You've  got  to  concentrate on something all the time.

"But I'd go crazy if I tried to work all day without a cigarette," you may reply. "I'd be a nervous wreck." No. You're not stating your case accurately. You might indeed become tense and nervous—not if you didn't smoke, but if you didn't take time out for concentration breaks throughout the day.
We'll hear an objection now from someone who says that his work doesn't require particular concentration. Or from a housewife who declares that washing dishes and making beds isn't "concentration." Yet both still feel the need for cigarettes to help them relax.

The fact is that the human mind must concentrate upon something every moment it is awake. You can't hold your mind completely blank. You're thinking about something all the time; and if whatever you're thinking about causes you to become tense, a concentration break will relax you. Any concentration break will relax you!

One of the chief reasons you have acquired the habit of smoking is just to give yourself the concentration break. But you can relax far more efficiently and far more effectively without smoking . . . once you   learn   the   technique   of   complete   relaxation through self-hypnosis.
You wont get fat from not smoking if you dont overeat.

Another frequently-repeated rationalization for the cigarette habit is: "I'd like to quit smoking, but every time I do I gain weight. And it's worse to be overweight than it is to smoke."

It isn't the fact that a person has stopped smoking that may cause him to gain weight. It's the fact that he substitutes the habit of overeating for the habit of smoking.

In the belief that he needs something tangible to relax tension (which he previously achieved by the mechanical movements of lighting a cigarette) a "reformed addict" may take to eating candy bars or nibbling on sweets . . . something to do, anything to do, in other words, to take his mind away from the pressing problems, and to get back some of those old, familiar gestures that are part of the habitual pattern of smoking.

The gesture of reaching for something, and picking it up, and then placing it in the mouth. The gestures and muscle movements of the lips, mouth and jaws: as many of the gestures of smoking as can be achieved, in other words, without a cigarette.

You'll soon see that this isn't necessary either.

IS IT KILLING YOUR APPETITE, OR IS IT KILLING YOU?

"But a cigarette kills my appetite," you answer. "I don't feel so hungry when I smoke, and so I don't eat as much. Without cigarettes, I’ll eat more."
 

The fact is that the cigarette isn't killing your appetite—but maybe it's killing you. Some of the ingredients in those cigarettes are harsh irritants to all parts of the digestive tract, and they can interfere with normal digestive juices and even aggravate stomach ulcers.

It may help to "kill your appetite for cigarettes" to know that Doctor A. C. Ivey of the University of Illinois found that a person who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day for ten years inhales eight quarts of tar in that time—the same kind of tars that Doctors Wynder and Graham injected in laboratory rats, thereby producing cancer.

Let's be reasonable about this. Appetite is the habit of hunger—it isn't hunger itself. Appetite is stimulated by seeing or thinking about food. Unless you substitute the habit of appetite for the habit of smoking, there is no reason why your appetite will be stimulated when you stop smoking. And we'll prevent this by giving you a better "habit substitute"—no calories, but exceedingly healthful.

And if you should have a weight problem, you will find there are better appetite depressants than cigarettes. Depressants that:

—do not over-stimulate movement of the bowels (cigarettes often do).
—don't cause heartburn, nausea, and abdominal pain (cigarettes frequently do).
—don't increase the death rate from ulcers in the stomach and duodenum (as cigarettes apparently do).

Or am I being unreasonable? Is burning the barn the only way to roast the pig?
 

Two other rationalizations often follow at this point; I know, you'll remember, because I practically wrote the script. They are both desperate in quality.

"IT'S AN ADDICTION, NOT A HABIT"

Smokers who can't stop smoking—and non-smokers who don't comprehend the leechlike aspects of the habit—insist that the need for cigarettes is an addiction.

When an individual becomes a drug addict, the dependence on drugs is not only emotional but physiological. The marked and increasingly severe changes in his body chemistry are not fleeting or transient; they endure, and while they endure the body physiologically requires renewal of the drug effect. What is more, the body increasingly becomes dependent on ever-increasing doses.

When we smoke, there are physiological changes, of course—the heart rate, blood pressure, circulation and blood are affected. But when we stop smoking, the effects do not endure; they gradually disappear. The heart rate returns to normal (permanent damage excluded, of course) and so does the blood pressure. The body does not demand more nicotine; it continues as efficiently as possible to eliminate as much of this poison as possible.