CHAPTER 1: THE WAYS OF THE FORCE


Most of the literature on the subject of addiction is in agreement: there is a weakness or defect within the adIt is a disease dicted individual that makes him or her more susceptible to addictions than the general population. of the psychological or even, some would say, spiritual sort. So that we could label a person `sick or ill' who engages in an addictive habit much the same way that we would call a person `sick' when they have a physical illness; for neither of the two can their aiction. For instance, the person who smokes cigarettes can no more control his compulsion than the individual with cancer can control their cancer. You may have felt or heard this sense of helplessness; for the common refrain from smokers has often been heard: I wish I could stop smoking but it is next to impossible. Some call this a weakness of the will but, as this chapter will show, nothing could be further from the truth. This so called is misinterpreted and misdiagnosed to the detriment of all who seek help in their quest to quit smoking.

control

weakness of will

THE FORCE In the modern context, not to mention historically, we have all heard stories about the incredible resiliency of the human spirit. We also know this intuitively; that there has hardly been an obstacle on earth that has not been subjugated by the will of man or woman. Yet the cylindrical role of tobacco wrapped in paper, that millions throughout the world light up every day, is able to to make the strongest of wills succumb to it's wiles. For those who try to quit smoking, we see, almost in dramatic form, a titanic struggle between the human will and a force that compels the individual to smoke. This nameless force always seems to win; it is indomitable, crushing the strongest of wills and resolutions. For centuries, man lived in ignorance of the forces that existed outside of him. When there came to be an understanding of these forces, that they were not random or haphazard, man was able to these same forces which he was so helpless against. Eventually, mankind recognized that there was order in the universe and that the forces of nature operated according to principles or laws. Once these principles were understood then the seemingly wild, recalcitrant forces of nature lost their bite . . . they could and can be tamed. The nameless force, which bends and breaks the human will with ease, can be understood. It operates according to principles and laws. If we understand this force which bends the will so easily we will be able to harness this seeming fury and tame it to serve us. We will understand why we smoke and in the larger context we may begin to understand addictions in general.

harness

But in an even larger context we may even broaden our view and more fully understand human behavior. Like gravity, no one on the planet is free from the pull of this force. What we will nd is that we are all subject to and under the

not only this thing called addiction but all matters of mayhem in human aairs
sway of this fury. A fury, because if not recognized for what it truly is, will unleash . In fact, it may be the case that addictive behavior is just a small subset of the manifestations of this force. THE GREAT DEEP Seasoned sailors know, when they look at the surface waters of the deep, that there is another aspect to those seemingly calm waters. They understand that the depths You and I of the ocean conceal mighty and mysterious forces that are constantly churning and seething underneath. might look at the surface of these waters and see calmness and serenity but the trained mariner knows the truth, he sees and respects the great duality. He understands that the surface is not always representative of what is going on down below where powerful forces are at work. He also knows that at times these forces manifest themselves on the surface . . . Like the forces of the deep, the force which so easily manipulates the will of an addict or a smoker, is hidden from view. At times, however, it unleashes its fury in a of intense cravings and desires for a certain substance that no force on earth can ostensibly contravene. The cravings are only signals or signs that the force sends up to the surface from it's deep origins. The storm, the cravings, are only The eects are visible to us an eect of the force below.

storm

in the form of these desires whereas the force which wields

its power upon the human will, is invisible to us. Since the force is invisible perhaps we can understand a little of it's nature by studying the eects it produces. THE LANGUAGE OF THE FORCE In the book

we are given some insight into the eects of this force when he uses the term . When dealing with a so called addiction, he says that the mind or intellect is out of the loop. For example, you know in your mind that smoking that cigarette may not be good for you yet you still do it because of or urgency. As Nakken puts it, Emotional logic works to satisfy this urgency even if it is not in the best interest of the person.(pg.9) He states that emotional logic can be summed up in the phrase, I want what I want and I want it now! This much is true and any smoker or addict can attest to this. It is this emotional pressure which summons the cravings which culminate in the use of the substance. But Nakken speaks for and represents the addiction model of thinking by dismissing emotions as or misdirected

