1 PENGUIN BOOKS ALLEN CARR'S EASY WAY TO STOP SMOKING WHAT THE MEDIA SAY ABOUT THE ALLEN CARR METHOD: 'I was exhilarated by a new sense of freedom' Independent 'An intelligent and original method' Evening Standard WHAT ESTABLISHED PROFESSIONALS AND MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS SAY ABOUT THE ALLEN CARR METHOD: 'I have no hesitation in supporting Allen Cart's work in helping smokers quit. Many quitting clinics use some of his techniques, but it would appear few do so in quite such a successful package' A personal view from Professor Judith Mackay, MBE, Director, Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control and World Health Organization Expert, Advisory Panel on Tobacco and Health 'It is a remarkable fact that Allen Carr, on his own admission a non-professional in behavior modification, should have succeeded where countless psychologists and psychiatrists holding postgraduate qualifications have failed, in formulating a SIMPLE and EFFECTIVE way to stop smoking' Dr William Green, Head of the Psychiatric Department, Matilda Hospital, Hong Kong 'I was really impressed by the method. In spite of Allen Carr's success and fame, there were no gimmicks and the professional approach was something a GP could readily respect. I would be happy to give a medical endorsement of the method to anyone' Dr P.M. Bray 'I have observed the Allen Carr method, "The Easy Way to Stop Smoking' at first hand on several occasions. I have found it to be very successful. I wholeheartedly support it as an effective way to stop smoking' Dr Anil Visram, B.Sc., MBBch, FRCA, Consultant, The Royal Hospitals NHS Trust, Royal London Hospital, UK 2 ABOUT THE AUTHOR The common thread running through Allen Carr's work is the removal of fear. Indeed, his genius lies in eliminating the phobias and anxieties which prevent people from being able to enjoy life to the full, as his bestselling books Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking, The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently, Allen Carr's Easyweigh to Lose Weight, How to Stop Your Child Smoking, and now The Easy Way to Enjoy Flying, vividly demonstrate. A successful accountant, Allen Carr's hundred-cigarettes-a-day addiction was driving him to despair until, in 1983, after countless failed attempts to quit, he finally discovered what the world had been waiting for —the Easy Way to Stop Smoking. He has now built a network of clinics that span the globe and has a phenomenal reputation for success in helping smokers to quit. His books have been published in over twenty different languages and video, audio and CD- ROM versions of his method are also available. Tens of thousands of people have attended Allen Carr's clinics where, with a success rate of over 95%. he guarantees that you will find it easy to quit smoking or your money back. A full list of clinics appears in the back of this book. Should you require any assistance do not hesitate to contact your nearest therapist. Weight-control sessions are now offered at a selection of these clinics. A full corporate service is also available enabling companies to implement no-smoking policies simply and effectively. All correspondence and enquiries about ALLEN CARR'S BOOKS, VIDEOS, AUDIO TAPES AND CD-ROMS should be addressed to the London Clinic. 3 ALLEN CARR'S EASY WAY TO STOP SMOKING THIRD EDITION PENGUIN BOOKS 4 ‘ PENGUIN HOOKS Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Putnam Inc.. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd. Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue. Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Ply) Ltd. 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2198, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices; 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England www.penguin.com First published privately, under the title The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, ,by Allen Carr 1085 Published in Penguin Books 1987 Second edition 1991 Third edition 1999 18 Copyright ©, Allen Carr. 1985, 1991. 1999 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any material form (including photocopying it or storing it in any medium or by any electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of [his publication) nor may it be performed in public without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner's written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher. Warning: the doing of an unauthorized act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution. Filmset 10/12pt Monophoto Century Schoolbook Printed in England by Clays Ltd. St Ives plc Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not. by way of trade or otherwise, be lent. re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser 5 To the smokers I have failed to cure, I hope it will help them to get free And to Sid Sutton But most of all to Joyce 6 Contents Preface 7 Warning 8 Introduction 10 1 The Worst Nicotine Addict I Have Yet to Meet 15 2 The Easy Method 17 3 Why is it Difficult to Stop? 19 4 The Sinister Trap 22 5 Why Do We Carry on Smoking? 