How I quit smoking, contrary to Alan Karr

For many years and many times I tried to quit smoking. I experienced various pharmaceutical and folk remedies, but nothing good came of it. A couple of times I threw almost successfully. The first time for six months, the second for a couple of months. All this lasted until I found out about the book of Allan Carr. I tried to read it, but I did not. I tried to listen to the audiobook and listened to it, but the book impressed me with its uncomplicated nature. Certainly there are interesting moments in the book, for myself I looked at the problem a little differently than I had seen it so far. In the end, it did not help. But once, about two months after reading the book, I simply did not go out into the smoking room.

UPD Preface.

By writing this post I wanted to share my personal experience with people who want to quit smoking . I am in no way trying to “set the right path” on people who smoke and are not going to quit. This is your own business, moreover if you smoke because you like and can easily quit at any time, do not read it, you will not understand, this is too personal or rather specific.
I will not tell you that the first years of my experience as a smoker, I thought and spoke like you. Perhaps the time will come and you will reconsider your position, but maybe not. There is, for example, quite numerous groups of people who enjoy pain, self-torture, why can not there be people who are satisfied that they smoke. And who am I to urge you to change something?

Woe from Wit or Feedback.

For a person in everyday life, the essence of things has two sides.
The first side is experience. What we are very familiar with is how we feel the effects of the phenomenon on ourselves. What this phenomenon is a transference to our lives.
The second side is pure academic knowledge. This is what we were taught.

For example. We turn on the lamp.
The first side tells us that turning on the lamp makes it possible to add light.
The second side tells us about electrons running along wires of a certain cross section with a certain resistance, about glowing tungsten and other interesting things.
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Do we use the other side in everyday life? Rare, very rare. The second side is more often used then when we need to create a new lamp and not to use an already created one.
In everyday life, we know that pressing the switch will lead to light, we will be able to distinguish objects, do what we need at the moment.

What am I leading to? In medicine, there is the concept of feedback when a person controls one of his parameters, such as temperature, pulse, sweating, and the like, based on information from sensors.
For example, after a short workout, you can successfully control the temperature of your body, if you see information about it on the monitor (thermometer, thermometer).
If you do not know what your temperature is at the moment, it is much more difficult to do. But when you can see the result quickly updated in real time, you simply manage your temperature simply by forcing the indicator to creep up or down.
Note that you do not observe the work of the heart muscle, the speed of blood flow, other important parameters that affect the temperature of your body, the only thing you need to know is the essence! Result.
The same happens when you walk, if you think about which muscle to contract at the moment, you will not go anywhere, all you need is to feel the result of your actions. See the phenomenon and your influence on it.

The knowledge of the second side of the essence of smoking prevented me from quitting smoking more than anything else. It is not strange. On any attempt to involve me in quitting smoking, I appealed with knowledge of the natural, physical essence of the phenomenon of smoking.
On the example of walking, I tried to go (quit smoking) meaningfully, alternately straining the muscles of the body, which I thought were responsible for this process.
But my mistake was that I didn’t imagine what smoking was to me. Why am I doing this?

Why do you smoke?
The second side comes to the rescue.
Because the supply of nicotine in the body is exhausted, and the gland producing it has long been atrophied ...
How simple is that, clear and authoritatively true?

Why are you running?
Because you alternately reduce the muscles of the legs, arms, torso, buttocks. Vestibular apparatus coordinates action ...
This is all wrong.
You run because you are catching up and your life at the moment depends on whether you can run or not. What will catch up with you (monster, criminal, zombie, enraged crowd) will kill you. You run for life! For you, running now means everything that you love, everything you like, everything that you have not had time to do, all the most pleasant moments of life that have been remembered.
That's why you run now.
You must evaluate phenomena from the point of view of their influence on your life and not according to the technical details that cause this phenomenon. Then you can manage these phenomena.
When you want to run away and the forces are already running out, you don’t need to think where the glands that produce adrenaline are, you have to think about what you and your loved ones will lose if you don’t run away. And adrenaline will shoot from there and where it should be.

And so an important part of successfully quitting smoking is to understand the essence of the phenomenon. See what smoking is for you personally. There are no universal solutions, I can only tell what it is for me and how I found out.

We define the essence.

I quit smoking many times, with pills, with chewing gum, all of this is essentially a placebo.
I tried to build on the "second side", that is, from some kind of physical processes that I essentially do not feel, whereas it was necessary to proceed from the "first side".
You take pills and read - "... the body produces nicotine, the introduction of nicotine through smoke leads to the cessation of nicotine release by the body. A shortage of nicotine causes a painful condition -" breaking. "Our remedy introduces a nicotine substitute into the body ..."
Any drug leads treatment with reference to the second side of understanding the essence of smoking.

