Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [6]
As I look back on my life, it almost seems that my whole existence has been a preparation for solving the smoking problem. Even those hateful years of training and practicing as a Chartered Accountant were invaluable in helping me to unravel the mysteries of the smoking trap.
Abraham Lincoln once said that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but that’s exactly what I believe the tobacco companies have been successfully doing for decades. I also believe that I was the first person to really understand the smoking trap. Please don’t mistake this statement for arrogance. I wish I could claim that my superior intellect led me to this understanding, but actually it was merely the circumstances of my own life.
The momentous day was July 15th, 1983. I didn’t escape from Alcatraz, but it felt like it. Even today, over twenty years later, I can still remember the feelings of relief, happiness and excitement when I stubbed out that final butt. I realized immediately that I had discovered something that every smoker secretly dreamed of: 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 counselor, running seminars to help other smokers to get free.
I wrote the first edition of this book in 1985. One of my failures, the man described 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 listen to 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, and this would help him 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 help me cope with the terrible withdrawal pangs?’
In addition to these pessimistic comments, I also had my own doubts. During a seminar if it became obvious that a client had misunderstood an important point, I was able to correct the situation. But how would a book be able to do that? When I was studying to be an accountant and didn’t understand or agree with a certain point in a book, I remember the frustration because you couldn’t ask a book to explain. I was also well aware that many people were no longer accustomed to reading.
Added to all these factors, I had one doubt that overrode 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 any smoker and convince them how easy and enjoyable the process of quitting can be, but could I translate that ability into the written word? Thankfully I needn’t have worried. In the twenty-six years since EASYWAY first appeared on the shelves, we have received tens of thousands of letters and emails from grateful readers containing comments such as:
‘It’s the greatest book ever written.’
‘You are my guru.’
‘You are a genius.’
‘You should be knighted.’
‘You should be Prime Minister.’
‘You are a saint.’
It is wonderful and humbling to receive letters such as these, and I hope that I have not allowed such comments to go to my head. I’m fully aware that those comments were made not to compliment me on my literary skills, but in spite of my lack of them. They were made because whether your preference is to read a book, watch an online webcast or to attend a seminar:
ALLEN CARR’S EASYWAY METHOD WORKS!
Not only do we now have a network of over 150 seminar centers, including locations across the US, but this book has now been translated into more than forty languages. As I write, it is the number one non-fiction bestseller in Russia