I have absolutely nothing of substance to add to this thread, really. I just wanted to say how much I appreciate the compound expletive, “Fuck fuck fucky McFucktard.” I will use it at the first opportunity.
And my best wishes to everyone trying to quit.
It has been sort of nutshelled a bit, but you cannot judge from summations. You have to read it, and you have to read it with the attitude that you sincerely want to be free. If you do, you will be.
It saved my life and my sanity. I am FREE!!!
Thanks to everyone who replied to my question about the Carr book. 
I have no particular desire to read it myself, as I am no longer a smoker. But I feel a bit better about recommending it to others, as it obviously has helped people.
My own “mental trick”, if you like, was, each time I was tempted, to remember what it was like having bronchitis (to which I am prone, thanks in large part to smoking). That did it.
I think I first heard about the Carr book a couple years ago from someone here. I just popped in to look up those old threads and saw this current one. I just bought the book. I’m pretty skeptical but I figured it’s worth a shot. I haven’t been visiting the SDMB lately but I will try to make a point of coming back to write a report.
My problem is getting motivated to quit. I know I should, but I don’t really want to. I really like smoking, and I can’t really see the downsides. (Yeah, yeah, I know it’s shortening my life, but something so remote and uncertain doesn’t motivate me.) The smell doesn’t bother me, being a social pariah (in California) is fine because those anti-smoking Nazis piss me off, and if it’s affecting me physically I can’t tell because I don’t know what the alternative would feel like. I know I ought to quit, but I’m too much of a rebel to do something just because I ought to.
I smoked a pack and a half a day (except on weekends when I smoked two packs a day) for eighteen years. I was a heavy duty chain smoker. I could handle not smoking for the work day except on breaks (2 in my 2 15 minute breaks and 4 during my lunch) but once I was free bam I lit one up as soon as the other finished.
I quit cold turkey six years ago. I was miserable for two weeks (my wife seriously considered leaving me) but found that after it got easier and easier. I did not avoid drinking or my smoking friends, in fact I hung out with them during their smoke breaks but did not partake.
The only way to quit is to want to quit and once you have started to not break down. I was sucking on straws for those two weeks and chewing them up something fierce. I came to the conclusion that I had not completely quit and that if I wanted one down the road I would have one. In the six years I have had ten cigarettes, but only when I drank. I haven’t touched one in a year.
My sinus infections are rare, I don’t wheeze when I lie in bed. There is less mucus and I can actually enjoy physical activity whithout feeling like death.
It is hard and painful to quit. You don’t know how the hell you can function without a ciggarette and that should tell you that you dafinitely are fucking hooked on the damned things. They are a monkey. But you can shake it. Just be miserable and anoying and pissed and accept that state for the two to three weeks it takes… after that it gets easier and one day you find you just stop thinking about them.
I watch the people who still smoke huddling outside in the freezing cold just to get their fix and realize I’m so much better off.
Well, I’d be interested.
BTW, how old are you? I felt exactly like you did, when I was in my 20s - early 30s. All these people urging me to quit just made me want to smoke more. To be honest, smoking was very pleasurable, and as long as I associated smoke with pleasure I wasn’t going to quit.
What changed my mind was getting bronchitis. Frequently. Every little cold I got, would turn into bronchitis. It was gross, not being able to breathe properly, and all that mucus - blech.
So in my mind, I started to associate smoking, not with (say) taking a break from it all, sitting on the dock with my feet dangling in the water at the cottage and watching the sun going down while slowly smoking a cig - but rather, with struggling to breathe, each breath a pain, with that feeling like blunt wooden knives turning in my lungs.
I freely admit that if it wasn’t for the bronchitis, I’d still be smoking. In a way, it was good, like a canary in a coal mine - after all, getting bronchitis isn’t in the same league as getting cancer or a heart attack.
My brief review of Carr’s book:
First of all, you should be warned that he is not a good writer. You have to look past that. Many of the ideas are not well developed and are not explained in the most systematic way. Sometimes it seems he’s contradicting himself, but I think what’s really going on is that he’s not teasing out the nuances of his points. He doesn’t seem to have done any actual research, which makes you question his authority a bit if you’re a stickler for those things (as so many Dopers are). However, it doesn’t really matter because he’s only trying to convince you of what’s going on inside your head, and if it doesn’t ring true then a citation won’t help.
Despite the flaws, I think it’s a worthwhile read for someone who wants to quit. I would definitely recommended it to you, Sampiro, based on what you posted.
The book is not so much a method as an approach. The method part is just cold turkey, and Carr is very much against cutting down and nicotine replacement therapies (patch, gum, etc.). I’m not completely convinced that nicotine replacement can’t help, but I suspect that those who struggle the least with quitting follow something like his approach. It puts you in a mindset that makes you want to quit and makes quitting less painful. Mostly he’s just emphasizing the positive – making you focus on what you gain by quitting rather than the sense of deprivation. You are not actually losing anything when you don’t smoke, and that feeling of emptiness you have is really your nicotine monster dying. Although it’s very easy to get addicted to nicotine, the physical withdrawal is really not that bad. There aren’t a lot of nasty physical symptoms like with heroine, for example. All you have to deal with are the cravings, and you can learn to enjoy them because they are a sign that you are defeating your enemy.
