How to stop smoking

Nicotine Addiction: A reasonable approach

I look at and talk about addictions and unwanted behaviors a little differently than you'll find in most treatment programs and treatment ideologies.

The reason Alan's ideas are included here is he's one of the few that has seen fear as a primary factor in dealing with addiction. He did such a good job of explaining it I wanted to provide everyone with the opportunity to read at least part of it. I can't put the whole book here because of copyright rules.

With everyday that goes by people that want solutions are finding them. Most of the answers come from outside the establishment community. I really like finding out what life is all about - so I can be of more help to others. The following is really helpful in understanding what our brains are up to...Wilson Douglas

About the author The common thread running through Allen Carr's work is the removal of fear. Indeed, his genius lies in eliminating the phobias and anxieties which prevent people from being able to enjoy life to the full, as his bestselling books Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking.

A successful accountant, Allen Carr's hundred-cigarettes-a-day addiction was driving him to despair until, in 1983, after countless failed attempts to quit, he finally discovered what the world had been waiting for the Easy Way to Stop Smoking. He has now built a network of clinics that span the globe and has a phenomenal reputation for success in helping smokers to quit.

ALLEN CARR'S EASY WAY TO STOP SMOKING

If there were a magic button that smokers could press to wake up the following morning as if they never lit that firs cigarette,. the only smokers there would be tomorrow morning would be the youngsters who are still at the experimental stage. The only thing that prevents us from quitting is: FEAR!

Fear that we will have to survive an indeterminate period of misery, deprivation and unsatisfied craving in order to be free. Fear that a meal or social occasion will never be quite as enjoyable without a cigarette. Fear that we'll never be able to concentrate, handle stress or be as confident without our little crutch. Fear that our personality and character will change. But most of all, the fear of 'once a smoker always a smoker,' that we will never be completely free and spend the rest of our lives at odd times craving the occasional cigarette. If, as I did, you have already tried all the conventional ways to quit and been through the misery of what I describe as the willpower method of stopping, you will not only be affected by that fear, hut convinced you can never quit.

If you are apprehensive, panic-sticken or feel that the time is not right for you to give up, then let me assure you that your apprehension or panic is caused by fear. That fear is not relieved by cigarettes but created by them. You didn't decide to fall into the nicotine trap. But like all traps, it is designed to ensure that you remain trapped. Ask yourself, when you lit those first experimental cigarettes, did you decide to remain a smoker as long as you have? So when are you going to quit? Tomorrow? Next, year? Stop kidding yourself! The trap is designed to hold you for life. Why else do you think all these other smokers don't quit before it kills them?

This book was first published by Penguin a decade ago and has been a bestseller every year since then, I now have ten years' feedback. As you will soon be reading, the feedback has revealed information that has exceeded my wildest aspirations of the effectiveness of my method. It has also revealed two aspects of EASYWAY that have caused me concern. The second I will he covering later. The first arose from the letters that I have received. I give three typical examples:

I didn't believe the claims you made and I apologize for doubting you. It was just as easy and enjoyable as you said it would be. I've given copies of your book to all my smoking friends and relatives, but I can't understand why they don't read it,

I was given your book eight years ago by an ex-smoking friend, I've just got around to reading it. My only regret is that I wasted eight years.

I've just finished reading EASYWAY. I know it has only been four days, but I feel so great, I know I'll never need to smoke again. I first started to read your book five years ago, got half-way through and panicked. I knew that if I went on reading I would have to stop. Wasn't I silly?

No, that particular young lady wasn't silly. I've referred to a magic button. EASYWAY works just like that magic button. Let me make it quite clear, EASYWAY isn't magic, but for me and the hundreds of thousands of ex-smokers who have found it so easy and enjoyable to quit. it seems like magic!

