'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:
'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.
The source: Allen Carr's "Easy Way to Stop Smoking"
Read the whole book at: http://prdupl02.ynet.co.il/ForumFiles_2/15119301.pdf
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