The Addictive Personality emotional logic

by Craig Nakken

emotional pressure

interests

because they guide people into that which is not in their

wrong

. Practically the whole eld of addiction treatment

best

has adopted this view. Actually, as we shall see, emotions contain information; valuable information that must be de-

dismissed because they are integral to addictions as some researchers have realized.

receptacles of information that go largely unheeded because they are not the type of information we are used to
most eective vehicle. Emotions are, in eect,

coded. It is a type of information that is packaged in the

. But they can not be

In the 1970's the psychologist J. Richard Eiser found

that people addicted to substances actually what they were doing.

jectively Rational Choice

In his paper,

, he lists the dierent approaches

enjoyed Smoking as a Sub-

doing

that had been investigated by researchers into the causes of addiction such as social upbringing, personality type etc, and found them wanting; he instead concluded that these may not be the reason at all for smokers and their decision to smoke. He concluded from his study that smokers were making a rational choice because they All these theories of addiction just mentioned and others, like social or peer pressure do not add up for, in the end,

enjoyed the activity.

emotionally

the smoker smokes because there is something to be gained . As Eiser puts it in another paper of his, account must somehow be taken of the pleasure smokers derive from smoking itself . . . What we have here is an interesting dichotomy. Nakken implies what the addiction model of thinking has always purported, that the emotions are wrong or misdirected while Eiser conrms what has been known to all who use these substances, they are

able yet bad

I

; this sounds like sin.

enjoyable

. Cigarette smoking is

The dichotomy can be

enjoy-

summed up in a phrase that has probably rebounded a billion times inside the mind of those who smoke cigarettes: it is bad for me but I like having a cigarette. Knowledge versus feelings and emotions. Which one is right? It would seem that knowledge should rule the day in this case, obviously, since the experts say that harm comes of cigarette smoking. The only rebuttal to these experts are our feelings and cravings. The tension in this dynamic between knowledge and emotions is great but one thing that has not been given its day in court to testify, one thing

know

feel

that has not been examined and put under the microscope, so to speak, are the emotions. Should we so easily dismiss a part of our human nature or should we at least investigate whether the emotions are trying to tell us something. Maybe our emotions, wrapped in cravings and desires, are trying to tell us a deeper, more powerful truth? FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE There is evidence that, concerning addictions, the emotions are an that are communicating information in the form of cravings and desires which are not understood because the cravings are not the reality but, as in language, symbolic of something else. They are only acting as a relay station and need to be decoded. the emotions are not the cause language is or

intelligent language

represent. In this way they are very much like language be. We all know that the word `dog' is dierent from the reality; it is just a symbol of the reality, the actual four legged creature. No one in their right mind mistakes the word for the reality. In the same way emotions and cravings are symbolizing something other than themselves . . . they are only a shadow of a deeper reality. Our misunderstanding of the representational nature of emotions is why we have failed to grasp their meaning and importance. is

actuality essence symbolic

Again,

of what they

mind that excludes the rest of the universe we do not think of a table or lamp or anything else when the word dog is specied. What must be understood is that the cravings or desires that a smoker has also have this specicity. The individual desires tobacco, he or she does not desire a

specicity

Another sign that emotions are of an intelligent nature . By using the word dog, an image comes to

toothpick or an ice-cream. the emotions are a source of information or knowledge that can be decoded, then we should not so easily dismiss them and instead strive to nd out what they are pointing to. What is that deeper reality and why is it communicating a rather peculiar desire for a specic substance known as tobacco? MESSAGE DECODED In the book

If

the author Ian Glynn summarizes much of the research in this area. He cites numerous experiments where it is shown that emotions have a direct correspondence to brain states. He summarizes one study by Dietrich Lehmann and associates in which it was found that the electrical activity of the brain was changing in discrete steps lasting a fraction of a second coincident with transitions between conscious thoughts.(pg.242) Thoughts and emotions consistently corresponded to what he calls `micro-states' of the brain because of their incredible shortness of duration. What is interesting is that through repeated testing he concludes the same thought generates the same brain micro-state, whether spontaneous or experimentally induced.(pg.246) For instance if one has a fearful thought, there will be certain characteristics that the brain will have, e.g. blood ow, oxygen amounts, electrical activity and glucose usage and amounts, that correspond to that exact thought every time. For every emotion there is a physiological event occurring in the brain. These emotional states were induced from the outside by the experimenters telling the subjects to think of a certain situation intently. What are we say-

