Allen Carr's Easy Way To Stop Smoking

by Allen Carr

These feelings of frailty and that we are somehow flawed and incomplete are promoted aggressively by advertisers in a wide range of categories, wh...

This is like banging your head against a brick wall because it feels better when you stop.

I was three weeks into one of my failed attempts to stop. The attempt had been triggered by my wife’s worry about my constant wheezing and coughing. I had told her I was not worried about my health. She said, ‘I know you aren’t, but how would you feel if you had to watch someone you love systematically destroying themselves?’ It was an argument that I found irresistible, hence the attempt to stop. The attempt ended at around the three week mark after a heated argument with an old friend. It did not register until years afterwards that my devious mind had deliberately triggered the argument. I felt justly aggrieved at the time, but I do not believe that it was coincidence, as I had never argued with this particular friend before, nor have I since. Anyway, I had my excuse. I desperately ‘needed’ a cigarette and started smoking again.

As the anti-social split between smokers and non-smokers widens, there are literally thousands of cases where the company of friends or relatives is restricted or avoided altogether because of this awful weed. The worst thing about secret smoking is that it reinforces the fallacy in the smoker’s mind that he is being deprived. At the same time, it causes a major loss of self-respect as otherwise honest, decent folk are forced to deceive those whom they love the most. This happened to me on several occasions and I am sure it has also happened to you.

You don’t need cancer scares or health warnings to know that cigarettes ruin your life. These bodies of ours are the most sophisticated machines on the planet and they tell us—no, they practically yell at us—from the first drag to the last that cigarettes are POISON.

it is not the nicotine addiction itself that hooks the smoker but the brainwashing that results from that addiction.

In a sense, this is the most subtle aspect of the smoking trap. It’s designed to hold you for life. When we have genuine stress in our lives, it’s not time to stop, and if we have no stress in our lives, we have no desire to stop.

Ask yourself these following questions. When you smoked that very first cigarette, did you really decide then that you would continue to smoke for the rest of your life? OF COURSE YOU DIDN’T! Do you want to be a smoker for the rest of your life? OF COURSE NOT! So when will you stop? Tomorrow? Isn’t that what you said yesterday? Next year? Isn’t that what you said last year? Isn’t this what you’ve been asking yourself since you first realized you were hooked? Are you hoping that one morning you will wake up and just not want to smoke any longer? Stop kidding yourself. I waited thirty-three years for it to happen to me and never did that day come. With drug addiction you get progressively more hooked, not less. You think it will be easier tomorrow? If you can’t do it today, what makes you think you’ll be able to tomorrow? Or will you wait until you get one of the killer diseases? Do you honestly think that the additional stress caused by the thought of impending death will make it easier to quit? Think about this; what would you advise your dearest friend to do in this situation? You would urge him to save his life and act immediately.

I was five years old when World War II started. We were bombed out of our home in London and I was separated from my parents for two years. I was billeted with people who treated me unkindly. It was an unpleasant period in my life, but I was able to cope with it. I don’t believe it has left me with any permanent scars; on the contrary I think it has made me a stronger person. When I look back on my life there has only been one thing I couldn’t handle and that was my slavery to that damned weed.

What I didn’t realize was that when you are physically and mentally depressed, everything gets you down. Today, I feel like a young boy again. Only one thing has made that change in my life: I’m now out of the smoking pit.

I know it’s a cliché to say that ‘If you haven’t got your health you haven’t got anything’ but it’s true. I used to think that physical fitness fanatics were a pain. I used to claim that there was more to life than feeling fit: like booze and smokes. That’s nonsense. When you are physically fit you can enjoy the highs more and cope with the lows better. We confuse responsibility with stress.

What destroys them is not the stresses of life, or the pressure of being in the public eye, but the socalled crutches they turn to in order to try to handle that stress.

Smoking is not a habit or a pleasure. It is drug addiction and a disease.

You are about to trade in a beaten up old pick-up truck for a brand new Ferrari. Why wait another day?

