Smoking in movies

Watch this excellent and fascinating video from Stanton Glantz's team at Smoke Free Movies.

It's called 120,000 Lives a Year and it's the story of how Big Tobacco uses Hollywood to recruit young smokers.

Winter is on the way...

As the leaves begin to turn here in the NorthEast, the smoker's heart begins to sink as they brace themselves for six months of freezing to death in order to do a drug that doesn't even get them high.

Last winter I flew into Saskatoon to run some sessions and saw something interesting at the airport. As you are probably aware, it gets pretty cold in Saskatoon. This February evening it was -28 degrees Centigrade. Like most people, my big jacket was in my main baggage, so I was waiting for my suitcase at the carousel. Another passenger - clearly a smoker - was doing the same, and getting increasingly agitated as the wait for our luggage continued. In the end he said: "Screw it, I'm outta here." and walked outside in just a T-shirt, to smoke a cigarette.

The terminal at Saskatoon Airport is totally glass-fronted, so the rest of us still at the baggage carousel could see him outside, in -28, trying to light his cigarette. He was shivering so much that he couldn't even light it, and this frustrated him even more. Within a minute or so, he couldn't even feel his hands, but he refused to give up. Eventually, a bundled-up airport employee went outside to ask if he was OK. "I'm fine" he said "I'm just getting a bit of fresh air."

Avoid the indignity of standing outside freezing your nuts off, pretending that you need fresh air when what you really need is to smoke. Quit smoking today with Allen carr's unique Easyway method by visiting us at www.TheEasywayToStopSmoking.com

Smoking and stress relief

Today I wanted to take a look at an article about smokers from the Chicago Tribune. I'm happy that the media covers this important topic, but the fact that they just trot out the same illusions about smoking and quitting is a bit depressing...

In particular, the article focuses on smoking as a stress reliever.

Smoker Keith Shannon says that a break-in scuppered his most recent attempt to quit. "After getting hit over the head with a gun, I needed a cigarette." This is presumably based on the well known fact that smoking a cigarette is an excellent cure for being hit over the head with a gun.

"It helps calm my nerves" Mr. Shannon says of the drug that elevates heart rate and blood pressure and causes the release of cortisol (the stress hormone) and adrenaline (the 'fight or flight' chemical). Does that sound like 'calming the nerves' to you? Some stress relief! More like a recipe for a heart attack.

Three pack-a-day smoker Deborah Israel says "Cigarettes are just adult pacifiers, you stick 'em in your mouth when you get stressed." Three packs a day is a lot of stress relief isn't it? If the cigarette worked to relieve stress, then why is the chain-smoking Ms. Israel stressed at all? Ironically, she says that quitting smoking would be too expensive as her company plan does not cover quit smoking programs. This is somewhat ironic coming from someone who spends over $7,500 a year on buying smokes.

Smoking to relieve stress is like drinking alcohol to get sober. The problem is that the illusion of smoking and stress relief is a subtle one. When a smoker puts out a cigarette, they go into physical withdrawal from nicotine. This is a barely noticeable feeling, a bit like hunger or very mild anxiety. The longer the smoker goes without smoking, the more pronounced the feeling becomes. When the smoker lights up, this slightly anxious edgy feeling disappears - leading the smoker to think that smoking relieves stress, when in fact withdrawal from the previous cigarette created that additional stress in the first place.

Until smokers can see through that illusion, they will have a desire or perceived need to smoke whenever they are in a stressful situation. They will need to use willpower to overcome that desire. This creates a conflict: part of them wants to smoke, but part wants to quit and it is this mental conflict (not physical withdrawal) that makes quitting challenging for those using willpower.

Allen Carr's Easyway method removes the need for willpower by enabling smokers to change their belief that smoking releives stress. Eliminating this belief eliminates the desire to smoke in stressful situations and with no desire to smoke, it really doesn't take willpower not to.

To find out more about this simple, drug-free approach to quitting, visit us at www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com

Allen Carr seminars now available in Denver, Houston and Dallas

Allen Carr North America is delighted to announce the launch of our seminar program in Denver, Houston and Dallas.

The seminars are conducted by Denver-native Collene Curran, who quit smoking using Allen Carr's Easyway method in 2005.

To find out dates and locations please visit us at www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com.

Scam alert - QuitSmokingRankings.com

The people who run the QuitSmokingRankings (QSR) website must think smokers are REALLY stupid. The site claims to provide smokers with 'independent research' into 17 quit smoking products, but a cursory glance at their research 'methodology' suggests that the whole thing is designed to lure desperate smokers into buying expensive but third-rate infomercial products.

