How to quit smoking: An ex-smoker reveals his secret
Whether you’re going Allen Carr or cold turkey, giving up nicotine is possible, as one ex-smoker reveals
Text: Christian Barker
Contrary to popular belief, smoking actually isn’t a difficult habit to kick.
The withdrawals from nicotine are so slight as to be almost imperceptible. That message — in fact, those words, verbatim — will be drilled into the head of anyone who’s read Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking, which many ex-smokers endorse with evangelical zeal. (Nine million copies have been sold worldwide, people).
Carr’s famous method, contained in several books and delivered live in seminars held all around the world, uses neuro-linguistic programming (or NLP) to help smokers shirk the belief that they ‘need’ to smoke or gain anything by it. By repeating, over and over and over, how utterly painless it is to refrain from lighting up, Carr and his acolytes convince many in their audience that quitting the unhealthy habit of smoking is a doddle.
“I spent 20 years trying to give up using willpower and the occasional Nicorette gum, always failing once a few beers had been sunk,” says Rob, a top men’s tailor. “Then, 18 years ago, I read Allen Carr’s book. I’ve not smoked or even wanted to smoke since the moment I finished reading. It’s absolutely brilliant.”
Restaurateur Josh attended an Allen Carr workshop in Singapore. “It worked well until I screwed up and started smoking again,” he recalls. Determined to quit, however, “I discovered Carr’s method was basically NLP, so I sought out an NLP specialist here and that’s worked,” Josh says.
No more cravings
In his books, Carr argues that nicotine replacement therapy, using patches or gum that slowly release nicotine into the system, is a fool’s errand as it leaves you hooked on the drug that makes smoking cigarettes so habit-forming. Nevertheless, many ex-smokers say for them, a full course of nicotine replacement did the trick, allowing them to ease off the mild but wickedly moreish stimulant.
Prescription treatments such as varenicline (sold as Champix or Chantix) and bupropion (going under the brand names Wellbutrin and Zyban) can also be effective. “I was a pack-a-day guy for eight years,” says Wes, a sommelier. “After many attempts to quit, I took bupropion while on holiday. It worked great. I never went back to smoking.”
Others swear by more esoteric methods. “I saw a hypnotherapist, and honestly, I was a cynic,” says Jola, a magazine editor. “I’m now a carefree ex-smoker. One session. No cravings. And I was elite-level, smoking a pack a day for decades.”
Seeing numerous relatives die early due to smoking-related illnesses — including a grandfather who spent his final years communicating via an artificial voice box — I’d always sworn I’d never take up smoking. Around the age of sixteen, stupidly, I did anyway. My addiction lasted more than 25 years.
During that time, I tried on countless occasions to kick the habit, giving up for days, weeks or months at a time. I experimented with almost all the methods detailed above. Patches and gum made me nauseous, but failed to deliver the nicotine hit I craved. I was soon augmenting the nicotine replacement with the occasional cigarette … which gradually grew all the more frequent. The ‘magic pill’ Zyban never appealed, as I saw too many formerly mellow friends become hyper while on the drug.
I read two of Allen Carr’s books, Easy Way and its sequel, The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently. I found them to be One Way to Stop Smoking Temporarily. And rather tedious, thanks to the repetition required to deliver the NLP message, plus Carr’s habit of telling anecdotes from his days as an accountant and weekends on the golf course. No offence to CPAs and golfers, but your occupations aren’t exactly the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters. (Well, aside from Caddyshack and Ben Affleck’s The Accountant. Those were pretty good).
Hypnotherapy was more successful. The first try, a two-appointment session about a decade ago, kept me cigarette-free for three or four months. The second go, comprising four appointments a couple of years back, worked for six months. Although hypnotherapy didn’t liberate me of my smoking habit, I still got value out of the sessions, exiting each hour-long appointment feeling remarkably physically and mentally refreshed — cleansed. I’d recommend the experience. Insofar as stopping smoking goes, it works for a lot of people.
Be warned, though: hypnotherapy can be quite expensive. Then again, so is smoking. Many find the financial motive a powerful incentive to giving up. When my father was in his late 40s, his employer asked him to calculate how much he spent annually on cigarettes. He wrote my dad a cheque for double that amount and said, “If you quit, you can cash it.” Stubbing out a 40-a-day habit, Dad hasn’t smoked since.
Health is wealth
We’re not all lucky enough to be offered a generous financial bonus for quitting. However, putting aside the money you would otherwise have spent on smokes (perhaps with a specific savings goal in mind) can bring into sharp relief just how much you were wasting at the tobacconist.
Money’s important, sure. But health is true wealth. I’ve been smoke-free for nearly two years now. What finally worked for me — and what worked for a vast number of the ex-smokers I reached out to in preparing this article — was a wish to prolong life, in order to spend as much time as possible on this earth with the people we love. Allen Carr and those two hypnotists helped me along the way. But it was my daughters who pushed me over the line.
I quit cold turkey (on New Year’s Day, cliché though that may be). The good ol’ pure abstinence method does, in fact, work for a lot of smokers. In my case, the trick I’d never got a handle on in the past was that the secret to not smoking is NOT SMOKING. Not one cigarette — nor one cigar. Never.
Oh, and as for vaping as an alternative, I’m reminded of a post on the Instagram page Overheard in LA. A restaurant patron asks a waitress, “Is it cool to vape?” The waitress replies, “Uh, no. And it’s not allowed here, either.”