Just think how wonderful it will be not to have your life dominated by a four-inch tube of paper with poison in it. Just think how wonderful it will be to replace a life of fear, anxiety, stress and slavery with one of health, happiness and freedom! Why wouldn’t it be easy—and fun?

WILL I MISS THE CIGARETTE? No! Once that little nicotine ‘monster’ is dead and the chemical addiction is broken, any remaining brainwashing will vanish and you will find that you will be both physically and mentally better equipped not only to cope with the stresses and strains of life but to enjoy the good times to the fullest. There is only one danger and that is the influence of people who are still smoking. There is a saying that, ‘The grass is always greener on the other side’. Nowhere is this attitude more prevalent than in the area of smoking. Why is it in the case of smoking, where the disadvantages are so enormous and the illusory ‘advantages’ so slight, that ex-smokers tend to envy smokers? With all of the brainwashing we are exposed to during our childhood and adolescence it is no surprise that we experiment with cigarettes and become hooked. But why is it that as soon as we manage to break free, we immediately once again want to become a smoker? It is the influence of smokers.

Don’t envy smokers; pity them.

Let’s be clear about this: stopping smoking does not lead to weight gain; overeating does.

What am I getting out of the cigarette? Why do I need to smoke?

It is ridiculously easy to stop smoking. All you have to do is two things. 1. Make the decision that you are never going to smoke again. 2. Don’t mope about it. Rejoice. You are probably asking, ‘Why the need for the rest of the book? Why couldn’t you have said that in the first place?’ The answer is that at some stage you would have moped about it, and consequently doubted your decision. You would have been forced to use Willpower and, as a result, most likely would have failed.

The main problem in quitting is not the chemical withdrawal, which is barely even noticeable, but the brainwashing and it was therefore necessary to explode those myths and illusions. Understand your enemy. Know his tactics, and you will easily defeat him.

I even enjoyed the withdrawal period because I saw it for what it really was—a barely noticeable feeling in the pit of my stomach, which was a signal that the ‘little monster’ was dying. The truth of the matter is that stopping smoking is the most wonderful thing that has happened in my life.

Instead of lighting up subconsciously, I became more aware of my smoking and began to analyze my thoughts and feelings as I was doing it. This confirmed what I already knew. I wasn’t enjoying any of them, and they were truly filthy and disgusting.

I said to myself: “Allen, whether you like it or not, YOU HAVE SMOKED YOUR LAST CIGARETTE.”

the key to making it easy is to make your decision certain and final. Not to hope you have kicked it, but to know you have. Never doubt or question your decision. In fact, celebrate it.

There are a couple of essential points and it is necessary to get them clear in your mind before you start. 1. Realize that you can do this. There is nothing different about you that makes quitting uniquely challenging. Millions of Americans have done it, and you can too. The only person who can make you smoke that next cigarette is you. 2. There is absolutely nothing to give up. On the contrary, there are enormous positive gains to be made. I do not only mean you will be healthier and wealthier. I mean that you will be able to enjoy the good times more and that your ability to cope during the bad times will improve. 3. Get it clear in your mind that there is no such thing as one cigarette. Smoking is drug addiction and a chain reaction. The first cigarette you ever smoked is responsible for every one you have ever smoked. 4. See smoking for what it really is. It is not a sociable habit with some unfortunate side effects. It is drug addiction and a disease. Face up to the fact that, whether you like it or not, YOU HAVE GOT THIS DISEASE. It won’t go away just because you bury your head in the sand. Remember: like all progressive diseases, it gets worse and worse. The easiest and best time to rid yourself of this disease is now. 5. Separate the disease (i.e. the chemical addiction) from the frame of mind of being a smoker or a non-smoker. All smokers, if given the opportunity to go back to the time before they became hooked, would jump at that opportunity and choose a non-sm...