My skeptical antenna was twitching from the second I got to their site.

Firstly, they claim to provide "in-depth reviews and rankings of leading quit smoking products" but four of the five products they recommend are herbal or homeopathic products, which real scientific research has conclusively shown to be ineffective. For example, all of their recommended herbal products are based on the substance lobeline, an alkaloid extract of the flowering herb lobelia. Here is what the esteemed Cochrane Collaboration had to say about lobeline for smoking cessation: "There is no evidence available from long-term trials that lobeline can aid smoking cessation." It adds, "Even short-term studies do not indicate a consistent effect on smoking behaviour."

This is a scientist's way of saying "It doesn't work". But despite this damning indictment from real scientists, QSR claims: "Herbs have shown overwhelming evidence that they work." Sadly, they do not quote any studies, research, testimonials or statistics to support this claim, and this is the second problem.

QSR makes enormous claims for the products they promote - bigger claims, in fact, than many of the manufacturers themselves - but unless they are supported by evidence (in the case of smoking cessation, evidence is usually via controlled studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals) they are worse than useless. Anyone can claim a 100% success rate - show me the data.

QSR claims to have used stringent criteria for their product selection: "effectiveness, longevity, safety, side effects, quickness of results and success rates." Allegedly based on 'consumer feedback' and their own research they give brands marks out of ten based on each criteria. Looking at the effectiveness 'data', QSR claims that the success rates for their top 5 products are 100%, 97.5%, 95%, 92.5% and 90% respectively. To anyone who works in the smoking cessation field, these figures are laughable.

For example, their fifth ranked product - for which they claim a 90% success rate - is a nicotine patch. According to Cochrane, based on genuinely independent, peer-reviewed data from over 100 clinical trials, the success rate for the nicotine patch is approximately 10%. How does QSR account for this huge difference? I know which figure I believe.

These people should be ashamed of themselves, but my guess is that they'll be too busy dealing with customer complaints, as the makers of some of the products they promote are. For example, the FTC slapped Smokeaway (formerly a QSR recommended product) with a $1.3m fine for deceptive marketing practices. In May 2008 the makers of another QSR recommended product - Zero Nicotine - were sued by the Federal Trade Commission for misrepresentation, failure to disclose material facts, the unauthorised billing of customer's credit cards and false product claims. Amazingly QSR ranks this company's reputation and customer service as 'very good'.

I welcome dialogue with QuitSmokingRankings.com, or the makers any of the scam products they promote, in fact, I beg them to get in touch to have an open debate about success rates and research.

If you are looking to quit smoking, start at http://www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com/ and click on the success rates tab to see a comprehensive review of the success rates of all major -and some not so major - quit methods.

Freedom = drug addiction? I don't think so...

Today, a newly-formed 'smoker's rights' group - Cigar Rights of America - announced its four day "Freedom Tour" starting next week in NYC.

What is especially interesting is that this smoker's right group has not been set up by smokers and nor does not have any regular, man-in-the-street smokers as members. Does it not seem odd that a smoker's rights group doesn't actually feature any smokers?

The group, which has been established and funded by - yep, you guessed it - cigar manufacturers, is attempting to teach smokers how to protest against the implementation of smoke-free legislation across the US under the guise of protecting freedom.

Nicotine is the most addictive substance known to man. Trying to reposition drug addiction as 'freedom' is shameful and, I think, extremely distasteful and disrespectful to the 45m Americans addicted to this awful drug. Especially to the estimated 450,000 Americans that will die of smoking this year and the further 8m Americans living with a smoking-related condition, or their families

Smoking is not a game, or a pleasure or a 'freedom', and it sickens me that people within the tobacco industry continue to see fit to ignore the shocking price American society pays to this terrible addiction, just to make a buck.

To break free from the slavery of smoking visit www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com

The true cost of smoke breaks

Smokers are under pressure at work. Today smoke breaks, once an accepted part of the work day are frowned upon and in some cases, even banned altogether - as Karen Krindle of Rochester, NY found to her cost.

Ms. Krindle, a paralegal, was terminated by her employer because she failed to comply with a written policy banning smoke breaks. She applied for unemployment benefits and was awarded $3,000. However the state Labour Department challenged this, claiming that Ms. Krindle had misrepresented the reasons for her dismissal. They argued that she was dismissed for misconduct - in which case she has no right to any benefits. The Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court agrees, and Ms. Krindle may be forced to pay back the $3,000 she received in benefits.

