Allen Carr Quotes

The whole business of smoking is like forcing yourself to wear tight shoes just to get the pleasure of taking them off.

Responsibility becomes stressful only when you don’t feel strong enough to handle it.

Wouldn’t that be an incredibly stupid thing to do? To say ‘I never want to smoke again’, then spend the rest of your life saying ‘I’d love a cigarette.’ That’s what smokers who use the Willpower Method do. No wonder they feel so miserable. They spend the rest of their lives desperately moping for something that they desperately hope they will never have.

However, you cannot force smokers to stop, and although all smokers secretly want to, until they are ready to do so a pact just creates additional pressure, which increases their desire to smoke. This turns them into secret smokers, which further increases the feeling of dependency.

There are people who can make love standing on a hammock, but it is not the easiest way.

The main reason that smokers find it difficult to quit is that they believe that they are giving up a genuine pleasure or crutch. It is absolutely essential to understand that there is nothing to ‘give up’.

Eight hours after putting out a cigarette, you are 97% nicotine-free. After just three days of not smoking, you are 100% nicotine-free.

The cigarette gets the credit for everything and the blame for nothing.

It reminds me of a remark Lucien [Carr] once made to me: He said "You never seem to give yourself away completely, but of course dark-haired people are so mysterious.

The only reason any smoker lights a cigarette is to try to end the empty, insecure feeling that the previous cigarette created.

Part of the ingenuity of any addictive drug is to fool you into believing that life without it won’t be as enjoyable, and/or that you’ll be less able to cope with stress.

The moment you stop smoking, everything that goes wrong in your life is blamed on the fact that you’ve stopped smoking. Now when you have a mental block, instead of just getting on with it you start to say, ‘If only I could light up now, it would solve my problem.’ You then start to question your decision to quit smoking.

Smokers do not smoke because they enjoy it. They do it because they are miserable without it.

Quite simply, the key to being a happy non-smoker is to remove the desire to smoke. With no desire to smoke, it takes no Willpower not to do so.

The moment you stop smoking, everything that goes wrong in your life is blamed on the fact that you’ve stopped smoking.

Modern man threw a brick through his own window in order to sell himself a burglar alarm.

What you really enjoy in an alcoholic drink is not the drink itself, but the ending of the irritation of wanting that drink. Non-drinkers enjoy that all the time.

Because when you feel physically and mentally low, molehills become mountains, slight set-backs seem like disasters, and the smallest problem tends to be the final straw to break the camel’s back.

Why would anyone want to drink a poisonous, highly addictive drug that tastes foul; a drug that will shorten your life, debilitate your immune system and impede your concentration; a drug that will destroy your nervous system, your confidence, your courage and your ability to relax? Why would you want to take a drug that will cost you about £100,000/$160,000 in your lifetime and do absolutely nothing for you whatsoever?

If you were in control of your smoking, you wouldn’t be reading this book. If you could simply choose whether to smoke or not, you would choose to be a nonsmoker.

You need to stop thinking “I can never ever have another drink”, and start thinking how wonderful it will be when you can stop poisoning yourself.

Whenever you think about smoking you must see it as a lifetime’s chain of filth, disease, fear, misery and slavery.

Get it clear in your mind: CIGARETTES DO NOT FILL A VOID. THEY CREATE ONE! These bodies of ours are the most

Alcohol is a chemical depressant and a powerful poison. It destroys us both physically and mentally. By inebriating us, it destroys every survival instinct that we possess and takes the joy of life with it. In short: it makes us feel suicidal. And that’s what it amounts to: SLOW AGONIZING SUICIDE

Alcohol doesn’t benefit anybody except the industry that peddles it. There is no demarcation line between “normal” drinking and problem drinking; it is all part of the same disease. The problem drinker is just at a more advanced stage.

Client: “Could you teach me to have an occasional drink and not get hooked again?” Me: “Of course I could. I could even teach you to take the occasional dose of arsenic.” Client: “Why on earth would I want you to do that?” Me: “Exactly!

