How I Stopped Smoking In The Blink of an Eye
July 25th 2011 06:31
Quite frankly, if you had told me that I could stop smoking easily, with no effort, no cravings, no withdrawal symptoms nor fluctuating moods and tantrums, I'd have kicked you in the shins and buried you somewhere near Jimmy Hoffa.
I smoked for 20 years. Not something I'm ashamed of or something I am proud of. It is a fact. From the time I was 17 I was addicted to nicotine, each year smoking more than the year before. If you asked me, I enjoyed it. I wasn't hooked, it was a habit I loved. I was good at saying that, even managed to do say it with a straight face. It was a lie. From the beginning I hated it. The taste, the burn, the acrid smoke, the breathlessness. Not to mention the smell although to be honest I couldn't smell it. I had no sense of smell left. I guess I probably owe a huge apology to all those people who have been trapped beside me on trains or in classrooms or elevators over the last 20 years for the stench of stale smoke I carried with me wherever I went.
Over the past few months I've at least been honest enough
with myself to admit, I hate smoking. The cost is ridiculous, the taste is not anything you're ever going to buy in a bottle and sprinkle on your evening ice cream. I seemed incapable of climbing stairs or walking for any length of time for that matter.
I sat at home and I whinged and complained about how "hard' it was to quit, without actually trying to do so. In October 2010 I was loaned a book by a friend of mine, written by a UK author named Allen Carr. I had never heard of him or his "Easyway to Stop Smoking". Frankly I agreed to read the book purely to be able to say "see, I told you it was a con. Smoking is never easy to quit." About 20 pages from the end I conveniently lost the book and continued smoking.
In June 2011 I was cleaning my room and came across the book, sitting proudly on the book shelf - so much for having lost it - and decided to give it another go. If nothing else it would make a decent blog about how gullible people were and how awful people were who cashed in on the desperate and the addicted.
So I read it. It is a very easy book to read, and contains a lot of information we've all heard a million times before, but what caught my attention was that the author truly believed what he had written. Of course it wasn't going to work for me, but he seemed to believe it.
As I read the last pages of the book I did as instructed and smoked my last cigarette, fully expecting to go and buy another packet within the hour. Turns out, that didn't happen.
Today has been 16 days since I stopped smoking. 16 packets of Dunhill Blue I haven't purchased, 400 cigarettes un-smoked and $280 saved. I keep waiting for the cravings and horrific withdrawal symptom's to start, but they seem nowhere to be found.
If I hadn't experienced it myself I wouldn't believe it. Actually I would outright call anyone who claimed to have stopped smoking "effortlessly and instantly" a bloody liar. But that is exactly how I did it.
Yes there were withdrawal symptoms, of course there were, but quite frankly they were almost non-existent. A slight tension in my chest and a slight feeling of panic for a couple of hours. Otherwise nothing.
Do I miss them? Not in the slightest. Do I miss that one after dinner or that first one in the morning over coffee? No.
One thing I took from the book was that all of us are born Non-Smokers, none of us are born "needing" a cigarette to wrap up a meal, handle stress, handle boredom or make a social occasion better. All of us are born perfect non-smokers and each of us who develop the addiction of smoking do so only after much hard work and many cigarettes.
The other thing I took from the book was the absolute ridiculousness of replacing nicotine while quitting. I've lost count of the amount of patches I've bought, gum I've chewed, lozenges I've sucked, and tablets I've taken in an attempt to get rid of cigarettes. I've paid out hundreds of dollars for hypnosis, on cassettes - wow that ages me instantly - NLP and god only knows what else I've done in an attempt to quit smoking. If I'd found that book 20 years ago it would have saved me a lot of time and money.
Recently I had to go to the doctor about an ear infection. While there he did his usual "smoking is bad m'kay" routine and I mentioned that I was reading the Allen Carr book and I was going to give that a shot. He ignored me outright and told me next time I went to see him he would give me a prescription for NRT. When I did go to see him again - for more antibiotics - he didn't mention smoking at all. Probably cause I'd stopped for over a week by that point. It's the first time in the 5 years I've been going to see him he hasn't mentioned it.
Can I guarantee Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking will work for you? Nope, I can't but the Allen Carr clinics do offer a money back guarantee and boast a 90% success rate.
