Allen Carr's Easy Way to Quit Smoking Without Willpower

by Allen Carr

The unpleasant physical feelings are real, but they are the result of a mental process – of wanting a cigarette and not being able to have one

Only by recognizing that you are an addict can you begin the process of becoming a non-addict again.

The only way to feel like a non-smoker is by not smoking

Kill the Little Monster and you end the addiction All you have to do to kill the Little Monster is starve it of nicotine – it dies within a matter of days.

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

Each cigarette or shot of nicotine rekindles the craving and ensures that you suffer it over and over for the rest of your life

The human body is an incredible machine. Its powers of recovery are extraordinary. We abuse our bodies with all sorts of poisons – nicotine, alcohol, sugar, etc. – yet they keep soldiering on. Any time we decide to stop abusing ourselves and lead a healthier lifestyle, our bodies recover with extraordinary speed. It’s not just the body that feels healthier either. The mind responds to the way we live too. Eat healthily, take exercise, and we feel better mentally as well as physically. The reverse is also true: abuse your body and your mental health suffers too.

Instead of becoming complete, strong, secure and unique individuals in our own right, we become impressionable fans, leaving ourselves wide open to suggestion. But we don’t want our insecurities to show; we want to look self-assured, confident, in control, grown-up. So we begin to mimic the mannerisms of other apparently confident individuals.

If we do something enough times, the brain is rewired.

The brainwashing creates the belief in your mind that smoking offers some kind of pleasure or crutch. The cycle of addiction, whereby each cigarette offers partial relief from the craving created by the one before, convinces you that you do get some pleasure or comfort when you smoke. Remember, this is no more of a pleasure than the relief of taking off tight shoes.

Smoking makes all smokers miserable. But you only realize just how miserable you have been when you stop

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. This void is created by the very thing that you take to relieve it. But you keep taking it because you believe in the myth. The only effective way to remove this artificial void is to remove the addiction.

When you know for a fact that smoking does absolutely nothing for you, any desire disappears.

Non-smokers manage to enjoy life and cope with stressful situations. In fact, they cope better and enjoy life more. The only reason you might think life will be worse without cigarettes is because your addiction makes you miserable when you don’t smoke.

smoking provides some sort of pleasure or crutch. It is this myth that creates the desire to smoke. Remove that desire and escape from the trap is easy.

It’s essential, then, for me to make sure you fully understand that any pleasure you think you get from smoking is an illusion.

There is no genuine pleasure or crutch to be derived from smoking or vaping; we think there is only because of the brainwashing and the way the nicotine trap twists our perception.

This time when you quit, you won’t feel like you’re missing out on anything, so if you habitually experience a trigger – immediately after a meal, for example – it’ll be a moment of happiness, a moment you can remind yourself how lucky you are to be free, rather than a moment for concern.

In fact, smokers are not stupid. They are being conned by a fiendish force called addiction. The temptation exists because you have been brainwashed into believing a myth: that smoking gives you some kind of pleasure or crutch. Even when you reach the point where you can no longer convince yourself that you are getting any pleasure or crutch from smoking, the temptation to go on smoking remains. It is driven by fear. ‘How will I be able to cope without cigarettes?’

When you light up, the feeling is partially relieved and your brain is fooled into believing that the cigarette is your friend. This is how smoking creates the illusion of pleasure.

Recognize that the empty, insecure feeling you experience when you’re not smoking is nicotine craving caused by smoking and the ‘pleasure’ you feel when you smoke is merely the temporary and partial relief of that craving and the pacification of the Big Monster in your mind.

You’re not ‘giving up’ anything when you quit – you’re getting rid of something that’s plagued your life.

As long as you continue to believe that you’re giving something up, you will always be running in pain.

The misery of addiction is not relieved by the thing you are addicted to – it’s caused by it

We’ve established that you are not ‘giving up’ anything. This gives you an enormous advantage over the braggers and whiners. Make sure you’re not fooled by the illusion that keeps them in the trap.

The good news is that once you’re free from the addiction, you also get free from the harmful effect it has on your character.

The problem is that it’s an illusion – one that’s keeping you in the nicotine trap, choking you to death and burning your money.