I guess the best part of music is that there's not much unknown. Especially in country, because it's always someone leaving or dying or drinking or fighting or loving the United States or talking about God, and the music's simple mostly.

You might well get that feeling of a void or wanting a drink, particularly over the next few days. If and when it happens, reverse it immediately. Just remind yourself, “This is the death throes of that goblin on my back. It’s what drinkers suffer throughout their drinking lives. Isn’t it marvellous: I’M FREE!” That way the slight pangs immediately become moments of pleasure. Get into the habit of doing that over the next few days. Unless you reverse those pangs immediately, you will be doubting your decision. Remember, any slight aggravation that you might suffer over the next few days is not because you stopped drinking, but because you started. Non-drinkers don’t have this problem.

Living with an alcohol problem is just like living with an abusive partner. It leaves you physically battered, destroys your confidence and self-esteem, yet makes you feel perversely dependent on your abuser. The only difference is that you can walk out on drink any time you like and no one will try to stop you.

Just one cigarette’ is a myth you must get out of your mind.

To quit successfully, you need to focus on what the cigarette is doing for you. Once you understand you’re not making a sacrifice, you’re well on your way to freedom.

Our intelligence may seem to be the flaw in the machine, but strictly speaking the flaw is our inability to use it properly.

The effect of the brainwashing is that we tend to think like the man who, having fallen off a 100-story building is heard to say as he passes the fiftieth floor, ‘So far, so good!

Having made what you know to be the correct decision, NEVER EVER question that decision.

Remember: all you actually enjoy when you smoke is attempting to get back to the relaxed state that non-smokers enjoy throughout their lives.

It’s a powerful poison and will shorten your life considerably. It is also highly addictive, will debilitate your immune system and impede your concentration. It will systematically destroy your nervous system, your confidence, your courage and your ability to relax. By the way, it tastes awful and will cost you about £100,000/$160,000 in your lifetime. What does it do for you? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

If you haven’t got your health you haven’t got anything’ but it’s true. I used to think that physical fitness fanatics were a pain. I used to claim that there was more to life than feeling fit: like booze and smokes.

All addictive drugs have this effect on their victims. The more they drag you down (and I’m not talking about the physical effects; those we can see clearly), the more they destroy your courage and confidence, and the greater your need for your illusory friend and support.

We very quickly start to feel cleansed, but the Little Monster is demanding its fix. If we’re using the wrong method, we interpret these cries as “I want a joint,” and although we might hold out to begin with, eventually the Big Monster will have its way and we find ourselves back in the trap.

for me, is the saddest thing about smoking: the only ‘enjoyment’ a smoker gets from a cigarette is temporary relief from the discomfort created by the previous one. All the smoker is looking for is the state of peace, tranquility and confidence that they had before they started smoking in the first place.

To me this is the most tragic part of this whole business. How hard we worked to become hooked, and this is why it is difficult to stop teenagers. Because they are still learning to smoke, because they still find cigarettes distasteful, they believe they can stop whenever they want to. Why do they not learn from us?

A bit of emptiness is actually very good for you. It leaves room for your imagination to flourish, ideas to hatch, or simply for your brain to rest. Without emptiness, your ability to be creative is severely diminished. Smartphones may be the work of some highly creative minds, but they are destroying creativity in their users.

The desire to drink comes from the Big Monster—the illusion that drinking gives us pleasure or support. • The edgy feeling we get when we’re without a drink is merely the Little Monster wanting to be fed. • The Little Monster was created by drinking in the first place. • Therefore drinking does not relieve the anxiety, it causes it.

the only pleasure or crutch that smokers receive when they light up, is trying to get back to the level of peace and tranquillity that non-smokers experience the whole of their lives, and that since each cigarette, far from relieving the withdrawal pangs from nicotine, is actually causing them, even that pleasure or crutch is illusory.