Feeling Good: The Science of Well Being

ing here? If someone tells you a scary story you will likely feel an emotion but this emotion is representational of a physio-chemical arrangement or conguration of your brain. That emotion you experience is of the biochemical events occurring in your brain. So emotions are the ip side or mirror of bio-electrical/chemical events that happen simultaneously. The strange and fascinating thing about this principle is that it is by some Not only can an emotion, caused event, cause a physiological brain change can cause an

symbolic

or state but a physiological change from

bi-directional. outside

emotional state. In the 1940's this is what the physiologist Walter Hess brought to fruition, through his experiments, what had only been theorized before. In electrically stimulating various parts of the brain in animals, he was able to induce certain brain states which, in turn, induced various emotions that ranged from anger to fear and curiosity and even hunger. . For example, if the brain has 

inside

lost oxygen in discrete amounts, this will induce emotions of a certain kind that are due to a physical state in this case low oxygen levels. book, Dr. Batmanghelidj in his , has convincingly

shown that even water deciency will eect a `panic mode' due to the

An emotion can occur because of a physical state that the brain is in inside Your Body's Many Cries for Water physical status
of the brain having a water short-

in the brain. All anxiety attacks and feelings of panic are age, according to Batmanghelidj. It is important to grasp that these emotions are caused by an inner condition or we could say that they condition. or are of an inner

represent

symbolic

There is another emotion that is representational of an

inner condition of the cell and that is hunger. We are well acquainted with this but we take it for granted that it is actually due to a physiological state in the cell. Hunger is

signal or message is wrapped up and packaged in an emotional craving a feeling feel

really a signal from the human cell that it is in need of nutrients in order to keep running but the . Though the stomach may gurgle and you hunger, it is really a physical status of the cell the cell needs nutrients. Through a myriad number of bio-chemical processes that involves various organs, hormones and brain transmitters, the cell communicates with the surface by means of a powerful emotion laid craving . . . hunger. In light of what we have just learned, we could say that hunger is a feeling or emotion that is coded; it has a deeper meaning which is the physical state of the cell. It is telling us that our body and the units that our body is composed of the cells need nutrients in order to keep functioning. So here we have another example of what feelings or emotions are coding; they are conveying a physiological status that is occurring in the cell. The of hunger equals a nutrient decit of the cell the physical state the cell is in. A hunger or craving equals a physical decit occurring in the cell of a nutrient or nutrients emotions are reecting, they are the other side of the coin of, a physiological status of the cell. Is it possible that the emotional cravings we feel for such things as tobacco are really symbolic of a physical status of the cell? In other words, is it a message from the great deep that the cell needs something? If hunger or a craving reects a physiological state then perhaps cravings in general are signaling a deciency. In short, a craving any craving is a hunger or deciency state of the cell.

feeling

The most arresting fact about hunger is that it can not be disobeyed. Much like gravity, it is an irresistible force that, if not placated through ordinary means, will redirect the human organism to obtain nutrition by un-ordinary means. This is a fundamental point to be grasped in order to understand the craving for tobacco. REORIENTATION DAY The cell acts as though it is eternal. In fact, according to an experiment that was carried out by Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel, it may be eternal. For close to thirty years Carrel kept tissue cultured from an embryonic chicken heart in a specially designed ask; this is three times longer than a chicken's life span. All he did was regularly change the uid medium that the tissue was in with fresh, nutrient dense uid. The only reason the experiment ended was because someone forgot to change the uid. In it's grasp for survival, the cell displays a remarkable intelligence which is comprised of strategies or backup plans just in case it is not getting the needed materials for it's continued existence. The principle is not new and was philosophically developed by one man in the mid 1800's. The primary discoverer and explicator of it was the renowned physician/scientist by the name of Claude Bernard. In essence the principle states that in order to maintain life the cellular environment must be at a specic level (nutrients,oxygen, pH etc) this level where everything is working eciently, is the ideal and we can call this plan A. But if there is something that causes this level to deviate from the norm, the body will call in plan B as a backup plan to maintain that level. And believe it or not there may be a plan C or plan D even. As he put it in his book,