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

Just as smoking destroys concentration, it also increases boredom by reducing your opportunities for physical and mental stimulation, depleting your energy, making you sluggish, lethargic and lazy, and destroying your zest for life.

Remove the doubt from a smoker’s mind and quitting becomes easy

After you’ve smoked your final cigarette, you may find yourself faced with a stressful situation and the thought enters your head to light up a cigarette. It’s important you prepare yourself for this and are not alarmed. The thought is just a hangover from your smoking days. You don’t have to go along with it. All you have to do is remind yourself of what you know to be the truth: smoking benefits you in no way; you know you’ve made the right decision; and no purpose will be served by doubting your decision.

When you enjoy the certainty that smoking does nothing for you, there is no need to avoid the triggers because they no longer work as triggers. Indeed, the triggers can serve to reinforce your sense of satisfaction at having quit. Every time something happens that reminds you of when you used to smoke, enjoy the reminder that you are free.

In order to kill the Big Monster, you need to see smoking for what it really is – a drug addiction that does nothing for you whatsoever – and allow understanding to replace brainwashing.

Sixth instruction: have no doubt about your decision to quit

When you are certain that smoking does nothing for you, you will find that your desire to smoke evaporates. The only reason anyone chooses to smoke is because of the myth that it provides some sort of pleasur...

We are going to deliver the final fatal blows to the Big Monster, free your mind from any lingering belief that smoking provides you with any kind of pleasure or crutch, and snuff out your desire for a cigarette once and for all.

You don’t want to wait until you’re faced with the reality of a premature death before you convince yourself that there is absolutely no benefit to smoking. You have so much to live for. It’s time for you to stop being part of the Big Con.

Smokers think they enjoy smoking because it appears to relieve the empty, insecure feeling that they perceive to be part of normal life. Non-smokers don’t suffer it and neither did you before you started smoking.

When you quit, you will be amazed how far below a genuine level of normality smoking or vaping dragged you down. Without the panic of nicotine addiction, you will feel more relaxed, confident, happy and healthy ALL THE TIME.

Whether a smoker is in a happy situation, a concentration situation, a sad situation, a stress situation, a relaxing situation, a boring situation or a lonely situation, they simultaneously experience nicotine withdrawal, and respond by lighting a cigarette, thereby immediately feeling better than a moment before and oblivious to the fact that that cigarette will perpetuate nicotine withdrawal once it has been smoked.

All a smoker is trying to achieve when they light a cigarette is to recapture the feeling of peace, calm and tranquilllity they enjoyed their entire lives before they lit their first experimental cigarette. In other words, a smoker smokes in order to feel like a non-smoker.

Easyway goes on to reveal how the smoker’s belief system towards smoking – that it helps them to relax, socialize, handle stress, concentrate, enjoy alcohol, take a break from work and so on – is based on misinformation, misinterpretation of personal experiences and their addiction to nicotine. The smoker then concludes that there aren’t any advantages to smoking and therefore there is no point in doing it. This leaves the smoker to handle the extremely mild symptoms of nicotine withdrawal without having to experience the discomfort of feeling that they are missing out on something they used to think they enjoyed or received benefit from.

One of the fabulous gains you can look forward to is feeling more energetic and healthy. Smokers tend to shy away from physical exercise because they find even the simplest of tasks can leave them out of breath.

Smoking does nothing for you whatsoever

To be a happy non-smoker for the rest of your life, you need to achieve the right frame of mind. If you believe you’re making a sacrifice, you will always feel deprived.

Unravelling the brainwashing is not hard, but it does require commitment and an open mind. You need to digest what you’ve learned and change your mindset from one of believing that smoking or any other nicotine product provides some sort of pleasure or benefit to one of total understanding that it does nothing for you at all.

The only reason anyone continues to smoke is to relieve the withdrawal pangs created by the previous cigarette.

as long as the Big Monster remains alive and you believe that there is some pleasure or crutch to be derived from smoking, you will never be free.

If you have understood everything about addiction, about the trap and the myths that keep smokers believing they’re getting some pleasure or crutch from cigarettes, then all you have to do now is allow yourself to believe. There is no catch

If you continue believing that you can’t enjoy certain situations without smoking, then you won’t.