I can't recommend Allen Carr's Easyway To Srop Smoking highly enough for those who read this post and are wanting to quit smoking. Give it a try, there are books, DVDs, clinics all over the world, there are facebook groups and twitter pages. Look it up and give it a shot.
I smoked for 20 years. Not something I'm ashamed of or something I am proud of. It is a fact. From the time I was 17 I was addicted to nicotine, each year smoking more than the year before. If you asked me, I enjoyed it. I wasn't hooked, it was a habit I loved. I was good at saying that, even managed to do say it with a straight face. It was a lie. From the beginning I hated it. The taste, the burn, the acrid smoke, the breathlessness. Not to mention the smell although to be honest I couldn't smell it. I had no sense of smell left. I guess I probably owe a huge apology to all those people who have been trapped beside me on trains or in classrooms or elevators over the last 20 years for the stench of stale smoke I carried with me wherever I went.
Over the past few months I've at least been honest enough
with myself to admit, I hate smoking. The cost is ridiculous, the taste is not anything you're ever going to buy in a bottle and sprinkle on your evening ice cream. I seemed incapable of climbing stairs or walking for any length of time for that matter.
I sat at home and I whinged and complained about how "hard' it was to quit, without actually trying to do so. In October 2010 I was loaned a book by a friend of mine, written by a UK author named Allen Carr. I had never heard of him or his "Easyway to Stop Smoking". Frankly I agreed to read the book purely to be able to say "see, I told you it was a con. Smoking is never easy to quit." About 20 pages from the end I conveniently lost the book and continued smoking.
The Book That Changed My Life
In June 2011 I was cleaning my room and came across the book, sitting proudly on the book shelf - so much for having lost it - and decided to give it another go. If nothing else it would make a decent blog about how gullible people were and how awful people were who cashed in on the desperate and the addicted.
So I read it. It is a very easy book to read, and contains a lot of information we've all heard a million times before, but what caught my attention was that the author truly believed what he had written. Of course it wasn't going to work for me, but he seemed to believe it.
As I read the last pages of the book I did as instructed and smoked my last cigarette, fully expecting to go and buy another packet within the hour. Turns out, that didn't happen.
Today has been 16 days since I stopped smoking. 16 packets of Dunhill Blue I haven't purchased, 400 cigarettes un-smoked and $280 saved. I keep waiting for the cravings and horrific withdrawal symptom's to start, but they seem nowhere to be found.
If I hadn't experienced it myself I wouldn't believe it. Actually I would outright call anyone who claimed to have stopped smoking "effortlessly and instantly" a bloody liar. But that is exactly how I did it.
Yes there were withdrawal symptoms, of course there were, but quite frankly they were almost non-existent. A slight tension in my chest and a slight feeling of panic for a couple of hours. Otherwise nothing.
Do I miss them? Not in the slightest. Do I miss that one after dinner or that first one in the morning over coffee? No.
One thing I took from the book was that all of us are born Non-Smokers, none of us are born "needing" a cigarette to wrap up a meal, handle stress, handle boredom or make a social occasion better. All of us are born perfect non-smokers and each of us who develop the addiction of smoking do so only after much hard work and many cigarettes.
The other thing I took from the book was the absolute ridiculousness of replacing nicotine while quitting. I've lost count of the amount of patches I've bought, gum I've chewed, lozenges I've sucked, and tablets I've taken in an attempt to get rid of cigarettes. I've paid out hundreds of dollars for hypnosis, on cassettes - wow that ages me instantly - NLP and god only knows what else I've done in an attempt to quit smoking. If I'd found that book 20 years ago it would have saved me a lot of time and money.
Recently I had to go to the doctor about an ear infection. While there he did his usual "smoking is bad m'kay" routine and I mentioned that I was reading the Allen Carr book and I was going to give that a shot. He ignored me outright and told me next time I went to see him he would give me a prescription for NRT. When I did go to see him again - for more antibiotics - he didn't mention smoking at all. Probably cause I'd stopped for over a week by that point. It's the first time in the 5 years I've been going to see him he hasn't mentioned it.
Can I guarantee Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking will work for you? Nope, I can't but the Allen Carr clinics do offer a money back guarantee and boast a 90% success rate.
I can't recommend Allen Carr's Easyway To Srop Smoking highly enough for those who read this post and are wanting to quit smoking. Give it a try, there are books, DVDs, clinics all over the world, there are facebook groups and twitter pages. Look it up and give it a shot.
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