If you could isolate the physical feeling, it would barely register as a small itch. I call this the Little Nicotine Monster. There is also a Big Monster in your mind. This is the brainwashing that tells you smoking is your crutch, your pleasure, and that you can’t live without it. When the nicotine level in your body falls, the Little Nicotine Monster triggers a pang around the stomach area which the Big Monster interprets as: “I want a cigarette.” This is the nicotine trap—the ingenious way that cigarettes turn smokers into slaves. Each cigarette causes the craving for the next, to fill the emptiness caused by the nicotine leaving your body. And so it goes on, ad infinitum.

We think of stopping smoking as something that is very difficult to do. What do we need when we have something difficult to do? We need our little friend. So stopping smoking appears to be a double blow. Not only do we have a difficult task to perform, which is hard enough, but the crutch on which we normally rely on such occasions is no longer available.

You could argue that you made a rational decision to try your first few drinks. I won’t argue with that. But supposing a confidence trickster had persuaded you to buy shares in a company that didn’t exist. You made a decision to invest in the company, a decision that was rational given what you knew at the time. But in retrospect you would hardly describe yourself as being in control of the situation. Likewise when you sampled alcohol for the first time you believed there was some benefit to doing so. But the so-called benefits are in fact illusions, and always have been. So the reason that you began sampling alcohol, whether it be brainwashing, peer pressure or whatever, is completely irrelevant. YOU WERE CONNED!

Of course you chose to have those first experimental joints, but how long ago was that? Years ago? Perhaps you were at an entirely different stage of your life. You were excited. It felt illicit. It felt sophisticated. It felt dangerous. But at no point in those early days did you decide to end up in your current predicament, having been dragged down so low by the drug that you had to seek professional help to stop taking it.

your pleasure, and that you can’t live without it. When the nicotine level in your body falls, the Little Nicotine Monster triggers a pang around the stomach area which the Big Monster interprets as: “I want a cigarette.” This is the nicotine trap—the ingenious way that cigarettes turn smokers into slaves. Each cigarette causes the craving for the next, to fill the emptiness caused by the nicotine leaving your body. And so it goes on, ad infinitum.

But first, I want you to over-spend on junk one last time. Take your credit card or store card, walk into any shop you choose and buy something you don’t need with money you don’t have. As you hand the card to the cashier, focus on how you’re feeling. Is it giving you pleasure? Does it make you feel good? As you punch your PIN into the card reader, concentrate on your emotions. Is this expenditure giving you a buzz? Is it making you happy? When you get home with your purchase, unpack it and hold it. Are you happy with it? Be aware of exactly how this purchase has made you feel. Stripped of the brainwashing that previously told you this sort of spending gave you pleasure, you can recognise what an empty, meaningless act it is to spend money you don’t have on something you don’t need.

I was in control of every area of my life except for smoking. The cigarette was deciding where I could go, what I could do, when I could do it and with whom.

The true situation is this: when you are addicted to nicotine and are not smoking, there is something missing.

Because they don’t understand smoking or smokers and have no idea how to make it easy to quit, their attitude is: ‘Try this method. If it doesn’t work try another.

For example, those of you who think it is just a habit, ask yourselves why other habits, some of them enjoyable ones, are easy to break, yet a habit that tastes awful, costs us a fortune and kills us is so difficult to break.

Escaping the Trap All we have to do is destroy the Big Monster. There is only one way to do that. Not through willpower, not through substitutes. The only way to quit successfully without feeling deprived is to remove the brainwashing that has given birth to the Big Monster in your mind. The purpose of this book is to show you how you’ve been lured into the nicotine trap; to remove all the myths and illusions that keep you hooked; to show you how to escape and stay free; and to help you and millions like you stop smoking now.

In the past, whenever my logic and my instincts were in conflict, I would back my logic. Today, I back my instincts every time. Why? Because I know that my instinctive brain is many times more intelligent than my conscious brain.

THERE IS NO PLEASURE OR CRUTCH IN SMOKING!

Try to perceive yourself as a nonsmoker sees you

movie Twelve Angry Men.