24 6 Nicotine Addiction 25 7 Brainwashing and the Sleeping Partner 31 8 Relieving Withdrawal Pangs 36 9 Stress 37 10 Boredom 38 11 Concentration 39 12 Relaxation 40 13 Combination Cigarettes 41 14 What am I Giving up? 42 15 Self-imposed Slavery 45 16 I'll Save £x a Week 47 17 Health 49 18 Energy 55 19 It Relaxes Me and Gives Me Confidence 56 20 Those Sinister Black Shadows 57 21 The Advantages of Being a Smoker 58 22 The Willpower Method of Stopping 60 23 Beware of Cutting Down 65 24 Just One Cigarette 68 25 Casual Smokers, Teenagers, Non-smokers 69 26 The Secret Smoker 74 27 A Social Habit? 76 28 Timing 77 29 Will I Miss the Cigarette? 80 30 Will I Put on Weight? 82 31 Avoid False Incentives 83 32 The Easy Way to Stop 84 33 The Withdrawal Period 87 34 Just One Puff 90 35 Will it be Harder for Me? 91 36 The Main Reasons for Failure 92 37 Substitutes 93 38 Should I Avoid Temptation? 95 39 The Moment of Revelation 97 40 The Final Cigarette 99 41 A Final Warning 101 42 Twelve Years' Feedback 102 43 Help the Smoker Left on the Sinking Ship 106 44 Advice to Non-smokers 108 Finale: Help End This Scandal 110 7 Preface At last the miracle cure all smokers have been waiting for: * Instantaneous * Equally effective for the heavy smoker * No bad withdrawal pangs * Needs no willpower * No shock treatment * No aids or gimmicks required * You will not even put on weight * Permanent If you are a smoker all you have to do is read on. If you are a non-smoker purchasing for loved ones all you have to do is persuade them to read the book. If you cannot persuade them, then read the book yourself, and the last chapter will advise you how to get the message across - also how to prevent your children from starting. Do not be fooled by the fact that they hate it now. All children do before they become hooked. How to Stop Your Child Smoking is published in Penguin. 8 Warning Perhaps you are somewhat apprehensive about reading this book. Perhaps, like the majority of smokers, the mere thought of stopping fills you with panic and although you have every intention of stopping one day, it is not today. If you are expecting me to inform you of the terrible health risks that smokers run, that smokers spend a small fortune during their smoking lives, that it is a filthy, disgusting habit and that you are a stupid, spineless, weak-willed jellyfish, then I must disappoint you. Those tactics never helped me to quit and if they were going to help you, you would already have quit. My method, which I shall refer to as EASYWAY doesn't work that way. Some of the things that I am about, to say, you might find difficult to believe. However by the time you've finished the book, you'll not only believe them, but wonder how you could ever have been brainwashed into believing otherwise. There is a common misapprehension that we choose to smoke. Smokers no more choose to smoke than alcoholics choose to become alcoholics, or heroin addicts choose to become heroin addicts. It is true that we choose to light those first experimental cigarettes. I occasionally choose to go to the cinema, but I certainly didn't choose to spend my whole life in a cinema. Please reflect on your life. Did you ever make the positive decision that at certain times in your life, you couldn't enjoy a meal or a social occasion without smoking, or that you couldn't concentrate or handle stress without a cigarette? At what stage did you decide that you needed cigarettes, not just for social occasions, but that you needed to have them permanently in your presence, and felt insecure, even panic-stricken without them? Like every other smoker, you have been lured into the most sinister subtle trap that man and nature have combined to devise. There is not a parent on this planet, whether they be smoker or non- smoker, that likes the thought of their children smoking. This means that all smokers wish they had never started. Not surprising really, no one needs cigarettes to enjoy meals or cope with stress before they get hooked. At the same time all smokers wish to continue to smoke. After all, no one forces us to light up, whether we understand the reason or not, it is only smokers themselves that decide to light up. If there were a magic button that smokers could press to wake up the following morning as if they never lit that firs cigarette,. the only smokers there would be tomorrow morning would be the youngsters who are still at the experimental stage. The only thing that