HOW A BOOK SAVED MY LIFE (Dr Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking)

Member Name:

Product:	Dr Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking
Date:	21/04/02 (638 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Life-saving information, Easy to read style, Inexpensive

Disadvantages: None

You know when you wake up in the morning after a heavy night – your eyes feel like they’ve been poked with something red hot and pokey, your chest is tight as a duck’s rear end and your mouth feels like a hippie set up a commune in there. Chances are, if you recognise this description, you are a smoker.

A month ago I was a 20-a-day girl – watch it! – or to be truthful, closer to 30. Like many people, I couldn’t function without a fag. I would avoid travel, because you can’t smoke on planes, trains or buses any more. I hated going to the theatre or cinema because it was so long to intermission. I wouldn’t go to a restaurant unless I was sure they had a smoking section and then I would rush through the food so that I could get to the fags! Smoking ruled my life. All I could think about was my next cigarette.

Then one day, something changed. I woke up - coughing up half a lung as usual, reaching for a cigarette even as I struggled for my breath - and wanted things to be different. Corny as it sounds, I looked at my sleeping child and realised I wanted to be around for her graduation, her wedding, her children. I wanted to be able to run and play with her without gasping like a goldfish on the carpet. I wanted to live.

It has now been nearly five weeks since my last cigarette and I feel wonderful. Life is great. The sky is bluer, the air sweeter, everything smells so much better, tastes so much better. I don’t crave cigarettes. I find it hard to believe I ever smoked. And I found it surprisingly easy to kick the habit. So, how did I do it? Well, it’s a bit of a tale, but if you’re interested, read on….

A friend told me about a quit smoking program being run by my local doctor’s surgery, so I decided to sign up. I made an appointment, popped along to see the nurse, and took my first scary step towards a normal life.

A lot of GPs are
providing a smoking clinic these days, as part of a trial government initiative. Aids for stopping smoking are available on prescription, provided you make regular visits to your surgery for check ups, and allow your progress to be monitored, so that the scheme can be properly audited at the end.

I was so nervous as I sat in the waiting room – I could have murdered a cigarette! That’s a definition of irony, if ever I heard one! As it turned out, it wasn’t that bad. Some forms to fill in, a chat with the very pleasant practice nurse, a test to show the amount of carbon monoxide in my breath (a very scary amount, I can tell you), and a sheaf of useful information to read through at my leisure.

So, the nurse said, what help do you think you need….gum, patches, inhalators? I don’t want anything to put in my mouth, I said (hey, behave!). That’s what got me into this mess. So we agreed on patches, and I was given a prescription for two weeks worth. She also suggested some books, breathing exercises and told me I could always call if I needed help.

It was decided that my day for quitting should be the following Friday. You should always decide on a quitting day and work up to it. As a kind of aversion therapy, over the next few days I smoked myself silly. If I was awake, I was smoking. God, how I hated smoking. I couldn’t breathe, my chest hurt, my mouth tasted vile, I stank. I couldn’t wait for Friday. I made my pilgrimage to the chemist to buy my little miracle plasters - £6.20 for two weeks worth on prescription, when they normally cost £17.25 per week. When Friday came I smoked my final cigarette with pleasure, slapped on my little beige patch and dreamed happy dreams of a smoke-free life.

Within an hour I was climbing the walls. I was screaming at my daughter, ready to smack my husband in the mouth and the chances of getting through the day without throwing a chair th
rough the front window were looking slim. I felt like hell. I kept feeling faint. My head was pounding with agony. My heart was racing so hard, I thought it was going to burst out of my chest. My family was at its wits end. I felt so ill; I ripped off the patch and was ready to grab a cigarette.

It was then that I noticed the little square of raw, red skin on my arm where the patch had been. Within ten minutes of removing the patch, I felt like a new woman. No headache, no raging temper, no sickness, no fainting fits, no triphammer heartbeat. It was obvious that I had suffered some kind of allergic reaction, and patches would not help me to stop smoking.

It was then that I pulled a memory from the dusty, cobwebby part of my brain, about a book a friend had given me on smoking many years ago. The book was duly found and I began to read. That book was “The Easy Way to Give Up Smoking”, by Allen Carr.

It is only a small book, with THE EASY WAY TO GIVE UP SMOKING emblazoned on the front in big letters, a bit like the “Don’t Panic” on the Hitchiker’s Guide. It is still in print and costs just £6.39 from Amazon. Pah, I thought, looking at the title. I stopped smoking two hours ago and I’ve already blacked my hubby’s eye, kicked the cat and got my daughter looking at me like I’m Cruella DeVille! There is no easy way. But on I read.

The first thing you notice is the Doctor’s easy style. He was a very heavy smoker and can see things from the smoker’s perspective. He knows what you are thinking at the prospect of stopping sticking those little white cancer sticks in your gob. Will I ever enjoy a meal if I can’t have a fag after? Or sex? Or anything?

What Allen Carr teaches you is that you will enjoy everything MORE once you are free of your nicotine addiction.

Nicotine is the most addictive drug known to man – much more add
ictive than Heroin, though the withdrawal symptoms are much easier to deal with. Withdrawing from nicotine is easy, it takes about three weeks and gives you occasional pangs which feel a bit like hunger pains. The rest of your symptoms are purely mental – a form of brainwashing – and once you have dealt with the mental addiction, you are home free. Realising that I had two addictions to break was like a little lightbulb lighting up over my head and going “ping”. Once I realised that stopping smoking was only about 10 per cent physical and 90 per cent mental, it suddenly became a brisk and wheeze-free walk in the park.

I never realised the tricks my brain was playing on me to get its nicotine hit, until they were pointed out in this book. The simple truth is that no one needs nicotine, and no one really wants to smoke. The fear of giving up is more frightening than the actual act of stopping.

Each time I felt a withdrawal pang, or found myself reaching for a cigarette out of habit, I would take a deep breath and think, “The nicotine is leaving my body and I am withdrawing, otherwise I wouldn’t have this craving”. The craving meant I was being healed from my addiction and I learned to enjoy them the pangs, and welcome them. I know that sounds a bit kinky (but the pangs are not really painful!).

The book is full of so many little gems of wisdom, that I have taken a highlighter pen to my copy and picked out lots of parts that I re-read if I am having a difficult time. These little nuggets give me the strength to go on (that and knowing that if I smoked another cigarette and then kept on for the rest of my natural life, it would probably cost me in excess of £60,000!)

So, if you are tired of having that terrible “morning after” feeling, or feel that smoking is ruling your life, or get uncomfortable if you should accidentally glance at the health warning on your fag packet,
buy this book. It will be the most important tenner that you ever spend (by the time you add on postage!) Believe me, I really think this man saved my life. He could save yours too.

Summary: