As promised (for my five followers,) I finished Alan Carr’s: Easy Way to Stop Smoking. On a whole, if the messages can infiltrate a smoker, it is a good book. Carr purports to have saved 1,000’s of smokers and his messages are set out under distinct headings with relatively simple explanations that lead into dispelling the next myth.
The book tells you in the first chapter the methods it will not adopt to help you quit smoking. The reader (smoking addict) is drawn in to see what Carr will actually do. He doesn’t give it away in the first chapters, instead he allows you to smoke through his whole book until you know the answer at the final page - with your last cigarette.
Carr challenges the notion that smokers chose to smoke. He supports his argument by emphasizing that smoking has absolutely no benefits. He tricks the smoker into answering a quiz with a ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ when in actual fact every question should be answered with a firm ‘no.’ He then refers to this list as he uncovers his secrets to stopping smoking the easy way.
According to Carr, most smokers know and think a cigarette tastes awful and costs a lot of money, but they still manage to become smokers despite this knowledge. Carr attributes this addiction to what he describes as the ‘Big Monster’. A subconscious thought that tells us smoking (or other drugs) are a crutch – a pick-up and a pleasure. He believes this massive brainwashing occurs even before a smoker starts smoking.
‘Big monster’ has a co-conspirator ‘Little Monster,’ who stirs up panic and fear in smokers. Smokers believe this is caused by not having the cigarette but it is really triggered and instigated by the 'brain-washing' nicotine driven monsters in a smoker’s head.
I like Carr’s positive spin on something so addictive and ultimately terminal. He says that it is not a sacrifice to give up an addiction, rather, a release, a restoration of health and gaining control of your own destiny again.
I can definitely see valid points in this book that can be applied to my reliance on a D.C. I believe that a D.C will help my mood after a crazy day with the kids. Carr uses an analogy in the same vein of a Mum needing a smoke after a stressful shopping experience with toddlers.
I am glad that I read this book (despite never being a ‘choofer’) because I have a greater understanding of the battles a smoker faces socially and mentally. I probably won’t go ‘cold turkey’ on the D.C because I haven’t been told it kills 1 in 3 yet, but we had that same ignorant view about sun baking a few decades ago. Perhaps, I should drink more water!
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