prevents us from quitting is: FEAR! Fear that we will have to survive an indeterminate period of misery, deprivation and unsatisfied craving in order to be free. Fear that a meal or social occasion will never be quite as enjoyable without a cigarette. Fear that we'll never be able to concentrate, handle stress or be as confident without our little crutch. Fear that our personality and character will change. But most of all, the fear of 'once a smoker always a smoker,' that we will never be completely free and spend the rest of our lives at odd times craving the occasional cigarette. If, as I did, you have already tried all the conventional ways to quit and been through the misery of what I describe as the willpower method of stopping, you will not only be affected by that fear, hut convinced you can never quit. If you are apprehensive, panic-sticken or feel that the time is not right for you to give up, then let me assure you that your apprehension or panic is caused by fear. That fear is not relieved by cigarettes but 9 created by them. You didn't decide to fall into the nicotine trap. But like all traps, it is designed to ensure that you remain trapped. Ask yourself, when you lit those first experimental cigarettes, did you decide to remain a smoker as long as you have? So when are you going to quit? Tomorrow? Next, year? Stop kidding yourself! The trap is designed to hold you for life. Why else do you think all these other smokers don't quit before it kills them? This book was first published by Penguin a decade ago and has been a bestseller every year since then, I now have ten years' feedback. As you will soon be reading, the feedback has revealed information that has exceeded my wildest aspirations of the effectiveness of my method. It has also revealed two aspects of EASYWAY that have caused me concern. The second I will he covering later. The first arose from the letters that I have received. I give three typical examples: I didn't believe the claims you made and I apologize for doubting you. It was just as easy and enjoyable as you said it would be. I've given copies of your book to all my smoking friends and relatives, but I can't understand why they don't read it, I was given your book eight years ago by an ex-smoking friend, I've just got around to reading it. My only regret is that I wasted eight years. I've just finished reading EASYWAY. I know it has only been four days, but I feel so great, I know I'll never need to smoke again. I first started to read your book five years ago, got half-way through and panicked. I knew that if I went on reading I would have to stop. Wasn't I silly? No, that particular young lady wasn't silly. I've referred to a magic button. EASYWAY works just like that magic button. Let me make it quite clear, EASYWAY isn't magic, but for me and the hundreds of thousands of ex-smokers who have found it so easy and enjoyable to quit. it seems like magic! This is the warning. We have a chicken and egg situation. Every smoker wants to quit and every smoker can find it easy and enjoyable to quit. It's only fear that prevents smokers from trying to quit. The greatest gain is to be rid of that fear. But you won't be free of that fear until you complete the book. On the contrary, like the lady in the third example, that fear might increase as you read the book and this might prevent you from finishing it. You didn't decide to fall into the trap, but he clear in your mind, you won't escape from it unless you make a positive decision to do so. You might already be straining at the leash to quit. On the other hand you might be apprehensive, Either way please bear in mind: YOU HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO LOSE! If at the end of the book you decide that you wish to continue to smoke, there is nothing to prevent you from doing so. You don't even have to cut down or stop smoking while you are reading the book, and remember, there is no shock treatment. On the contrary, I have only good news for you. Can you imagine how the Count of Monte Cristo felt when he finally escaped from that prison? That's how I felt when I escaped from the nicotine trap. That's how the millions of ex-smokers who have used my method feel. By the end of the book: THAT'S HOW YOU WILL FEEL! GO FOR IT! 10 Introduction 'I'M GOING TO CURE THE WORLD OF SMOKING.' I was talking to my wife. She thought that I had flipped. Understandable if you consider that she had watched me fail on numerous attempts to quit. The most recent had been two years previously. I'd actually survived six months of sheer purgatory before I finally succumbed and lit a cigarette. I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried like a baby. I was crying because I knew that I was condemned to he a smoker for life. I'd put so much