Her appeal is based on the argument that banning smoke breaks is unfair to smokers, who use them to "Re-energize and become less crabby".

But as Allen Carr pointed out, why don't non-smokers need to take breaks to make them less "crabby"? And if smoking "re-energizes" then why don't smokers have more energy than non-smokers?

Do you think that Ms. Krindle will get a sympathetic hearing in her appeal? I don't. Smokers are detested by today's society, but I have always felt this to unfair. Allen Carr once said "Smoking is the problem, not smokers", and how true that is. Most smokers got addicted to nicotine as children or young adults. How can we blame them for a mistake they made as a child?

Smokers: if you are looking for a way to quit smoking where you are not judged to be weak, selfish and stupid, but are instead treated with intelligence, dignity and respect then we'll see you at www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com

You've got to be kidding me...

In the week when it is announced that after years of escaping oversight by any federal body, the tobacco industry is finally going to be regulated by the FDA, the LA Times has seen fit to publish an article about athletes who smoke. This is a link to the article: http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-he-smoking4-2008aug04,0,4646024.story

As you can imagine, it's a fairly short article.

It features five athletes: Rob McCool who after less than ten years of intermittent smoking notices diminished lung capacity, despite a gruelling training regime; Jeff Myers, who sees himself as a casual smoker, despite having smoked half-a-pack a day every single day for the past 13 years and who promised himself he would stop on his thirtieth birthday - five years ago; Simi Singer, who has smoked on and off for twenty-five years and is clearly desperate to quit. She seems embarrased by her smoking working, as she does, at Mt. Sinai; Jon Delaney, a self-described recovering addict for who intends to quit as soon as possible and Nicole Fitzpatrick, who wants to be a non-smoker but feels that she would be missing out on something so cannot quit and smokes 5 to 10 cigarettes a week.

The final sentence of the article reads "But for now, smoking and exercise continue to run in sync" but this doesn't make sense. 94% of the runners polled in the survey the author quotes do not smoke and one-third of those that do are so ashamed of it that they only smoke in secret. A detailed analysis of the five athletes mentioned indicates that four actively want to quit and the other wants to cut down dramatically.

The point of all this is simple. There are a very few athletes who smoke, but only because they don't know how to quit. Every single one of them would rather be a non-smoker.

Reading through the stories of these athletes is heartbreaking. They want to quit, but believe that smoking gives them some comfort or pleasure, or that it helps them manage their weight. So long as they believe these things they will have desire to smoke, and if they try to quit, they'll need to use willpower to overcome that desire to smoke. This is what makes quitting difficult using the willpower path.

Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking makes it easy to quit smoking by challenging the beliefs upon which the desire to smoke is based. By exposing these beliefs as illusory it is possible to completely change the way the smoker sees smoking and remove the desire to smoke. With no desire to smoke, it's easy not to.

If any of the athletes featured in this article want to quit smoking, they would be welcome to attend our next LA seminar free of charge.

The Best Time to Quit Smoking

The one word answer: tomorrow!


But isn't that what you said yesterday? And the day before?

The reason that 'tomorrow' is the smoker's favorite answer is because it means we don't have to do it today. We know we should quit smoking in the long-term, but that's the long-term and we'll think about that later. For now, we want to smoke, and the immediate fear of feeling deprived trumps the longer-term fear of being killed by smoking.

We 'want' to smoke because, even though we know it kills one out of every two smokers, we think it helps us relax or cope with stress or that it keeps us thin. On top of these beliefs that smoking is somehow pleasurable or beneficial, we believe that quitting smoking is extremely difficult and unpleasant. Nicotine withdrawal is said to be brutal; "harder to quit than heroin" we're told. We believe that even if we make it, we will never be truly happy as non-smokers and that we will go through the rest of lives feeling deprived.


With beliefs like this is it surprising that the best day to quit is always 'tomorrow'?


The key to finding it easy to stop smoking is to change the way you see smoking and quitting. Allen Carr's method teaches smokers to shift their prespective. As soon as I began to see the cigarette not as the solution, but as the problem; when I realized that there was nothing to 'give up'; when I understood that as a smoker I experienced nicotine withdrawal for hours at a time when I was asleep and that it was so mild that it didn't even wake me up; when I realized that it was smokers, not non-smokers, who were deprived - of their health, their money, their energy, their self-respect and their freedom - then I realized it could be easy to quit and do you know what?


