Addiction v's Habit
Do you believe you are addicted to nicotine?
And if you weren't addicted to nicotine would it be easy for you to quit?
So let's first define addiction. The type of addiction I want to talk about at the moment is physical addiction.
Firstly, who tells us that cigarettes are addictive?
I have an idea.... the media, the government, and the cigarette industry.
And have these industry bodies ever lied to you before?
They are very certain that cigarettes are addictive, but I must share with you – thousands of people quit cigarettes every day, and not one of them experiences any kind of physical withdrawal symptoms that you would see in a normally addicting chemical like cocaine or heroin.
Remember, I am referring to the physical addiction. That is, the physical malfunction that a human body goes through when being deprived of a substance upon which they have become dependant.
No-one’s body malfunctions when they stop smoking cigarettes.
In fact, think about it, how long can you go without a cigarette?
Do you sleep at night? How many hours? Do you smoke in your sleep?
Have you ever witnessed someone suffering from withdrawals who are addicted to heroin or methamphetamines? It is not a pretty sight.
People who are truly addicted to a chemical like heroin or meth cannot sleep through the night, they have to get up and take a hit, just to go back to sleep.
No one does that with cigarettes.
Doesn’t this make you wonder how addictive cigarettes really are?
You see, even with just looking at your own life you have demonstrated that cigarettes do not have the same addictive characteristics biologically that truly addictive drugs do.
Now, I’m not into conspiracy theories or anything, but think about it, who benefits the most by us thinking that cigarettes are addictive?
Sure, you may suffer from headaches, crankiness and shaky hands but are they not simply irritations instead? Irritation and malfunction are not the same things. Irritations just cause discomfort… which is not a word used to describe the addictive withdrawals from any other truly addictive drug.
You’ve probably heard about people who contracted lung cancer from breathing in second-hand smoke. Now the nicotine and all the chemicals are strong enough to kill them, but they aren't strong enough to addict them. For years people breathed in all that nicotine but it didn't make them want to smoke.
So if it isn’t a physical addiction, what is it?
It’s a habit. Now it might sound a little trite to say it’s just a habit, but it’s probably one of the most powerful habits that exist.
When you wake up in the morning and you have that first cigarette you are reinforcing the habit of smoking. Then 20 times during the course of the day you are reinforcing the habit of smoking. Every time the hand goes up to the mouth, say about 10 times with each cigarette, so that’s about 200 times a day, you are reinforcing the habit.
What else do you do 200 times a day?
Nothing, except breathe.
So it’s a very powerfully conditioned habit.
The only way to stop smoking cigarettes is to just stop smoking cigarettes. And because it’s just a habit, you can break it easily.
What we’re doing here today is getting you to decide to quit cigarettes. When you now decide, then it becomes easy. Because the word decide literally means to 'kill off'. It comes from the Greek language, like suicide, genocide, homicide; decide means to 'kill off 'one option. So, when you decide now to quit cigarettes, it then becomes easy.
So, is the biological aspect of addiction still a concern for you?
Or would you be willing to believe for the sake of this process that you are indeed not biologically addicted but have a powerful habit?
What about patches and gum treatments? Would you believe that patches and gum provide a massive dose of nicotine? One day's supply of nicotine patches, is equivalent, in nicotine terms, to about six normal packs of cigarettes a day.
So, why on earth would people still want a cigarette? And yet they do. Why?
It’s because it’s not nicotine addiction. If it were an addiction the patches would work.
The reason is clear. It's because they do not address the source of the habit.
