A critique of Easyway to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr
I hesitated to start writing this critique because I don’t want my views to be taken the wrong way. I don’t wish to dissuade people from reading the book – anything that stops people smoking has to be a good thing doesn’t it? I don’t doubt the good intentions of the author or the sincerity of the testimonials.
I started reading the book with the best of intentions. It had been recommended to me by a couple of people, independently, but both with experience of working for a drugs charity so I reckoned they knew what they were talking about. After several failed attempts to stop smoking, which have included going ‘cold turkey’, using nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and Zyban, I thought it was worth a punt. I found the book easily enough on Amazon and parted with my fiver gladly. It then sat unread for a few months but eventually, assaulted by a bad cold at the beginning of November and dreading another winter full of viruses and infections, I thought it was about time I gave it a whirl.
I really, really, really, want to give up, and took my reading of the book seriously. If I wasn’t sure that I had grasped what the book was getting at in a particular section, I would re-read it before moving on. There were a lot of things that rang true for me and I thought this could be the one thing that gets me to kick the nicotine habit.
Even when I was two thirds of the way through and I was starting to get annoyed with some of the statements and assumptions that I didn’t agree with, I persevered thinking that the penny would drop at some stage soon and I would be a non smoker!
Well, blow me but the epiphany never came! After my cold, I got a horrendous throat infection and was even more determined to stop. I had cut down drastically – just two cigs on one particular day, and sped up my reading to get to the end of the book so that I would be able to give up completely (one of the instructions is not to give up before finishing the book). And holy smoke! I got to the end and try as I might to focus on the stuff that made sense and convince myself I didn’t need cigarettes, I am still a smoker.
So what exactly is my problem with Easyway? As I said before, I don’t passionately disagree with it on a fundamental level, but it is just too simplistic and I also find it incredibly judgemental (although it purports not to be; it’s like listening to a lecture from the most evangelical ex-smoker in the history of the universe). There are also some basic statements and assumptions made as though they are fact which I just know are not true.
Before I go on about them, in the interests of balance, I will first put forward the things I agree with:
Nicotine is an addictive drug – no shit Sherlock; I don’t need a book to tell me this.
Fear – it is true that thoughts of giving up fill us with fear and dread; fear of failure, fear of withdrawal symptoms, fear we won’t ever enjoy anything again, fear of our weaknesses etc.
Stress – there’s a lot of sense in the argument that nicotine addiction causes stress. It’s awful being stuck in a three hour meeting without a ‘comfort break’ (mind you, these meetings would be awful anyway. Who wants to be stuck for half a day talking about pointless shit in a square box with a bunch of suits in any circumstances?)
There’s no such thing as one cigarette – with a few exceptions of people who claim to have tried it, didn’t like it and never did it again, this is largely true.
And now for the things I don’t agree with:
Nicotine does not have physical withdrawal symptoms – yes it does! I can attest to it. Everyone is different but for me in the past, withdrawal symptoms have included headaches, sore throats and back pain. An osteopath once explained the latter to me as nicotine changes the signals to your central nervous system so withdrawal of the drug can cause pain.
Brainwashing – most smokers know they smoke because they are addicted. They know all the arguments for and against. They may blot out the evils of tobacco but they know they exist. In a way Easyway is just trying to replace the so-called brainwashing with another kind (there is overuse of the phrase ‘get it into you head’). Nothing wrong with that per se, but what to hang it on? Where was my Eureka moment where everything fell into place and I knew I would never smoke again?
Boredom – If we smoke because we are bored, are we always bored? What rot! The only time I smoke out of lack of something to do is if I am in the house on my own during the day with not much to do. At all other times I am adequately occupied thank you very much.
You don’t need will power – how on earth can you say the EasyWay doesn’t require will power? Every time you feel the urge to have a fag and don’t have one, you are using will power, what else do you call it? Just because you say to yourself ‘Yippee! I don’t need cigarettes anymore!’ doesn’t mean the urge to smoke has gone – you still have to fight it.
NRT is no use – whilst taking the point about replacing one sort of nicotine for another and making pharmaceutical companies rich, if this method works in the sense that it stops you smoking, surely this is better than continuing to smoke. Granted, it hasn’t worked for me but it has helped me cut down a lot in the past and I am sure it does help some people to stop smoking altogether. I can’t find any definitive research but some claim it has a 25% success rate and others say it increases the chances of giving up smoking by as much as70%. Not fantastic stats. but worth a try surely.
Casual smoking is just as bad as regular smoking – while it’s obviously better not to smoke at all, smoking occasionally is surely better than smoking regularly. There is some spurious argument in the book that if casual smokers enjoy smoking why don’t they do it all the time and if they don’t like it, why do they do it at all? That’s like saying if you like a drink why don’t you do it all the time? It’s called controlled drug use dude! In other contexts, this would be lauded, not criticised.
Heroin addicts are criminals – while it is technically true that using heroin is illegal, this is not a helpful analogy. Due to the availability of heroin in prison, lots of criminals are heroin addicts but that’s not quite the same thing. There is also a good argument to de-criminalise heroin along with all other drugs as this would reduce a lot of the social problems associated with it.
I could go on, but I will just finish by saying that I also found the book quite monotonous, repetitive, unfunny (as in totally lacking in humour) and long-winded in getting round to the final message which is basically to just give up or you are crap and stupid.
Still work in progress for me I’m afraid.
