Now I don't. And that was because I won this fight many years ago.
After my moment of truth - when I was forced to accept that I was an addict, not a free man - I knew that this fight was the most important fight of my life. It took me eighteen months to kill the desire to smoke. And that is the key. Smoking is, above all, an emotional problem, a habit, not so much an addiction.The method I used to become a free man again was almost identical to this. I say almost because what took me a year and a half could have taken much less. Weeks or even days.
There is no drama or special supplements in this method. No 'will of iron' is necessary. And above all there is
no fear. (One of the biggest problems for most of us is our fear of change.)
It is a guide to your enemy. I suggest that you look into this.
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Swimming And Smoking At The Same Time
Some people, when they’re beginning to learn how to stop smoking, just put themselves in places where it is
really difficult to smoke.
One man decided to learn how to swim. He lived near a swimming pool, so it was easier. The first three or
four weeks he was in the pool two or three times every day, an hour or more every time. In the beginning, he
says, he felt horrible. Chest pains, fear of drowning, ten-year-olds overtaking him in the water…. But he was
happy because it’s very very hard to swim and smoke at the same time.
He swims well now.
Another man suddenly became a big film fan.
He spent hours and hours and hours in cold air-conditioned cinemas watching 'good films, bad films, and
films worse than that'. Sometimes he would watch three or four films one after another in the same multiplex.
He soon found out which actors and which directors he is never going to see again. And he quickly learned
which cinemas were best for a quiet siesta.
It worked fine, and he doesn’t smoke now.
But neither does he go to see films too much.
We also hear of an elegant lady who thought that smoking was no longer elegant. (She was right.) So she
spent, in her own words 'two whole weeks in the shower'.
Hot showers, cold showers, body creams, foot showers, hair washing, more body creams 'so I wouldn’t look
like a prune', face packs, more hot showers…
It worked. And she is still elegant.
But my favourite story is of a lady who invited all her grandchildren to stay with her over the summer. She
said she would have been far too ashamed to smoke in front of them. Ashamed before them, and ashamed
before her own children. So she didn’t.
And by the autumn, the desire had gone.
