlucky you stepped on a mine.
You knew the risks you were taking and if you were prepared to take the risk, what had it to do with
anyone else?
So if a non-smoker ever tried to make me aware of those risks, I would use the typical evasive
tactics that all addicts invariably adopt.
'You have to die of something.'
Of course you do, but is that a logical reason for deliberately shortening your life?
Quality of life is more important than longevity.'
Exactly, but you are surely not suggesting that, the quality of life of an alcoholic or a
heroin addict is greater than that of someone that isn't addicted to alcohol or heroin? Do
you really believe that the quality of a smoker's life is better than a non-smoker's?
Surely the smoker loses on both counts his life is both shorter and more miserable.
My lungs probably suffer more damage from car exhausts than from smoking;
Even if that were true, is that a logical reason for punishing your lungs further? Can you
possibly conceive of anyone being stupid enough to actually put their mouth over an exhaust
pipe and deliberately inhale those fumes into their lungs?
THAT'S WHAT SMOKERS EFFECTIVELY DO!
52
Think of that next time you watch a poor smoker inhale deeply on one of those 'precious'
cigarettes!
T can understand why the congestion and the risks of contracting lung cancer didn't help me to
quit. I could cope with the former and block my mind to the latter. As you are already aware, my
method is not to frighten you into quitting, but the complete opposite - to make you realize just
how more enjoyable your life will be when you have escaped.
However, I do believe that if I could have seen what was happening inside my body, this would
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