effort into that attempt and suffered so much misery that I knew I would never have the strength to go through that ordeal again. I'm not a violent man, but if some patronizing non-smoker had been stupid enough at that moment to suggest to me that all smokers can find it easy to quit, immediately and permanently, I would not have been responsible for my actions. However, I'm convinced that any jury in the world, comprised of smokers only, would have pardoned me on the grounds of justifiable homicide. Perhaps you too find it impossible to believe that any smoker can find it easy to quit. If so, I beg you not to cast this book into the rubbish bin. Please trust me. I assure you that even you can find it easy to quit. Anyway, there I was two years later, having just extinguished what I knew would be my final cigarette, not only telling my wife that I was already a non-smoker, but that I was going to cure the rest of the world. I must admit that at the time I found her skepticism somewhat irritating. However, in no way did it diminish my feeling of exaltation, 1 suppose that my exhilaration in knowing that I was already a happy non-smoker distorted my perspective somewhat. With the benefit of hindsight, I can sympathize with her attitude, I now understand why Joyce and my close friends and relatives thought I was a candidate for the funny farm. As I look back on my life, it seems that my whole existence has been a preparation for solving the smoking problem. Even those hateful years of training and practicing as a chartered accountant were invaluable in helping me to unravel the mysteries of the smoking trap. They say you can't fool all the people all of the time, but I believe the tobacco companies have done just that for years. I also believe that I am the first to really understand the smoking trap. If I appear to be arrogant, let me hasten to add that it was no credit to me, just the circumstances of my life. The momentous day was 15 July 1983, I didn't escape from Colditz, but I imagine those who did felt the same sense of relief and exhilaration as I did when I extinguished that final cigarette. I realized 1 had discovered something that every smoker was praying for: an easy way to stop smoking. After testing out the method on smoking friends and relatives, I gave up accountancy and became a full-time consultant, helping other smokers to get free. I wrote the first edition of this book in 1985. One of my failures, the man I describe in chapter 25, was the inspiration. He visited me twice, and we were both reduced to tears on each occasion. He was so agitated that I couldn't get him to relax enough to absorb what I was saying. I hoped that if I wrote it all down, he could read it in his own good time, as many times as he wanted to, and this would help him to absorb the message. I was in no doubt that EASYWAY would work just as effectively for other smokers as it had for me. However, when I contemplated putting the method into book form, I was apprehensive. I did my own market research. The comments were not very encouraging: 11 'How can a book help me to quit? What I need is willpower!' 'How can a book avoid the terrible withdrawal pangs?' In addition to these pessimistic comments, I had my own doubts. Often at the clinics it became obvious that a client had misunderstood an important point that I was making. I was able to correct the situation. But how would a book be able to do that? I remembered well the times when I studied to qualify as an accountant, when I didn't understand or agree with a particular point in a book, the frustration because you couldn't ask the book to explain, I was also well aware, particularly in these days of television and videos, that many people arc not accustomed to reading. Added to all these factors, I had one doubt that overrode all the rest. I wasn't a writer and was very conscious of my limitations in this respect. I was confident that I could sit down face to face with a smoker and convince that smoker how much more enjoyable social occasions to regard it as their failure. We regard it as our failure, we failed to convince those smokers just how easy and enjoyable it is to quit. I dedicated the first edition to the smokers that I had failed to cure. That failure rate was based on the money-hack guarantee that we give at our clinics. The average current failure rate of our clinics world-wide is under 5 per cent. That means a success rate of over 95 per cent, Although I was aware that I had discovered something marvelous, I never in my wildest dreams expected to achieve such rates. You might well argue that if I genuinely believed that I would cure the world of smoking, I must have expected to achieve 100 per cent. No, I never ever expected to achieve 100 per cent. Snuff-taking was