This is the warning. We have a chicken and egg situation. Every smoker wants to quit and every smoker can find it easy and enjoyable to quit. It's only fear that prevents smokers from trying to quit. The greatest gain is to be rid of that fear. But you won't be free of that fear until you complete the book. On the contrary, like the lady in the third example, that fear might increase as you read the book and this might prevent you from finishing it.

You didn't decide to fall into the trap, but he clear in your mind, you won't escape from it unless you make a positive decision to do so. You might already be straining at the leash to quit. On the other hand you might be apprehensive, Either way please bear in mind: YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO LOSE!

If at the end of the book you decide that you wish to continue to smoke, there is nothing to prevent you from doing so. You don't even have to cut down or stop smoking while you are reading the book, and remember, there is no shock treatment. On the contrary, I have only good news for you. Can you imagine how the Count of Monte Cristo felt when he finally escaped from that prison? That's how I felt when I escaped from the nicotine trap. That's how the millions of ex-smokers who have used my method feel. By the end of the book: THAT'S HOW YOU WILL FEEL! GO FOR IT!


The momentous day was 15 July 1983, I didn't escape from Colditz, but I imagine those who did felt the same sense of relief and exhilaration as I did when I extinguished that final cigarette. I realized 1 had discovered something that every smoker was praying for: an easy way to stop smoking. After testing out the method on smoking friends and relatives, I gave up accountancy and became a full-time consultant, helping other smokers to get free.

I wrote the first edition of this book in 1985. One of my failures, the man I describe in chapter 25, was the inspiration. He visited me twice, and we were both reduced to tears on each occasion. He was so agitated that I couldn't get him to relax enough to absorb what I was saying. I hoped that if I wrote it all down, he could read it in his own good time, as many times as he wanted to, and this would help him to absorb the message.

I was in no doubt that EASYWAY would work just as effectively for other smokers as it had for me. However, when I contemplated putting the method into book form, I was apprehensive. I did my own market research. The comments were not very encouraging:

'How can a book help me to quit? What I need is willpower!'

'How can a book avoid the terrible withdrawal pangs?'

In addition to these pessimistic comments, I had my own doubts. Often at the clinics it became obvious that a client had misunderstood an important point that I was making. I was able to correct the situation. But how would a book be able to do that? I remembered well the times when I studied to qualify as an accountant, when I didn't understand or agree with a particular point in a book, the frustration because you couldn't ask the book to explain, I was also well aware, particularly in these days of television and videos, that many people arc not accustomed to reading.

Added to all these factors, I had one doubt that overrode all the rest. I wasn't a writer and was very conscious of my limitations in this respect. I was confident that I could sit down face to face with a smoker and convince that smoker how much more enjoyable social occasions to regard it as their failure. We regard it as our failure, we failed to convince those smokers just how easy and enjoyable it is to quit.

I dedicated the first edition to the smokers that I had failed to cure. That failure rate was based on the money-hack guarantee that we give at our clinics. The average current failure rate of our clinics world-wide is under 5 per cent. That means a success rate of over 95 per cent,

Although I was aware that I had discovered something marvelous, I never in my wildest dreams expected to achieve such rates. You might well argue that if I genuinely believed that I would cure the world of smoking, I must have expected to achieve 100 per cent.

No, I never ever expected to achieve 100 per cent. Snuff-taking was the previous most popular form of nicotine addiction until it became antisocial and died. However, there are still a few weirdoes that continue to take snuff and probably, there always will be. Amazingly, the Houses of Parliament are one of the last bastions of snuff-taking. I suppose this is not so surprising when you think about it, politicians are generally about a hundred years behind the times. So there will always be a few weirdoes that will continue to smoke, I certainly never expected to have to cure every smoker personally.

What I thought would happen was that once I had explained the mysteries of the smoking trap and dispelled such illusions as:

* Smokers enjoy smoking

* Smokers choose to smoke

* Smoking relieves boredom & stress

* Smoking aids concentration and relaxation

* Smoking is a habit

* It takes willpower to quit

* Once a smoker always a smoker

* Telling smokers that it kills them helps them to quit

* Substitutes, particularly nicotine replacement, helps smokers to quit, in particular, when I had dispelled the illusion that it is difficult to quit and that you have to go through a transitional period of misery in order to do so, I naively thought that the rest of the world would also see the light and adopt my method.

