Allen Carr's Easy Way to Quit Smoking Without Willpower

by Allen Carr

In its pure form, nicotine is a colourless, oily compound that is lethal to humans even in relatively small doses. It is the fastest-acting addictive drug known to humankind, faster than heroin.

Nicotine leaves the body very quickly. Within eight hours of stubbing out a cigarette, you are 97 per cent nicotine-free; within three days, you’re 100 per cent nicotine-free

is to truly understand why you thought you got tremendous pleasure, enjoyment and support from taking this drug.

Rather than seeing the nicotine trap as a hellish prison that they want to escape from at the earliest possible opportunity, smokers feel they are trapped between a rock and a hard place.

It is overwhelmingly fear that keeps smokers trapped. On the one hand, the fear of what will happen if we carry on smoking – on the other, the fear of what will happen if we stop; how will we cope?

most smoking is done without much thought. The only times you’re aware of it are when you’re coughing and wheezing

They don’t realize that it’s smoking which causes them to be in a constant state of feeling stressed, tense and unable to concentrate in the first place.

The only pleasure from smoking or vaping is the partial relief of the discomfort caused by smoking or vaping

If you trusted your instincts over your intellect, you would never have smoked that first cigarette.

When you satisfy a genuine instinct like hunger or thirst, it gives you genuine pleasure and a lasting feeling of satisfaction and wellbeing. When you smoke, all you get is temporary and partial relief, which is quickly replaced by insecurity and emptiness.

But the nicotine trap is not a physical trap; it’s a mental trap, based on illusion.

Despite the fact that cigarettes are responsible for far more deaths than heroin, we regard heroin as a hard drug and nicotine as a social drug.

The person who claims that smoking distracts their mind in a stressful situation will, in the next breath, also claim that it provides no distraction whatsoever when it comes to concentration; in fact, they claim it helps them to do so.

It’s because they associate the smell with the relief of the craving for nicotine.

Your immune system has built a tolerance to the poison, so you’re less sensitive to the foul taste and smell.

If you notice that a meal you’re eating in a restaurant is too salty, check outside the kitchen door later and you’ll be sure to find a chef who smokes.

Smokers talk about the hit they get from that first smoke of the day. This is actually their body recoiling from the poison.

That isn’t a buzz or a high – it’s just a dizzy sensation caused by lack of oxygen to your brain and the poisoning effect of the nicotine.

How can something that creates stress ease stress?

Whenever the thought of smoking enters your mind, you don’t mope because you can’t smoke; you rejoice because you no longer have to. You’re not ‘giving up’ anything when you quit – you’re getting rid of something that’s plagued your life.

So are we to conclude that the proportion of people with addictive personalities has fallen by 64 per cent in just over half a century? That’s a major genetic shift in humankind!

You believed a cigarette would help you concentrate. The problem is that you became obsessed with the idea so much that you were unable to concentrate until you smoked.

‘So what – I don’t care if I live or die!’ But at that point you didn’t throw yourself off a cliff.

If there is something you can do to remove a distraction, you need to do it or else it will irritate you and that will become an added distraction. If there is nothing you can do about it, it’s much easier to ignore it and put it out of your mind.

Smoking becomes your default response to boredom. But it doesn’t remove the boredom.

According to the US Center for Disease Control & Prevention, smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States. This accounts for about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day. That’s the equivalent of three Boeing 747 jumbo jets crashing every single day.

Smokers don’t enjoy smoking or vaping. They only think they do because they’re drug addicts, and so they feel most miserable when they’re not allowed to smoke

The key is seeing through the illusions and understanding the true picture: that smoking does not relieve stress, or provide any kind of crutch at all; nor does it suppress your appetite and help you stay slim.

There is no reason to envy casual smokers for the limited amount of smoking they do. Think about it: you’re really envying them for the amount of smoking they don’t do.

There is only the illusion of pleasure. Any perceived enjoyment is merely temporary and partial relief from the empty, insecure feeling of nicotine withdrawing from your body.

Nothing bad is going to happen after you quit. Quite the contrary.

You’ll be missing out on nothing other than a lifetime of misery.

The addiction makes it impossible for them to even grieve properly without nicotine.

Withdrawal is 1 per cent physical and 99 per cent mental