It is essential to start with the correct frame of mind: “Isn’t it great that I am a non-smoker!”

the withdrawal period (three days),

Provided you have the right mindset, which means seeing quitting not as losing a friend, but as killing an enemy,

if you can start right now by saying, ‘I am never going to smoke again. Isn’t it wonderful?’ all temptation will go. Whereas if you say, ‘If only I can survive three days without a cigarette,’ you will be dying for a cigarette after the three days are up.

Although you are 100% nicotine-free after three days of abstinence it can take up to three weeks before our mind and body become fully accustomed to the absence of nicotine and many of the other thousands of chemicals present in tobacco smoke. It is not uncommon to experience smoking thoughts during this period.

If smokers using willpower to quit can manage to abstain for a few days, the physical component of the ‘pang’ disappears. It is the psychological triggers that cause the difficulty.

That smoker has grown accustomed to relieving his need to smoke at certain times of the day and when doing certain things.

Let’s say that you buy a brand new car, and true to Murphy’s Law, instead of the signal lever being on the left, as with your old car, it is on the right. You know it’s on the right, but for a couple of weeks, until you become accustomed to it, you occasionally put the windshield wipers on whenever you want to signal. Stopping smoking is similar. During the early days of being quit, certain events may trigger the thought, ‘I want a cigarette.’ This is because for all of the years you were a smoker, you associated this specific event with smoking. In such situations, ‘I want a cigarette’ becomes a conditioned reflex. It is essential to counter-condition your response in these situations otherwise you will interpret your conditioned ‘I want a cigarette’ response as fact and then feel deprived because you can’t have one. This is the beginning of the slippery slope of having to use willpower.

Even with my method, responding correctly to these ‘triggers’ is the most challenging part and it can make the difference between finding stopping an ‘OK’ experience and a wonderful, life-changing one. It is essential to counter this conditioning from the start and to do so successfully you must replace the fear and confusion caused by the brainwashing with hard facts. Get it clear in your mind: you don’t need to smoke and you don’t need to torture yourself by regarding the cigarette as some sort of crutch or friend when you know for a fact that it is neither. There is no need to be miserable. Cigarettes don’t make meals or social occasions; they ruin them. Smokers aren’t smoking after a meal because they enjoy it, but because they are drug addicts who need their ‘fix’ after a period of abstinence.

Abandon the ridiculous concept of smoking as being pleasurable for its own sake. If we smoked just for the sake of smoking, we could smoke herbal cigarettes (no, not that kind of herb!). The reason that herbal cigarettes haven’t taken off here or anywhere else is that there is no point in smoking them because they haven’t got any nicotine. We can clarify this point by comparing it with heroin. Do you think a heroin addict shoots up because he enjoys using a hypodermic or to get the drug? It’s so obvious with other people’s addictions, isn’t it? Smokers smoke to get nicotine, not because they enjoy the act of smoking. As a vivid demonstration of this, look at the story of Next.

Instead of feeling fearful and anxious about pangs, embrace them. Say to yourself: ‘I know what this is—it’s the ‘little monster’ dying. This is what smokers suffer from their whole lives and that’s what keeps them smoking. Non-smokers don’t get these pangs. Isn’t it great that I am breaking free from this awful addiction and looking forward to a life of freedom?’ Don’t focus on the pang, but on what it represents—the death not of a friend, but of a terrible enemy. One that enslaved you for years and stole your health, your money, your self-respect, your courage and confidence, all the time trying to kill you. Think of the next few days and weeks as a game of poker where you have a Royal Flush and your opponent doesn’t even have a pair of twos. You have the better cards and will crush him, so he’ll try to cheat and trick you. Whatever he throws at you doesn’t matter because it doesn’t change the facts. You have the winning hand. You are going to win and at last be able to claim the prize you so richly deserve—a life of health, happiness and freedom. You have him just where you want him. You have used facts to see through the confusion and fear that he has created to try to keep you trapped. As every minute passes, he becomes weaker. It’s over. You have won. You are free. Whatever you do, don’t