Smokers suffer the empty insecure feeling of nicotine withdrawal their entire smoking lives. Nonsmokers never suffer it

HOW the ADDICTION STARTS • ALARM BELLS • THAT EMPTY FEELING • ONE CIGARETTE LEADS TO ANOTHER • RE-PROGRAMMING YOUR BRAIN • THE KEY TO ESCAPE

The only pleasure or crutch smokers receive when they light up is the perceived relief of the empty, insecure feeling of the body withdrawing from nicotine that nonsmokers don’t suffer from anyway. 2. Each cigarette, far from relieving the empty feeling, actually causes it, so the perception of a pleasure or crutch is an illusion. It’s like putting on tight shoes to get the pleasure or relief of removing them.

SUMMARY • Nicotine is the addictive poison which hooks you. It’s the No.1 killer. • Smokers go on smoking despite all the obvious disadvantages because they’re in a trap. • Nicotine addiction is what keeps smokers smoking. It’s a disease. • You are not in control of your smoking. The cigarette controls you. CHAPTER 2

Most of our smoking is done without thinking.

This is a warning from your body: “POISON! DON’T TOUCH!

Less intelligent creatures would heed that warning, yet the human species has been brainwashed to ignore it. Smokers who are already hooked say, “Keep trying, it’s an acquired taste.

The human brain works partly on instinct and partly on deduction.

So how can we rejig our brains and get back to that blissful state of never wanting or needing a cigarette? That may sound difficult to you at this stage, even impossible, but I promise you it’s not only possible but also extremely easy! All you need to do is use your intellect to replace the misinformed reactions with correctly informed ones. Here’s an exercise to show you how easy that is. Look at the image below, let your imagination run wild and see if you can make anything of it.

artificial void,

I know that heroin will do absolutely nothing for me and that I neither need nor want it, and I don’t have to keep telling myself that.

Knowledge is not necessarily enough to beat the nicotine trap.

Smoking creates an artificial feeling of insecurity and emptiness.

kill the Big Monster first. You unravel the brainwashing and see alcohol for what it really is: an addictive poison that controls and debilitates those who take it. Then the Little Monster is easy to deal with. In fact, you can enjoy the process, confident in the knowledge that you’re destroying a mortal enemy.

Todas las razones para dejar de fumar, hacen que sea más difícil dejarlo por otras dos razones. Primero mero, porque provocan una sensación de sacrificio. Siempre pensamos que nos están obligando a sacrificar a nuestro pequeño amigo, o apoyo, o vicio, o placer, o como quieras llamarlo

porque crean una distracción. Siempre nos concentramos en las razones por las que no deberíamos de fumar, pero nunca analizamos las razones por las que fumamos. La verdadera pregunta es: ‘¿Por qué necesitamos hacerlo?

Place a small child in a crib with a rabbit and an apple. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I’ll buy you a new car.” Harvey Diamond, co-author Fit For Life

What was truly fascinating was that half of the people in the room had managed to quit smoking. Mike had been smoke-free for a few years at that point, and he swore up and down that he broke the habit because of a book called Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking.

Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking. “It frees you from the mental burden of smoking,” he said. “It tells you: ‘Stop lying to yourself. You know you don’t actually want to smoke. You know you don’t really enjoy this.’ It helps you feel like you’re not the victim anymore. You start to realize that you don’t need to smoke.

what we are ‘enjoying’ when we smoke after a period of abstinence is not the cigarette, but ending the state of wanting or needing it.

DRINKERS DRINK IN ORDER TO FEEL LIKE NONDRINKERS!

When we first arrived at the school we received an extended introduction detailing what a wonderful place it was and how lucky we were to be there. But no one explained exactly why we were to be there. Yes, we understood the general objective was to accumulate knowledge, although learning Shakespeare and algebra did not strike us as particularly helpful to our future lives. I've yet to meet a single person who found a use for algebra in later life. The excuse proffered was that it developed intelligence. It struck me as extremely unintelligent not to give us the opportunity to study subjects that would be of practical use as well as develop our intelligence. I learned Boyle's law and Ohm's law parrot fashion without having a clue as to their meaning, yet left the school five years later incapable of changing a fuse or wiring a three-pin plug. Understandably, we formed the general impression that we were there for the same reason we were sent to Sunday school – to keep us out of mischief until we were old enough to work.