Lectures on the Phenomena

10

nisms, however varied they may be, have always one goal, to maintain the uniformity of the conditions of life in the internal environment. For instance, in his pioneering study into the phenomena of diabetes, he discovered that the blood of animals had sugar content even when he was starving them. How could sugar still be in the blood when he was clearly starving the supply of it to the body? What was found was that the body needs to maintain a constancy in regard to sugar levels in order to maintain brain function. So when it is not being supplied through the diet the body goes into plan B. Plan B was Bernard nding that the liver could store and produce

Common to Animals and Plants

: all of the vital mecha-

interieur

sugar, when needed, to maintain, as he called it, the

 the internal environment. When sugar was not

milieu milieu

provided by diet, the liver would supply it by breaking down stored sugar (glycogen). However, plan B can not go on forever, as the liver is limited in storage. If the sugar does not eventually come through dietary means, then, in order

of cannibalism which is known physiologically by the term catabolism. This is a desperate strategy but the organism must maintain the internal environment ( ) at a certain level in order to survive. This is the outcome of hunger, the force that can not be disobeyed. If one option is not available the cell will reorient itself to cannibalize the body. This is a redirection or, rather, reorientation at the cellular level which obviously we can not see. But this

interieur reorient
will

to maintain a steady supply of sugar in the blood (

) the body will resort to plan C. At this stage the

body will begin to turn on itself as a source of food.

It

itself to obtain whatever it needs by a form

milieu interieur

11

also occurs at the macro-level, which we can see, as in the following example . . . A particular example of reorientation at the macro-level, or whole human organism, is the Uruguayan ight that crashed in the Andes in 1972. The survivors were so ravenous that they fed on the well preserved bodies in the snow of those that did not survive the crash. Nando Parrando, one of the survivors, relates in his book, : we were starving in earnest, with no hope of nding food, but our hunger soon grew so voracious that we searched anyway . . . again and again we scoured the fuselage in We tried to eat strips of search of crumbs and morsels.

Miracle in the Andes

leather torn from pieces of luggage, though we knew that the chemicals they'd been treated with would do us more harm than good. We ripped open seat cushions hoping to nd straw, but found only inedible upholstery foam . . . . The hunger of the cell is the awesome force from the deep that sends its vigorous signals to the surface in a raging fury if its needs are not met. All convention and propriety is thrown out the window to a ravenous person because the cell must have food. Most people don't have bugs or vermin on their mind for dinner but a ravenous person will do what is necessary. A ravenous person will even resort to eating

reorients He or she will seek nutrients in unconventional ways and in unconventional things; this is reorientation of the human physiology.
another person in their desperation for nutrients. Thus, the cell the desires of a person so that it gets what it needs in any way possible. The cell overrides the human physiology because hunger is the supreme force which ensures that the cell will survive. Survival is the Prime Directive of the cell and it has

12

recruited or created an incredible force to do this. So powerful is this force of hunger that the cell actually overrides socially adopted conventions that a person has so that the person may in fact do things that he would not normally do in order to get that x, which is nutrients in the form of food. Ravenous people, as seen above, will commit extreme acts even including crime in order to get nutrients for the cell. The force of hunger is so great that it will overwhelm a person and the thing that will be on his mind is a single minded obsession with food. It will be so focused and crazed that a person, if they are without means, may resort to very irrational behavior such as stealing and lying and cheating and other sorts of pathological behavior. Have we heard this somewhere before concerning something else like, maybe, addiction based behavior? Ultimately, if there is no possibility of attaining food from the environment, the body still reorients itself; it will actually resort to cannibalism of a dierent kind. body in order to get at required nutrients. It will actually begin tearing apart internal structures within the The eld of physiology has a nicer word for it, catabolism, but really it is the body eating itself. This is how powerful the drive of the cell for nutrients is. THE GREAT FIRE OF MICRO-HUNGER But there is another type of hunger that is less well known but that is even more widespread than the full scale hunger we have just talked about. Most of humanity is suffering from this at this moment. You see, the human body requires close to 100 nutrients in order to perform it's functions eciently. If one of these nutrients is decient from the body for an extended period of time, you may not feel it

only

13

type of hunger special hunger or specic hunger.