I wonder how in all this time, ten or fifteen years of smoking, I did not have a few minutes or hours to understand what I was doing at that moment. The moment I smoke. And this is despite the fact that I spent a lot of time smoking myself.

The bell rang, when once again busy with work, I went out to “smoke a cigarette”, thought about something of my own, came back, woke up from my thoughts, pulled a cigarette out of the pack and went to smoke.
"Stop. I just smoked. ”I could not remember how many such cycles I had already done.
“Good,” I thought. "This is too much, I will not go smoking now, I will wait."
“The only question is how long. How long do I have to wait to go and smoke some more. ”
And then I really felt uneasy. I realized that real life for me is just a break between smoking!
How did I get to this? When? Why am I doing this?
I remembered the Danone ad - “And let the whole world wait”
Yes, that's exactly what happens. Most of all pulls to a cigarette when a break, when the head is torn from work and you do not have time.
"And let the whole world wait" while I smoke.
That is, we begin to look at what smoking is. Of course, I knew before that I was going away from problems with a cigarette, but I had neither the time nor the motivation to put it all on the shelves. And you, if you smoke, are well aware that a cigarette for you most often is a “break”. But that is not all.
We describe the first found fragment.
Smoking is such a magical place where I go to relax, while the whole world is waiting.
As once in the carefree student years. To go out to friends in the dorm section, at any time of the day or night, to crack for life, drag on with a cigarette. To discuss such important and so ridiculous problems for today.
Stop, catch your breath, drag on.
We will not write what substances, what is there and how it is relaxed in our body, we are not interested in it, we are not writing a dissertation.

Fragment one. Magic door that can be opened if you have a cigarette. The door behind which is waiting for peace, friends, joy.

That's just for this door, I go out more often. It's all? Surely not.
I also feel a direct addiction to smoking - health. I know that smoking is killing me anyway. But how to present it from the point of view of my life without drowning in details.
The first thing that comes to mind is a certain maniac, a butcher who cuts off parts of your body.
First you have problems with breathing, then with the veins, then ... we will not go into details, they are not important to us.

Fragment two. Smoking deprives you of life, in an understandable way. It cuts off parts of your body.

We wrote out two, in fact, common truths. And I and you all this was clear for a long time. Yes, smoking is relaxing, yes it is harmful.
But when we start to add puzzle pieces together, a very unusual picture is obtained.

I have one friend. Despite the fact that I maintain friendly relations with him at work, I always didn’t like his way to communicate.
I was surprised that a person who sees me for the first time in his life exclaims “Friend !!!”, tells me many interesting funny things, introduces interesting people. But as a result of communication, you understand that you have been deceived. You took much more than they gave you. And the attitude is twofold, the person seems to be so open, so “light”, but every time you feel deceived.
Our meetings were repeated at intervals of a year - half a year. Each time this person appeared when he needed something from me. Every time our communication ended negatively for my balance. Balance of time, work done and money.
And when I thought about it, it just dawned on me! It's him! He personifies what makes me so much so.
For myself, I chose this person as an image.
Smoking is him! Welcome, open, like your best friend. He exclaims at the sight of you, embraces one arm over his shoulder and says - “and you remember ...” and pleasant memories come on. Friends, girlfriends, a hostel, sleepless nights, the first experience of life, a magical feeling that there is no need to hurry, the whole life is still to come.
But when you put your head down, you notice that by hugging you with one hand in a friendly way, your smoking, your smoky monster with a smile cuts off parts of your body with your second hand. Chest, light, little by little, seemingly by chance.
At the same time, he continues to talk about pleasant things.

You may recall another similar example. This is a frame from the film about Hannibal Lector, who, having a small talk with an FBI agent, pumped up with drugs that immobilized him, cuts off his brain in an opened skull.
He does not cut a lot, he cuts off a little bit, and immediately cooks this dish, which they both eat. The FBI agent does not realize that he is. He does not understand that it is his flesh, he does not realize what his interlocutor is doing. And his interlocutor essentially embodies what I am for a long time.
I did not notice that daily enjoying the false peace I lost myself.

This is the second piece of our mosaic. Smoking brings us pleasure, or rather, we bring it to ourselves, but as a key to the magic door we need a cigarette, we find a reason to be happy. But this phenomenon takes our life. And no matter what part of your body it affects and how, you understand that “your smoking” will sooner or later cut off everything from you.