I thought my chief antagonist would be the tobacco industry. Amazingly, my chief stumbling blocks were the very institutions that I thought would be my greatest allies: the media, the Government, organizations like ASH, QUIT and the established medical profession.

You've probably seen the film Sister Kenny. In case you haven't, it was about the time when infantile paralysis or polio was the scourge of our children. I vividly remember that the words engendered the same fear in me as the word cancer does today. The effect of polio was not only to paralyze the legs and arms but to distort the limbs. The established medical treatment was to put those limbs in irons and thus prevent the distortion. The result was paralysis for life.

Sister Kenny believed the irons inhibited recovery and proved a thousand times over that the muscles could be re-educated so that the child could walk again. However, Sister Kenny wasn't a doctor, she was merely a nurse. How dare she dabble in a province that was confined to qualified doctors? It didn't seem to matter that Sister Kenny had found the solution to the problem and had proved her solution to be effective. The children that were treated by Sister Kenny knew she was right, so did their parents, yet the established medical profession not only refused to adopt her methods but actually prevented her from practicing. It took Sister Kenny twenty years before the medical profession would accept the obvious.

I first saw that film years before I discovered EASYWAY, The film was very interesting and no doubt there was an element of truth. However, it was equally obvious that Hollywood had used a large portion of poetic license. Sister Kenny couldn't possibly have dis covered something that the combined knowledge of medical science had failed to discover. Surely the established medical specialists weren't the dinosaurs they were being portrayed as? How could it possibly have taken them twenty years to accept the facts that were staring them in the face?

They say that fact is stranger than fiction, I apologize for accusing the makers of Sister Kenny for using poetic license. Even in this so-called enlightened age of modern communications, after fourteen years, even having access to modern communications, I've failed to get my message across. Oh, I've proved my point, the only reason that you are reading this hook is because another ex-smoker has recommended it to you. Remember, I don't have the massive financial power of institutions like the BMA, ASH or QUIT. Like Sister Kenny, I'm a lone individual. Like her. I'm only famous because rny system works. I'm already regarded as the number-one guru on helping smokers to quit. Like Sister Kenny, I've proved my point. But Sister Kenny proved her point. What good did that do if the rest of the world was still adopting procedures which were the direct opposite to what they should be?

The last sentence of this book is identical to that in the original manuscript:

There is a wind of change in society, A snowball has started that I hope this book will help turn into an avalanche.

From my remarks above, you might have drawn the conclusion that I am no respecter of the medical profession. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of my sons is a doctor and I know of no finer profession. Indeed we receive more recommendations to our clinics from doctors than from any other source, and surprisingly, more of our clients come from the medical profession than any other single profession.

In the early years, I was generally regarded by the doctors as being somewhere between a charlatan and a quack. In August 1997, I had the great honor to be invited to lecture to the 10th World Conference on Tobacco or Health held in Beijing. I believe that I am the first non - qualified doctor to receive such an honor. The invitation itself is a measure of the progress that I have made.

However, I might just as well have been lecturing to a brick wall Since the nicotine chewing-gum and the patch have failed to cure the problem, smokers themselves appear to have accepted that you don't get cured from addiction to a drug by prescribing the same drug. It's equivalent to saying to a heroin addict: don't smoke heroin, smoking is dangerous, try injecting it into your vein (don't try this with nicotine, it will kill you instantly). Because the medical profession and the media haven't a clue about helping smokers to quit, they concentrate on telling smokers what they already know: smoking is unhealthy, it's filthy and disgusting, it's antisocial and expensive. It never seems to occur to them that smokers do not smoke for the reasons that they shouldn't smoke. The real problem is to remove the reasons that they do smoke.





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