the previous most popular form of nicotine addiction until it became antisocial and died. However, there are still a few weirdoes that continue to take snuff and probably, there always will be. Amazingly, the Houses of Parliament are one of the last bastions of snuff-taking. I suppose this is not so surprising when you think about it, politicians are generally about a hundred years behind the times. So there will always be a few weirdoes that will continue to smoke, I certainly never expected to have to cure every smoker personally. What I thought would happen was that once I had explained the mysteries of the smoking trap and dispelled such illusions as: * Smokers enjoy smoking * Smokers choose to smoke * Smoking relieves boredom & stress * Smoking aids concentration and relaxation * Smoking is a habit * It takes willpower to quit * Once a smoker always a smoker * Telling smokers that it kills them helps them to quit * Substitutes, particularly nicotine replacement, helps smokers to quit, in particular, when I had dispelled the illusion that it is difficult to quit and that you have to go through a transitional period of misery in order to do so, I naively thought that the rest of the world would also see the light and adopt my method. 12 I thought my chief antagonist would be the tobacco industry. Amazingly, my chief stumbling blocks were the very institutions that I thought would be my greatest allies: the media, the Government, organizations like ASH, QUIT and the established medical profession. You've probably seen the film Sister Kenny. In case you haven't, it was about the time when infantile paralysis or polio was the scourge of our children. I vividly remember that the words engendered the same fear in me as the word cancer does today. The effect of polio was not only to paralyze the legs and arms but to distort the limbs. The established medical treatment was to put those limbs in irons and thus prevent the distortion. The result was paralysis for life. Sister Kenny believed the irons inhibited recovery and proved a thousand times over that the muscles could be re-educated so that the child could walk again. However, Sister Kenny wasn't a doctor, she was merely a nurse. How dare she dabble in a province that was confined to qualified doctors? It didn't seem to matter that Sister Kenny had found the solution to the problem and had proved her solution to be effective. The children that were treated by Sister Kenny knew she was right, so did their parents, yet the established medical profession not only refused to adopt her methods but actually prevented her from practicing. It took Sister Kenny twenty years before the medical profession would accept the obvious. I first saw that film years before I discovered EASYWAY, The film was very interesting and no doubt there was an element of truth. However, it was equally obvious that Hollywood had used a large portion of poetic license. Sister Kenny couldn't possibly have discovered something that the combined knowledge of medical science had failed to discover. Surely the established medical specialists weren't the dinosaurs they were being portrayed as? How could it possibly have taken them twenty years to accept the facts that were staring them in the face? They say that fact is stranger than fiction, I apologize for accusing the makers of Sister Kenny for using poetic license. Even in this so-called enlightened age of modern communications, after fourteen years, even having access to modern communications, I've failed to get my message across. Oh, I've proved my point, the only reason that you are reading this hook is because another ex-smoker has recommended it to you. Remember, I don't have the massive financial power of institutions like the BMA, ASH or QUIT. Like Sister Kenny, I'm a lone individual. Like her. I'm only famous because rny system works. I'm already regarded as the number-one guru on helping smokers to quit. Like Sister Kenny, I've proved my point. But Sister Kenny proved her point. What good did that do if the rest of the world was still adopting procedures which were the direct opposite to what they should be? The last sentence of this book is identical to that in the original manuscript: There is a wind of change in society, A snowball has started that I hope this book will help turn into an avalanche. From my remarks above, you might have drawn the conclusion that I am no respecter of the medical profession. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of my sons is a doctor and I know of no finer profession. Indeed we receive more recommendations to our clinics from doctors than from any other source, and surprisingly, more of our clients come from the medical profession than any other single profession. In the early years, I was generally regarded by the doctors as being somewhere between a charlatan and a quack. In August 1997, I had the great honor to be invited to lecture to the 10th World Conference on Tobacco or Health held in Beijing. I believe that I am the first non- qualified doctor to receive such an honor. The invitation itself is a measure of the progress that I have made. 13 However, I might just as well have been lecturing to a brick wall Since the nicotine chewing-gum and the patch have failed to cure the problem, smokers themselves appear to have accepted that you don't get cured from addiction to a drug by prescribing the same drug. It's equivalent to saying to a heroin addict: don't smoke heroin, smoking is dangerous, try injecting it into your vein (don't try this with nicotine, it will kill you instantly). Because the medical profession and the media haven't a clue about helping smokers to quit, they concentrate on telling smokers what they already know: smoking is unhealthy, it's filthy and disgusting, it's antisocial and expensive. It never seems to occur to them that smokers do not smoke for the reasons that they shouldn't smoke. The real problem is to remove the reasons that they do smoke. On national no-smoking days, the medical experts say something like: This is the day that every smoker tries to quit!' Every smoker knows that it is the one day in the year that most smokers will smoke twice as many as they usually do and twice as blatantly, because smokers don't like being told what to do, particularly by people who dismiss smokers as mere idiots and don't understand why they smoke. Because they don't completely understand smokers themselves or how to make it easy for smokers to quit, their attitude is 'Try this method. If it doesn't work try another: Can you imagine if there were ten different ways of treating appendicitis? Nine of them cured 10 per cent of the patients, which means they killed 90 per cent of them and the tenth way cured 95 per cent. Imagine that knowledge of the tenth method had been available for over fourteen years, but the vast majority of the medical profession was still recommending the other nine. One of the doctors at the conference raised a very pertinent point that hadn't occurred to me. He pointed out that doctors might well find themselves liable to a legal action for malpractice, by not advising their patients of the best way to quit smoking. Ironically he was a great advocate of nicotine replacement therapy (nicotine gums, patches, etc.), I try hard not to be vindictive, but I hope he becomes the first victim of his suggestion. As I write, the Government has just wasted £2.5 million on a shook TV campaign trying to persuade youngsters not to get hooked. They might just as well have wasted it on trying to persuade them that motorbikes can kill you. Do they not realize that youngsters know that one cigarette won't kill them and that no youngster ever expects to get hooked? The link between smoking and lung cancer has been established for over forty years. Yet more youngsters are becoming hooked nowadays than ever before. Youngsters don't need to watch smoking horrors on TV. Smokers tend to avoid such, programmes anyway. Practically every youngster in the country has witnessed the actual devastation that smoking causes within their own family. I watched my father and my sister destroyed by the weed; that didn't prevent me from falling into the trap. I appeared on a national TV programme with a doctor from Ash who had never smoked in her life and had never cured a single smoker, categorically informing the nation how this campaign would prevent youngsters from becoming hooked. If only the government had had the common sense to give that £2.5 million to me, I could have financed a campaign that would have guaranteed the death of nicotine addiction within a few years. I truly believe that the snowball has become a football. But after fourteen years that is still a spit in the ocean. I'm grateful to the thousands of ex-smokers who have visited my clinics, read my books, watched my videos and recommended EASYWAY to their friends, relatives and anyone who will listen to them, and 1 pray that you continue to do so. However, the snowball won't become an avalanche until the medical profession and the media stop recommending methods that make it harder to quit and accept that EASYWAY is not just another method: BUT THE ONLY 14 SENSIBLE METHOD TO USE! I don't expect you to believe me at this stage, but by the time you have finished the book, you will understand. Even the comparatively few failures that we have say something like: 'I haven't succeeded yet, but your way is better than any I know.' If when you finish the book, you feel that you owe me a debt of gratitude, you can more than repay that debt. Not