cell recognizes this deciency almost instantly and is starving for that particular nutrient.
but the Scientists call this What occurs in specic starvation is a craving or hunger

for a specic nutrient. However, if the nutrient is not available, the cell, as in the case of general starvation discussed

ventional ways and forms

above, will reorient the physiology to acquire it in

. The thesis of this book is that

uncon-

this is what is going on when a person desires tobacco. The tobacco is actually oering a nutrient that is not available in the food supply, for reasons we shall soon discuss, and so the cell MUST have this nutrient and it will do so in forms that are considered non-foods. The craving for tobacco is not irrational but rather it is biologically driven by the needs of the cell the craving is representational or symbolic of a cellular situation. The two fundamental reasons for this reorientation are: The nutrient that is being sought in non-food forms such as tobacco is removed from the normal foods by processing techniques As a result of these processing techniques we are left with devitalized foods that do not contain the nutrients in them in order to be metabolized by the body. In a sense, they are what we could call partial-foods since they have vital nutrients removed. The irony is great, however, because the consumption of these partial-foods creates a nally removed from the food supply. The smoker, in a sense, is starving for this missing nutrient. I have dubbed this missing nutrient the Magic Element for the nutrient that is sought in tobacco which was origi-

greater need

14

for many reasons but mainly because it serves as an antidote to the situation that is caused in the cell by the consumption of partial-foods. ammation. Partial-foods or rened foods cause a situation in the cell that goes by the name of inHowever, this term does not seem to convey the image of what is actually occurring biochemically as a result of eating partial-foods. So I will rename this situation in the cell by calling it the FIRE. In a bio-chemical sense the cellular environment is inamed or IN-FLAMES. It will become more clear, as you read, as to what this actually is but for now what you must know, and will be revealed in chapter 7, is that the Magic Element is a FIRE-extinguisher. It is the emergency switch for the cell and the brain when these suer from consumption of partial-foods and their eects. But, to reiterate, there is a problem the Magic Element is not available in the food supply it has been rened out of the food supply.

is all around us

Yet herein lies another grand irony

. In fact, it is so ubiquitous in our environBut this is

the Magic Element reorient

ment that there could never be a lack for this vital nutrient of the cell but it is in NON-FOOD forms. actually a tribute to the design of our bodies; for the deciency in our food supply of the Magic Element does not pose a problem for the cell. The cell will . the or-

ganism so that it can acquire this vital Element from the environment So what we will see on the outside is behavior that is not conventional or cravings for things that are not normally considered food but are nevertheless as tobacco. of this Magic Element such No, it is not quite eating other humans but

in those non-food forms carriers

this is nevertheless, reorientation of the cell, though for a

15

specic nutrient. This special hunger is not noticed by the stomach but by the cell. The cell will send its signal in a specic manner because it is a specic hunger for a specic nutrient the Magic Element. The craving for these nonfood items in the environment, which is really a craving for the Magic Element, is more fully explained in chapter 2 but, for our purposes, one of them happens to be tobacco. Because the Magic Element is not being supplied in the diet, the cell will brilliantly reorient certain mechanisms in the individual so that he or she can at least attain the nutrient from another source that is not conventional, e.g. tobacco. The starved cell communicates this through strong and powerful emotion laden cravings that are impossible to withstand because the cell must feed. If this is true, you can see why hypnosis and counseling are limited in their eects how can you hypnotize away the needs of the cell? Smoking is really a the cell. by

nutrient specic starvation response

NO SIN ONLY A DEFICIENCY Obviously, the craving or emotion we know as hunger is not belittled or neglected in our society. But the cravings for cigarettes are looked at as irrational and we are told that it is abnormal. It may seem abnormal until one understands the cellular needs of the deep and how the cell will override things like a taste mechanism in order to get at a nutrient. If one does not understand this then the person having the cravings for that unconventional substance can seem abnormal or ill as we would look at a person that eats other people. The