This is a fairly clear and fairly truthful image of what is actually happening. An image of how smoking affects your life. Without unnecessary descriptions of processes that only hide the essence. Here it is the face of the one to whom I leave every day.

What's next? How many fragments does this understanding have? Exactly as much as in your life of things, people whose concepts concern smoking. The main thing is to imagine what it is.
I have a third fragment, perhaps decisive for me. My decision to quit smoking has been growing for a long time. After long working days when a lot has been smoked, not much has been eaten, you catch a painful push inside you. What is it? What was it?
Something ate something wrong or maybe appendicitis, what if it is ...
"That well, and figs with him," you say to yourself, "life is short."

And I said so myself, until the child was born. My child. Yes, life is short, but by making it even shorter, you deprive your child of a parent of protection, caress, love. With each cigarette, smoking steals from you those hours that you could spend with your child. You dissuade yourself- "what to be ..., enjoy while ...". But every time your cynicism sounds ridiculous against the background of your child’s laughter.

Stop. What I wrote in the last paragraph is some kind of agitprop. Call to responsibility, this is all wrong, let's be easier.
What is smoking in relation to your children, in an understandable form, without psychological cheating. What is the real picture to take?
For me, it looks like this. A cigarette removes me from a child, taking my years of communication with him.
I go out for a smoke break and let the whole world wait. I am joyfully greeted by calm and relaxation and with a friendly exclamation - “Friend!”, “Old!”. We attach to pleasant memories when I notice that they are cutting me with a rusty knife, but at the same time they continue to smile and tell stories for life.
I feel uneasy, on the other hand, this is still quite a bit, at one time it will not lose.
Hearing a cry you look back. Someone whose face you can't see is taking your child away. Your child resists and cries, still, for him the parents are the closest people, and whatever they are, the very same ones. A feeling of anxiety grows in the soul, something is wrong, I don’t really want to! But there is no power to do anything. Your "friend" continues to smile and looks away with the words - "Man, empty, life is short, enjoy!"
At the same time he gives a sign, the child is taken further. What will you do? How can you just look at it?

Fragment three. Smoking deprives you of communication with the closest and dearest people to you. Deprives forever. This happens every smoke break. You notice that your loved ones are going further and further.

When all the fragments came together, I just knew what was waiting for me outside the door. What is there really.
And let it be the usual door to the porch, to the smoking room or the vestibule of the car, if you have a cigarette in your hand, you hold the "magic" key from the "magic" door. There is something behind this door and it is waiting for you. You used to think that these are your friends, memories of the best moments of life, but now you know - this is not so. It is a fake that has nothing to do with you or your life. It is something alien that takes the form of everything that you associate with the concept of happiness.
It really is there, because that is how it affects your life. These are not empty fantasies, otherwise how to explain that everything happens in your life exactly as you described in your fragments.
It is waiting for you, listening, preparing to spread its arms in a greeting cry - “Friend!”
I never went out that door.

Afterword

A week later, my smoking wife, with a slight mockery, and yet curiously began to be interested - how could this be so? The pills did not help, but here he suddenly dropped.
I tried to explain the principle to her, but with sarcasm peculiar to her, she accepted my story as an attempt to “draw her into a sect”. In general, the conversation turned into a psychiatric dispute.
Sincerely trying to explain her feelings and motivations to her, I nevertheless did not abandon attempts, focusing her attention on sensations and analogies.
As a result of this conversation in about half an hour, the wife was crying.
It was relatively easy for me to get through to finding the right words, since we have been together for a long time. Since then, my wife has not smoked.

Yes, indeed, confirming the fame of many who have read Carr, I declare that there is no stress. There is no breaking. Quitting smoking is really easy.

All the knowledge of the process of habituation absolutely did not help me. No
Adding a picture of the fragments, the “first side” of the perception of smoking, gave me an understanding of the real essence.
Looking at "this" I ran in horror.
I have no special willpower, I am not a psychologist or a physician. I'm fine with the psyche.
All that I wrote is my personal conclusions, to specialists they will seem naive, but I am sure they are right.
This is what helped me to stop.

PS Some time later, I thought that Carr’s book was the detonator of my thinking about the meaning of smoking in my life. His constant replays seemed naive and annoyed. His analogies seemed too far-fetched and not reflecting the truth, but his approach made me think in a different way. Thanks Alan Carr.
How I quit smoking despite and thanks to Alan Karr