just by recommending EASYWAY to your friends, but whenever you see a TV or radio programme, or read a newspaper article advocating some other method, write to them or phone them asking why they aren't advocating EASYWAY. That will start the avalanche and if I live to witness it, I will die a happy man. This third edition of EASYWAY is to give you the state of the art technology on just how easy and enjoyable it is to quit smoking. Do you have a feeling of doom and gloom? Forget it. I've achieved some marvelous things in my life. By far the greatest was to escape from the slavery of nicotine addiction. I escaped over fourteen years ago and still cannot get over the joy of being free. There is no need to feel depressed, nothing bad is happening, on the contrary, you are about to achieve something that every smoker on the planet would love to achieve: TO BE FREE! 15 1 The Worst Nicotine Addict I Have Yet to Meet Perhaps I should begin by describing my competence for writing this book. No, I am not a doctor or a psychiatrist; my qualifications are far more appropriate. I spent thirty-three years of my life as a confirmed smoker. In the later years I smoked a hundred a day on a bad day, and never less than sixty. During my life I had made dozens of attempts to stop. I once stopped for six months, and I was still climbing up the wall, still standing near smokers trying to get a whiff of the tobacco, still traveling in the smokers' compartments on trains. With most smokers, on the health side, it's a question of 'I'll stop before it happens to me.' I had reached the stage where I knew it was killing me. I had a permanent headache with the pressure of the constant coughing. I could feel the continuous throbbing in the vein that runs vertically down the centre of my forehead, and I honestly believed that any moment there would be an explosion in my head and I would die from a brain hemorrhage. It bothered me, but it still didn't stop me. I had reached the stage where I gave up even trying to stop. It was not so much that I enjoyed smoking. Some time in their lives most smokers have suffered from the illusion that they enjoy the odd cigarette, but I never suffered from that illusion. I have always detested the taste and smell, but I thought a cigarette helped me to relax. It gave me courage and confidence, and I was always miserable when I tried to stop, never being able to visualize an enjoyable life without a cigarette. Eventually my wife sent me to a hypnotherapist. I must confess that I was completely skeptical, knowing nothing about hypnosis in those days and having visions of a Svengali-type figure with piercing eyes and a waving pendulum. I had all the normal illusions that smokers have about smoking except one I knew that I wasn't a weak-willed person. I was in control of all other aspects of my life but cigarettes controlled me. I thought that hypnosis involved the forcing of wills, and although I was not obstructive (like most smokers, I dearly wanted to stop), I thought no one was going to kid me that I didn't need to smoke. The whole session appeared to be a waste of time. The hypnotherapist tried to make me lift my arms and do various other things. Nothing appeared to be working properly. I didn't lose consciousness. I didn't go into a trance, or at least I didn't think I did, and yet after that session not only did I stop smoking but I actually enjoyed the process even during the withdrawal period. Now, before you go rushing off to see a hypnotherapist, let me make something quite clear. Hypnotherapy is a means of communication. If the wrong message is communicated, you won't stop smoking. I'm loath to criticize the man whom I consulted because I would be dead by now if I hadn't seen him. But it was in spite of him. not because of him. Neither do I wish to appear to be knocking hypnotherapy; on the contrary, I use it as part of my own consultations. It is the power of suggestion and a powerful force that can be used for good or evil. Don't ever consult a hypnotherapist unless he or she has been personally recommended by someone you respect and trust. During those awful years as a smoker I thought that my life depended on cigarettes, and I was prepared to die rather than be without them. Today people ask me whether I ever have the odd pang. The answer is, 'Never, never, never' - just the reverse. I've had a marvelous life. If I had died through smoking, I couldn't have complained, I have been a very lucky man, but the most marvelous thing that has ever happened to me is being freed from that nightmare, that slavery of having to go through life systematically destroying my own body and paying through the nose for the privilege. Let me make it quite clear from the beginning: I am not a mystical figure. I do not believe in