Allen Carr - Allen Carrs Easy Way for Women to Stop Smoking

In 1983, after countless failed attempts to cure his own addiction to nicotine, Allen Carr discovered what the world had been waiting for the Easy Way to Stop Smoking. Since giving up a successful career as an accountant to help cure the worlds smokers, he has built a global reputation as a result of his phenomenal method and a network of clinics spanning the world. Allen Carrs Easy Way to Stop Smoking became an international bestseller and has been published in over twenty different languages. This has been followed by The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently, How to Stop Your Child Smoking, and video, audio and CD-Rom versions of the Easyway method.

In 1998 Allen Carr was invited to speak at the 10th World Conference on Tobacco & Health, held in Beijing, an honour that the most eminent physician would be proud of. His method and reputation could receive no higher commendation. He is now widely accepted as the worlds leading expert on how to help smokers stop.

The success of Easyway encouraged people with other problems to approach Allen for help. This has resulted in the publication of Allen Carrs Easyweigh to Lose Weight and The Easy Way to Enjoy Flying. After tests with some of his patients it was discovered that the simple logic of Easyway also worked well for people with a drink problem, and so Allen wrote Easy Way to Control Alcohol.

A full list of Allen Carr clinics appears at the back of this book. Should you require any assistance, do not hesitate to contact your nearest therapist. All correspondence and enquiries about Allen Carrs books, videos, audio tapes and CD-Roms should be addressed to the nearest clinic.

Men are from Mars

My special thanks to the female therapists
at my clinics, for smoothing the rough edges and for
incorporating the Venus touch.

This edition published in 2011 by Arcturus Publishing Limited
26/27 Bickels Yard, 151153 Bermondsey Street,
London SE1 3HA

Text copyright 2003 Allen Carrs Easyway (International) Limited
Design copyright 2003 Arcturus Publishing Limited

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person or persons who do any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

ISBN: 978-1-84837-925-1
AD000031EN

INTRODUCTION

Youll end up like him!

I still hear my mothers voice from years ago. I see her pointing in the direction of a frail, seated man, older than his years, panting and coughing in the corner. That man was my father, reduced to a shadow of his former self by emphysema and chronic bronchitis. I would look at him without really seeing him: a few minutes later, I would open the window of my room, inhaling, along with the wintry dampness, the first puffs of yet another cigarette.

I had started smoking twenty years earlier: twenty years of lies, fears, and various attempts to stop all of which failed. Twenty years timed by the pendulum that swings in every smokers mind:

Oh, my God! What is this twinge in my throat Ive got to quit... soon. Tick.

Now isnt the right time to quit. Tock.

Damn! I forgot the cigarettes! Ive got to go out again. Tick.

Ill quit when this stressful period is over! Tock.

And the pendulum would have carried on, tick-tock-tick-tock, until the inevitable and unthinkable end. But a year later, in London where I was living at the time a lady gave me a telephone number, saying, My husband, who was a chain-smoker, went to see this gentleman named Allen Carr. Since then, my husband hasnt touched a cigarette, and he is as happy as a clam!

A few days later, I found myself among a group of fellow smokers in the presence of this Mr Carr. Everywhere were copies of his book and mountains of letters, all with the same message: Thank you, Allen Carr! Your book/your seminar has saved me/freed me/changed my life forever...

Initially sceptical and petrified, I listened to Allen talk. Every sentence slowly unscrewed the pendulums devices, revealing its sinister mechanism. Word after word, I began to understand the mental associations and the traps that had been the bars of my prison for more than twenty-one years. Now, contrary to my view of my father, I was not only looking, but I was able to see and everything was so clear, so ridiculously obvious and easy!

A few short hours later, I realized that the pendulum was actually silent. It had finally stopped!

Allen Carr held his first seminar in 1983; by 1985, purely on the strength of word-of-mouth recommendations, he had become unable to cope with the number of smokers seeking his help. His solution was to put his method into a book. The book has now sold more than 11 million copies worldwide. Allen Carrs lasting legacy is not only a dynamic ongoing publishing programme, but also a network of stop-smoking clinics that spans the globe.

Ten years after I sat in that room with Allen Carr, it was my huge privilege to introduce Allen Carrs Easyway to Stop Smoking Seminars to my fathers homeland, Italy. It was my honour and joy to work so closely with the man who had freed me from my addiction to nicotine. In 2003, I was entrusted to translate and publish the book in Italy, where, as in so many other countries, it remains a top-ten bestseller to this day. Getting involved in this way was the least I could do: helping others to free themselves was enormously gratifying. There are now over 150 Allen Carrs Easyway centres in more than thirty-eight countries. Each centre was established by people like me who had found it easy and exhilarating to quit smoking after reading the book or participating in a seminar. We have each decided to join the organization to bring Allen Carrs Easyway to our own countries.

The book is now a global bestseller, and more than 300,000 smokers have attended Allen Carrs Easyway seminars. The same heartfelt, grateful and moving letters that I saw in London twenty years ago now arrive on our desks daily from New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Milan, Tokyo, Madrid, Moscow, Santiago, Berlin, Paris, Sydney, Mexico City, Belgrade, Amsterdam, Dublin, and so on.

I stopped smoking in August 1988, and in the following years I never stopped thanking Allen. Without him, not only would I not be here writing these words, but, most probably, I would not be here at all. THANK YOU, ALLEN!

To have been asked to help Allen address the smoking problem from a female point of view was the biggest compliment that anyone could have paid me.

The number of women smokers is rising inexorably as the number of male smokers is slowly declining. Although Allen Carrs original book works just as well for women as it does for men, women perceive many of the issues associated with smoking differently. After all, men are from Mars and we are from Venus. There are particular difficulties faced by women who want to quit, including those arising from the perceived links between cigarettes and fashion, style, sex, glamour, stress relief, and weight control. Every aspect of smoking is examined from a female perspective, providing answers to female-specific questions and concerns.

I have written about privilege and honour already. Perhaps sometimes we use those words too cheaply, but in this instance I think they are understatements. Helping Allen to apply the Venus touch in channelling his method in this special way has been one of the most exciting, enjoyable, and liberating processes of my life. I am certain that you will find reading this book and the result that it achieves equally spectacular.