The smoker can not help his

addiction model

imposes a paradigm of helplessness. , his addiction. It is an

sin

16

inherent weakness that he or she can not help, much less think about curing it. The

because, rst of all, the individual can recognize for the rst time that they do not have an inherent weakness only a nutrient deciency. Secondly, once the problem is understood there is potential for a remarkable thing to occur. Picture again the scene of the stranded airplane passengers in the desolate mountains: Because of the brunt force of the cells demands for nutrients, the cell conscripted the machinery of the bodies of the stranded passengers to act in a way that they would never in their lives have imagined. Their actions seem repulsive but the cell's demands are that great and it will reorient the organism in order to get at what it needs. Anyway, what would have cured them of their reorientation? The answer is obvious: if food were found by some chance and they ate it, then they would have been cured of the starvation which led them to such repulsive acts. The same thing will happen in a nutrient specic deciency. The cell is starving but it is starving for one or more nutrients due to the eating of partial foods. This causes a FIRE which creates a greater demand for the Magic Element. On top of this, the Magic Element is already scarce in our food supply in essence, the cell is starving for the Magic Element due to one or both of these situations. But if the Magic Element is supplied in the right amounts through our diet, then the redirected physiology of the body is brought back to normal. The reorientation of the body is no more. So whatever the person may have been doing to supply the Magic Element (like smoking tobacco) will dis-

special starvation

model empowers the individual

17

appear. Desires and cravings that were once formidable will no longer exist because the cell has received the Magic Element in a whole food form. It might seem strange to think of tobacco smoking as supplying a nutrient but just keep in mind that it is ultimately a plant and all plants have some substances which, when isolated, can have a physiological benet. But the only way to test this theory is to see if the nutrient that will be introduced in chapter 6, the Magic Element, will stop the reorientation or rather, the cigarette smoking. This book lays the theoretical groundwork but it will be supplemented by the experience that you have when you take the missing nutrient. In this book: -It will be shown that tobacco, though a non-food, is a carrier (like many other non-foods) of two nutrients. One of the nutrients is the Magic Element, which is discussed in chapters 6 and 7. The other nutrient serves as a sort of facilitator to help the Magic Element be absorbed in the cell. This nutrient will be discussed in chapters 4 and 5. -It will be shown that these nutrients serve a specic function in the body and brain especially. -It will be shown by YOU, if you care to read on, that supplying at least one of these nutrients, the Magic Element, in your diet through food or supplementation, will STOP your reorientation known as cigarette smoking just as presenting food to those stranded passengers would have instantly cured them of their cannibalism. What you will understand and hopefully appreciate by the end of this book is that the partial-foods (or special starvation) in our society, are the real gateway drug that eventually relegate us to the consumption of non-foods such

18

as tobacco smoking. This is an important point to keep in mind, since the last 100 years have seen the dominance of rened foods as in no other time period on earth. The human organism has the intelligence to combat this fractionation or splintering of the food supply by utilizing a certain survival strategy known as reorientation. It is as if the cell is trying to put the pieces of a fractured picture back together again by this strategy of acquiring a non-food to use it for making up for the lack in the partial-foods. The non-foods (tobacco etc) happen to have the missing piece of the puzzle that the partial-foods are not supplying the Magic Element. And, as we'll see in the next chapter, the biggest partialfood in our society is practically used by everyone and no indictment is handed out against it, by the authorities, in it's causal relationship to smoking. Instead, the eect smoking is vilied. Though, as a reader of this book, you will understand that smoking is a strategy of the cell to supply a missing part to something that was once whole. In it's attempt to make things whole, the body will seek after quite strange things and objects in it's search for the Magic Element . . .

19