Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking - Allen Carr [9]
I mention this because it demonstrates the profound lack of understanding that much of the health establishment has of smoking and smokers. So long as teenagers perceive smoking as cool, anti-establishment and a badge of independence and adulthood, they will experiment, irrespective of what the health establishment tells them about the long-term dangers. They know that one cigarette won’t kill them, and believe they could never get hooked on something that tastes so disgusting. Isn’t that how we all started?
It staggers me that the medical establishment hasn’t yet figured out what every parent on the planet knows—that the best way to guarantee that our teenagers start smoking is to tell them not to.
In the original edition of this book I wrote:
‘There is a wind of change in society. A snowball has started that I hope this book will help turn into an avalanche.’
Twenty-five years and over 11,000,000 copies later, I think the snowball has grown into the size of a bowling ball, but it is still only a drop in the ocean. While the tobacco-control establishment pats itself on the back over their latest ‘victory’, every year an estimated 5 million smokers will die as a direct result of their addiction and they will be replaced by over 10 million new teenage smokers. This doesn’t look, smell or sound like ‘victory’ to me.
I’m immensely grateful to the millions of ex-smokers who have attended our seminars, read my books, watched the webcast and have recommended EASYWAY to their friends, relatives and colleagues and I dearly hope that they continue to do so.
It is this word of mouth that will turn the bowling ball into an avalanche. While the medical profession continues to prescribe the latest pill or potion (many of them actually containing the drug you are trying to kick), more and more smokers will turn to the common sense, painless solution offered by EASYWAY.
The truth is, as we have demonstrated countless thousands of times over the years, that it can be easy and enjoyable to stop smoking. Do you have a feeling of doom and gloom? Forget it. I’ve been lucky to achieve some wonderful things in my life. By far the greatest was to escape from the slavery of nicotine addiction. I escaped over twenty-five years ago and still can’t get over the joy of being free. There is no need to feel miserable. There is nothing bad happening. On the contrary, you are about to achieve what every smoker on the planet would love to achieve: TO BE FREE!
CHAPTER 1
THE WORST NICOTINE ADDICT I EVER MET
Perhaps I should begin by describing my credentials for writing this book. No, I am not a doctor or a psychologist; my qualifications are far more relevant. I spent thirty-three years of my life as a hardcore smoker. In the later years I smoked a hundred a day on a bad day, and never less than sixty.
During my life I had made dozens of attempts to stop. I once stopped for six miserable months. I hated every minute of it, still standing near smokers trying to get a whiff of the tobacco.
With most smokers, it’s a case of ‘I’ll stop before something happens to me.’ The ‘something’ was already happening to me. I already had reached the stage where I knew cigarettes were killing me. I had a permanent headache, which I thought was normal, from the pressure of the constant coughing. I could feel the continuous throbbing of the vein that runs vertically down the center of my forehead, and I honestly believed that at any moment there would be an explosion in my head and I would die from a brain hemorrhage. It bothered me and it scared me, but it still didn’t stop me from lighting the next one.
I had reached the stage where I gave up even trying to stop. It wasn’t even that I enjoyed smoking. At some stage in their lives most smokers suffer from the illusion that they enjoy some cigarettes, but I didn’t. I always