Day 37

Well it looks like Kelly is fast approaching the 100 hours mark. You'll have been a non smoker for a week very soon. That's pretty impressive for someone who quit on day eight because they didn't want to waste any more money on smoking.

Regular readers will have sussed out that I have got into a routine of updating this blog before I go to bed. It's just the best time for me to get my thoughts together. I do however check the blog at least once or twice a day. Normally when I get up in the morning and can't remember what I wrote the night before and when I check my emails later in the day. It's particularly exciting when you check and there's a new comment. This morning when I checked Kelly mentioned Allen Carrs book in her comments. I've heard of this book on a couple of occasions and have put off looking into it as the last thing I need is a book to give me sensible reasons to quit smoking. But Kelly mentioned she had it in PDF format which meant that it was out there on the Internet. I typed 'Allen Carr, PDF' and it was the first find. If only it were that easy to find this blog. I've linked to the pdf at the side if you don't want to search and fancy reading it.

So since it was free and only just over 100 pages I thought, I'll give it a try. Since the guy's a world authority on his subject I don't want to criticize his methods however I do think he over simplifies the whole thing. He also refuses to accept that anyone likes smoking and strengthens his argument by pointing out that all smokers want to quit. He talks of how he loathed smoking but just couldn't quit. I doubt very much that he would believe me if I said that, I liked smoking. I didn't want to quit. Yes it was making me feel ill. Yes smoking made me feel like an outcast. Yes I was addicted but, I didn't loath it or myself. Yes I wish I'd never started but, I know why I did and I am not lying when I say that I enjoyed it. I am also not lying when I say that giving up feels bloody hellish. The book covers this. Turns out I just think I feel hellish. Also turns out that because I feel hellish I'll probably smoke again. Nope.

So why have I linked the book on my blog if I don't rate it? It doesn't completely work for me but I can follow the logic and it may help others. Also, I may not have fallen for it hook, line and sinker but some of it hit home. I'm not going to have that cigar I mentioned yesterday or in fact another cigarette ever. That's the truth. What he made perfectly clear and I understand completely is that one single draw of a cigarette is the start of a cycle that starts you smoking. I wish I had read the stuff about not torturing yourself by cutting down as well although, there's no way I'd have got from 40 cigs to zero the way he did. A lot of the book plays on peoples sense of pride. Nobody wants to be the weakling. Sorry Allen but your a bigger man than me and I admit it. You went from 100 to zero in a single breath. Good for you.

If everything in his book was as black and white as he paints it, forget smoking, addiction would not exist. Addiction whether harmful or not is usually stronger than logic and has a combination of physical and emotional triggers that combine to ensure that the addict cannot ignore the addiction. Just because you can sleep for eight hours without a cigarette doesn't mean that you have all the tools in your armour to beat your addiction. Think of the people who are a addicted to drink or drugs simply because they need something to get them to sleep.

I'm really pleased that Kelly pointed me to this book though. As I found myself getting angry at some of the over simplistic arguments being proposed I also found that I was angry with myself for picking holes in the arguments. At the risk of sounding like Al Gore writing about the environment there were two very inconvenient truths in the book that I had to accept. Two truths that make the book worth reading even if you don't buy into the whole thing.

First, when you give up you have to completely and utterly give up (which is what I've struggled with). You can't have a cigarette in three days, three weeks, three months or even three years because if you do you will have to give up all over again.

Second, There's absolutely no point moping about it. You are giving up so that you can feel well again and you will, even in spite of yourself, start to feel well again. You are not some sort of martyr because you've given up (and I really am guilty of this) you are not depriving yourself of something that you need and you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself that you'll never smoke again. What I need to get my head round is the fact that I've made a decision and need to stick to it. If smoking was doing me any good I wouldn't be trying so hard to quit. It would be far more disappointing for me to go through this and then start smoking again than it will be to never smoke another cig in my life.

So there you have it. If you're reading this blog then you either are quitting or are thinking about it. Click the link and read the book. For some people that's all the help they need. If you are going to try to quit using just the book I'd love to know how you get on. That really would be extreme quitting. Till tomorrow..