Can you picture the fly alighting on the plant as the teenager sampling their first shandy? Can you visualize the lager lout just about to throw up as the bloated fly before it tries to take off? And when the alcoholic can no longer close his eyes to the fact that his life is being dominated and ruined by drink, doesn’t he try to cut down and control his intake, rather like someone who is grossly overweight attempts to cut down on food. But does dieting make food appear less precious? Quite the contrary. The more you cut down, the more hungry you get, the hungrier you get the more deprived you feel, the more deprived you feel the more precious each morsel becomes. Exactly the same happens when you try to cut down on your drinking. At the times when you won’t allow yourself to drink, you feel miserable because you can’t drink, and when you do allow yourself to drink, you still feel miserable because you can’t drink enough. Aren’t the struggles of the fly similar to the abortive struggles of the alcoholic who is trying to control his intake? Drinking hasn’t become less precious to him. On the contrary, it now dominates his whole life. The more both the fly and the alcoholic struggle to escape, the more imprisoned they become. Are the semi-digested insects not comparable to the down-and-out meths drinkers of skid row, whose entire existence is now confined to begging or stealing the next fix, and trying to find somewhere warm to sleep off the effects? Does the fact that the fly can see the partially digested bodies prevent it from joining them? Who knows?

was about ten years old. It was called The Geek.

I would like you to pause for a moment, and to record your own feelings about smoking: what you think it does for you, why you smoke and why you want to

relaxation is like drinking bourbon to get sober.

Your ideal weight is the weight you happen to be when you can look at yourself naked in a full-length mirror and be happy with your shape.

I’d rather it be ice cream.

At the window, with it open, as rain sang across the land once dry, so the rain slipped in threads of current down cracks and toward the lows, the man wiped his glasses free of spray—beads that had hit the sill and splattered at him. He cleared his throat, put the glasses back on, picked up a cigarette weaving smoke into the pale-yellow room—a light cast by a single bulb dangling above the kitchen table from a cord, makeshift. “Would you say,” said the man now ashing his cigarette, smoke staining his words, his eyes toward the rain, “that I am very brave?” He then looked at the woman, wrapped in a blanket, her eyes tight against the chill, her body frail with age and labor, her hair winced gray by days. She tightened the blanket across her shoulders, leaned against a wall—faded white paint, cracked and spotting. “These days?” she said, and looked now at the rain, sighed as if she knew it only came to wash her off the land, to hoist their home from its foundation in a torrent toward the death of it—nature ravaging its boards and bones to splinters and shingles and scraps and refuse that would toss wildly in the breath of flood until it came to rest unrecognizable. She closed her eyes. Turned from the man. “I wouldn’t even call you handsome.

When I had tried to stop previously there were weeks of dark depression. There would be odd days when I was comparatively cheerful but the next day I would invariably sink back into the misery and depression. It was like clawing your way out of a slippery pit—you feel that you are nearing the top; you can see the sunshine—and then find yourself sliding back down again.

Sometimes we look but don’t see, listen but don’t hear, touch but don’t feel. If one sense fails, the others step in.

Have you analysed how bizarrely low your standards of what constitutes “excitement” have become?

You only need willpower if you have a conflict of will.

unravel the brainwashing and follow your instincts.

You do not need to smoke. It’s the last thing you need to do; make sure it isn’t the last thing you do.

These cigarettes are the equivalent of wearing tight shoes to get the pleasure of taking them off.

The body cannot crave nicotine. Only the brain can crave.

Of all the basic human values, surely freedom is the most basic and most important? Who could conceive of anything as stupid as giving away this priceless gift in order to be enslaved to a drug that doesn’t even get you high?

it is interesting to note and also ironic that cigarettes only seem precious to us when we aren’t smoking. When we are smoking, we take it for granted and we’re barely even aware that we are doing it.

I closed my mind, prayed it wouldn’t be me, kept my head firmly in the sand and hoped that I would wake up one morning with no desire to smoke.

We confuse responsibility with stress. Responsibility becomes stressful only if you are not strong enough to handle it.