I’m not a reformed smoker, in fact I’m one of these goody-goody types who have never even tried
smoking, so it’s no surprise
that I hate
smoking with a passion bordering on neurotic. I attribute it to growing up in a household with two smoking parents who puffed away in the house or car oblivious to the pleas of my siblings and I for some fresh air. The effects of passive smoking weren’t known then but my parents probably wouldn’t have cared anyway.
For me one of the best laws ever passed was the banning of smoking from all but one room of clubs and pubs in New South Wales in Australia. Roll on 2007 when smoking will be completely banned in all sections of clubs and pubs.
I should make it clear that it’s the by-product of smoking I hate, NOT the smokers. In fact some of my best friends are smokers and ironically many of them can’t stand smoky rooms either.
Ironically also many of them rue the day they started to smoke and want to quit. I don’t come across a lot of people who say that smoking is a positive experience for them. Most say they will quit ‘eventually’ and believe they will quit ‘some day’.
I’ve witnessed many good attempts at quitting; cold turkey, nicotine patches, nicotine gum and hypnosis being the most common and I have to admit that a lot of them have been successful.
Those who have fallen off the wagon usually have other issues to deal with. They say they need to smoke so that they stay slim or smoking helps them to deal with stress. My mother used to say that she would go mad if she didn’t smoke. She eventually gave up smoking (cold turkey) at age 75 but it was too late to prevent the onset of emphysema and osteoporosis.
This is all leading to an interesting book that I’ve come across called Allen Carr’s Easy Way To Stop Smoking by Allen Carr, published by Penguin Health Care and Fitness.
Allen Carr himself had a hundred-cigarette-a-day habit, which was driving him to despair. Conventional
methods of quitting didn’t work for him so he devised his own method, which uses a combination of psychotherapy and hypnotherapy. It works in the opposite way to traditional willpower methods, which makes people feel they are being deprived of something.
Now recommended as the leading world expert in helping people to quit smoking, Allen Carr’s no scare tactics methods and techniques are worth a try if you are ready to take the plunge and quit. Anthony Hopkins and businessman Richard Branson also endorse the Allen Carr method.