Easyway to quit smoking Allen Carr

[Stephra]

From Wikipedia:

Carr left his accountancy job in 1983 and set up his first Easyway clinic to help other addicts. He wrote ten bestsellers including his 1985 hit The Easy Way To Stop Smoking, which topped the non-fiction book charts in nine countries and remains the highest selling book on quitting smoking worldwide. The success of the original London clinic, through word-of-mouth and direct recommendation, has led to a worldwide network of 100 Easyway clinics in 35 countries plus the production of audio CDs and DVDs. Based on their full money-back guarantee, Carr's clinics claim a 95 percent success rate in helping smokers stop. Celebrity clients include Richard Branson, Anthony Hopkins, Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, Charlotte Church and Mahesh Babu a popular telugu film actor

EasyWay has now been released for Nintendo DS and iPod Touch / iPhone


All Allen Carr's Clinics are run by dedicated therapists who were once smokers and used Allen's method to quit smoking. All therapists are Members of the Association of Allen Carr Therapists International (MAACTI).

I only add this to illustrate the Allen Carr is not part of the medical community, nor are the therapists who work in his clinics.

It seems the Allen Carr was just some guy who figured out a method that worked pretty well for him, and decided that it should work for everybody. This kind of assumption is rather short-sighted IMO. He went on to write books about a number of other problems (drinking, losing weight, etc.). He turned a tidy profit on his self-help empire before dying of lung cancer, but that's no reason to believe that he's speaking from anything other than his own experience.

If he had some credentials other than being a former accountant, I might be more interested in what he has to say. But as it stands, he wrote one successful book, then wrote a bunch of other books about problems which he has no expertise in. His empire has been extremely lucrative, and his clinics boast a 95% success rate, but I'd like to see a study on their long term results, most importantly the one year and five year marks. It's easy to stay on a program when you're in a clinic with people cheering you on, but how many stayed true back in the real world, where people are smoking around you, life is stressful, and cigarettes are easy to come by?

I don't mean to come off as dismissive, but I'm a skeptic by nature. If he was a doctor, a licensed therapist, an addiction specialist, I would be more interested in what he has to say. He based his program on his own experience, not medical science. That kills it for me.

[StormFinch]

And Alcoholics Anonymous was started by a drunk that failed at two colleges and every job he ever held.

Sorry, absolutely no offense, but I would trust someone that has been exactly where I'm at before I would trust someone that hadn't, sheepskin or not. I've just dealt with too many holier than thou doctors and therapists that think they know more than I do about myself, simply because they learned to give tests and regurgitate lines from a textbook.

[jamesam1243]

And the Playboy Empire was created by a failed cartoonist that got a few lucky breaks

[nesf]

Skimmed through that PDF and as far as I can tell, it's a jedi mind trick. Once you see through what he's trying to do, it simply won't work.

This sums up my experience with the book. Got it on the recommendation of others who quit successfully with it. Read it, and just got nothing from it. Just disagreed too much with it and found it far too easy to see through.

Works for loads of people though, so really something that needs to be tried out rather than dismissed because of a few bad reviews.

[JoeChemo]

Without buying the book can you explain exactly how this works.

Mr. Carr explains how you were brainwashed about smoking and that you are afraid to quit smoking because you think you cannot live without cigarettes. Armed with this new knowledge, you simply quit smoking. I read that book, watched the video, listened to the audio book and failed to quit. Reread and failed again. Gave it one more go and made it 11 days before giving in to my nicotine addiction. Worked for some: Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres, etc.

[mom_life_love]

I read the book, loved it, for the first 6 weeks everything was great, I had stress in my life and picked up that first cigarette then started again, I did re-read it again but it didn't help, I think if you can go cold turkey then this is definately a helpful book as when I first read it I had no intentions of quitting but did (I had tried tons of different NRTS but nothing helped) I just started vaping and love it, no stress, no anxiety over not having my analogs, I'm stoked! Oh and hubby kisses me more lol!

[thall12]

I actually read this book and it did work...for a little bit. It was strange, I read the book twice and nothing. The third time I read it, the last cigarette I had I looked at and it felt so alien. After that I didn't smoke for about 2 weeks, I didn't have any withdrawals and felt better immediately not even worried about depriving myself, it was really awesome, like a switch was turned off. After 2 weeks the switch came back on that sucked. The book did work for me though for a bit.

[edotman]

I have a copy of this book in pdf. I tried attaching it to this message; we'll see if I did that correctly. It didn't make me quit, but it did help me stay off when I first started vaping. I need to read it again.

wow, thanks!