My notes from Allen Carr's easyway to stop smoking book

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Just thought I would share a few of the notes that I took from this book. I found them to be really helpful when I finally quit (15 days here and no going back) :smile: If you have not read the book I highly recommend that you do. Here's to being free people :drinker:

*Whether you like it or not you have smoked your last cigarette!!

*If you can be certain from the start, it will be easy.
1. Realise that you can achieve it. There is nothing different about you, and the only person who can make you smoke that next cigarette is YOU!

2. There is absolutely nothing to give up. On the contrary, there are enormous positives gains to be made. Not just healthier and richer. But enjoy the good times more and be less miserable during the bad times.

3. Get it clear in your head that there is no such thing as one cigarette. Smoking is a drug addiction and a chain reaction. By moaning about the odd cigarette you will only be punishing yourself needlessly.

*The key to making it easy to quit smoking is to be certain that you will succeed in abstaining completely during the withdrawal period (max 3 weeks). If you are in the correct frame of mind this will be easy.
-Correct frame of mind: Isn't it awesome that I'm a non-smoker!
All we have to do is to keep that frame of mind during the withdrawal period.

*Get ti clear in your head: you don't need the cigarette, and you are only torturing yourself by continuing to regard it as some sort of prop or boost.

*The physical pain is non existent and with the right frame of mind cigarettes become no problem.Do no worry about withdrawal. The feeling itself isn't bad. It is the association with wanting a cigarette and then feeling denied that is the problem.

*Instead of moping about it, say to yourself, I know what it is, it's the withdrawal pang from nicotine. That's what smokers suffer all their lives and that's what keeps them smoking. Non-smokers do not suffer these pangs. It is another of the many evil of this drug. Isn't it awesome I am purging this evil from my body!!

*In other words, for the next 3 weeks you will have slight trauma inside your body, but during those weeks, and for the rest of your life, something awesome will be happening. You will be ridding yourself of an awful disease. That bonus will more than outweigh the slight trauma and you will actually enjoy the withdrawal pangs. They will become moments of pleasure.

*Think of the whole business of stopping as an exciting game. Think of the nicotine monster as a sort of tape worm inside your stomach. You have got to starve him for three weeks and he is going to try to trick you into lighting a cigarette to keep him alive. At times he will try to make you miserable. At times you will be off guard. Everytime you resist the temptation you have dealt another mortal blow in the battle.

*DO NOT DOUBT YOU DECISION. Once you start to doubt you will start to mope, and it will get worse. Instead use the moment as a boost. Remember that the feeling is only temporary and each moment is a moment nearer to your goal.

*That panic feeling of wanting a cigarette is not weakness, or some magic quality in the cigarette. It was caused from the first cigarette, and each subsequent one, far from relieving the feeling, it's causing it!

*Stop kidding yourself. You have the chance. It's a chain reaction. If you smoke the next cigarette, it will lead to the next one and the next.

*No one forces you to smoke (apart from yourself).

*The time is never right because life for most people doesn't become less stressful, it becomes moreso. Of course, the smoker's life can never become less stressful because it is the cigarette that actually causes stress.

*There is no such thing as just one cigarette. It is a chain reaction that will last the rest of your life unless you break it.

*Like all drug addictions yours won't get better, each year it will get worse and worse.

*The key to making it easy is to make stopping certain and final. Not to hope but to know you have kicked it, having made the decision. Never to doubt or question it. In fact, just the reverse always to rejoice about it.

*There is nothing to give up. Once you purge that little monster from your body and the brainwashing from your mind, you will neither want cigarettes nor need them.

ASK YOURSELF THE FOLLOWING
1. What is it doing for me?
2. Do I really enjoy it?
3. Do I really need to go through life paying through the nose just to stick these in my mouth and suffocate myself?

*Get it clear in your head that the cigarette is not relieving your nerves; it is slowly but steadily destroying them.

*Cigarettes do not help concentration. That is just another illusion. The progressive blocking up of the arteries and veins with poisons starves the brain of oxygen. In fact, your concentration and inspiration will be greatly improved as this process is reversed.

*It is just one cigarette that, when smokers have succeeded in breaking the addiction, sends them back into the trap.

Replies

  • jrcox520
    jrcox520 Posts: 130 Member
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    This book saved me. :) Everyone who is quitting or thinking about quitting should read it. Hell, I wasn't even thinking about quitting - I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I read it one sitting and put it down a nonsmoker, and am on day 34 now. Read this book!!
  • CnocNaCu
    CnocNaCu Posts: 536 Member
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    I read it,too, and really recommend it. This was the cheapest book I ever bought (0.01 at Amazon) and the one that saved me money and quality and time of my life.
    My stats: 39 days, 1 hour, 53 minutes and 58 seconds smoke free.

    782 cigarettes not smoked.
    €306.15 and 5 days, 23 hours of your life saved.

    Your quit date: 11/9/2011

    My first reward was a visit at the hairdresser's. I got me a new hair style, new colour...a new me :-)
    Next reward will be a treadmill.