It was.


For more information on how to build a winning mindset when it comes to quitting smoking, visit us at http://www.theeasywaytostopsmoking.com/

Happy Valentine's Day

Another great reason to quit: the chances of getting lucky on Valentine's Day are better if you don't smell like an ashtray!

Hope you all have a great and fun day...

Why do smokers believe that quitting is hard?

Crossing a road is pretty easy, but only if you do it right. If you try to cross a busy highway, in fog, at night, wearing dark clothes, blindfolded, drunk and walking on your hands, you can make something that is basically pretty easy into something extremely difficult. And so it is with quitting smoking.

Smokers believe that quitting is hard for a couple of reasons: firstly, everyone tells them it is. Smokers are bombarded with messages from other smokers, drug companies and quit smoking ‘experts’ (many of whom have never smoked a cigarette in their lives) that smoking is ‘harder to quit than heroin’. I’ve never been a heroin addict, but I’m guessing that quitting the stuff is no picnic. Who could think of a worse mindset with which to approach a problem?

Secondly, throughout their smoking lives smokers have been told that smoking helps them relax, cope with stress, concentrate, keep them thin and so on. Any smoker who believes these things will retain a desire to smoke in those situations, and will need to use willpower to try to overcome that desire. This creates a conflict; part of them wants to quit, but part still wants to smoke and it is this conflict – not physical withdrawal from nicotine – that creates the symptoms of fear, panic, anxiety and irritability that so many smokers associate with quitting.

Thirdly, smokers are seriously misinformed about nicotine – in particular about how addictive it is and bad withdrawal is.

But despite these horror stories, every so often you come across one of those people that say: “Nah. Quitting smoking was easy.” I am one of those people and I want to share my experience with you.

I started smoking as an eleven year-old and for the next twenty-nine years never went a day without smoking. By the time I quit I was smoking 40-60 cigarettes a day. I tried to quit smoking many times over many years. I tried the patch, the gum, hypnosis, acupuncture, laser therapy, cold turkey, herbal treatments, homeopathic remedies – you name it, I tried it. I never made it to a single day smoke-free using these methods for the reasons I have already explained above: My expectation was that quitting would be difficult and unpleasant, that I would feel deprived of my pleasure or crutch, and that physical withdrawal was brutal.

As soon as I was able to change these beliefs, it was ridiculously easy to quit.

First, I decided to stop listening to people who found it difficult to quit and start listening to people who had found it easy. There are a surprisingly large number of such people.

Second, I learned how to challenge the beliefs that created the desire to smoke. If smoking relieved stress then why was I so stressed? If the cigarette was an appetite suppressant then why was I 60 lbs overweight as a smoker? If the cigarette aided concentration why weren’t smokers smarter than non-smokers? If the cigarette aids relaxation why aren’t chain smokers the most relaxed people on the planet? By challenging these beliefs I was able to realize that actually there was nothing to give up, apart from illusions I had acquired as a smoker – most of them as a very young smoker.

Third, I learned the facts about nicotine. It’s a powerful drug, but only in the sense that it hooks you very quickly. Believe it or not, there is an upside to the speed with which nicotine works – it gets out of your body very quickly too. Most smokers believe that they only go into physical withdrawal from nicotine when they try to stop smoking, but this is not true. The process of withdrawal begins as soon as a smoker puts out a cigarette. The reality is that just 20 minutes after putting out a cigarette the body is 50% nicotine free. After six hours of not smoking, the body is 97% nicotine free. Smokers sleep through physical withdrawal from nicotine every single night when they go to sleep, yet it is so mild that it doesn’t even wake them up. If withdrawal didn’t bother you as a smoker, why would it bother you as a non-smoker?

Equipped with this new mindset (courtesy of Allen Carr’s Easyway seminar): that quitting could be easy, that there was nothing to give up but illusions and that physical withdrawal was straightforward (having slept through it every night as a smoker), the confidence levels with which I approached my final quit were much higher than in the past. There was none of the fear and doubt that had plagued my earlier attempts to quit.

After smoking heavily for 29 years, I just walked away from the whole thing. That was nine years ago. I have never once missed smoking or had the slightest desire to light up. In fact, the sense of empowerment, freedom and accomplishment was amazing.

Knowledge is power and when you have the power instead of the cigarette, quitting is easy.