One of his central points is that you smoke because you addicted to nicotine, period. The little nicotine monster that makes you need a cigarette has brainwashed you into thinking you enjoy smoking, but you don’t. You know smoking is bad, you know you don’t want to do it, so why do you do it? Because you’re afraid life won’t be as good without cigarettes. But clearly life will actually be better without cigarettes, and the only reason you think that way is because you are a drug addict. Drug addicts have to take their drug in order to achieve a normal state of contentment. You don’t feel good when you smoke – you just feel the way non-smokers feel every minute of every day of their lives. Life as a non-smoker is simply better for all the reasons they always tell you, but most of all because you are not a slave to an addiction. Being in control of your life is the best reward.
Those are the main points I took from the book anyway. Once again, for anyone who really wants to quit, it’s worth the $15.
The big question: Did it make me quit smoking? Nope. But I think when I’m ready to quit it will help me. He convinced me that my life would me significantly better if I quit, and that quitting doesn’t have to be that difficult. My stumbling block is a revelation about myself while reading the book that goes way deeper than smoking. It would be off-topic to try to explain here, but I think I’m afraid of being happy, if that makes any sense. I’m going to focus on figuring out what’s going on inside me that’s holding me back, and I think once I overcome that, the cigarettes will disappear from my life.
I’m 31. Started smoking every day at 18. I swore I’d quit when I was 30 (not realizing everyone says that). I’m not sure my attitude has as much to do with my age as with my character. I’m a rebel and lack self-discipline. The only way I’m going to quit is if I really want to.
It’s now 18 days smoke-free (I’m starting to lose track of how long - a good sign?) for me. I’ve been off the patch for three days.
I’m still somewhat restless and anxious, especially after meals and at other “trigger points”, and I’m still eating too much candy, but I’m getting it under control.
At this point, what keeps me going is knowing that if I smoke now, I’ll be wasting the last two weeks of sacrifice, and that someday, I would have to do this all over again.
How are you doing Sampiro? If you fell off the wagon, don’t worry, you’ll get back on again.
I don’t believe I mentioned this before:
I’m 50
I started smoking when I was 15
I quit for two years when my wife bribed me with a Porsche 928 S4
I started again (stupidstupidstupidstupidstupidstupidstupid) when I started my current job.
I smoked 1 1/2 to 2 packs a day, every day, sick or healthy, rain or shine. I was starting to wake up at 2:00 AM to have a cig.
Cigs were a BIG part of my life.
I am now a non-smoker.
Completely. Therapy helped me get in touch with that fear when I was about your age. And I saw the whole thing completely: I was afraid of being happy because that would mean I would die. Crazy, I know, but very real to me, and hard to push through. I was actually terrified of happiness because I saw death lurking right behind it.
I’m over it, and I’m a very happy person. Now I’m terrified of actually completing my entire to-do list because then I’ll die. I’m working on it.
The part about “smoking isn’t really fun” doesn’t ring true to me. I’m a non-smoker now, have been for seven months; but I remember smoking, and I remember it being fun. 
That being said, I agree that cold turkey and really wanting to quit is the way to go.
By “age”, I meant that, when you are in your early '30s, the health problems that are associated with smoking are more theoretical than real.
By your late '30s, you may be seeing more proof positive in your own body that smoking is bad for you - which, if you are anything like me, will be a hell of a lot more convincing than any number of lectures or books on the subject.
A LOT of very good of advice in this thread.
I smoked from 11-13; 17-21; 29-32 and 35-40, with my last smoke so far happening at 12 noon on 1/15/2005.
The 3rd time quitting was the hardest; as the first two cycles I wasn’t really addicted.
It took me at least 20 times of trying to quit when I was 32. Each time was cold turkey, and there was no real pattern to how long I could go, or what would make me fail.
So I guess my point is like anything else, it takes practice, and you will fail some number of times before you reach your goals. Also, at least in my case, a very important thing is to never tell myself I have quit, only that I have chosen to go without smoking. At first its for a minute, then an hour, … on and on. Eventually you forget the exact date/time you quit (well, then anyway. This is the first quit since forums/blogs were everywhere) and then you don’t think about it at all anymore, except to wonder why you ever did that strange thing. I also STRONGLY agree not to tell anyone you are quitting, for the reasons listed, and also for the fact that if you start again, you don’t have to take the condescending glints.
And then one day, again in my case anyway, you start again. Dog dies, car wreck, whatever. And in my case, I go from that first cig right back to 2 or 3 packs a day within 2 days.
So for me, its all or nothing, and I never tell myself I have actually quit, as from the patterns I’ve established it’s pretty clear I’ll start again.
So, the bad news in my case is that I know I will never really quit, I can only hope to break my previous records. The good news is that after quitting enough times, you DO get good at it. You know what to expect (physical/emotional effects), what situations to avoid (drinking, whatever) as well as how to occupy your time during the first few days. For me, I sleep as much as possible during this time. If I’m asleep, I’m not thinking about it.
I think that the stop smoking aids can be very usefull if you actually want to quit. Otherwise, they are just toys you use to kid yourself until you give in again. Patches seemed to work the best for me when I used them; but cold turkey has always been my best bet.
Also, you wll be completely amazed how nasty cigs smell sometime late into the first week/early in the 2nd. Doesn’t mean you won’t pick em up again, it’s just strange. I mean they SMELL BAD. Also I usually have dreams that I started smoking again, and wake up feeling guilty.
Only advice I can give is that you WILL quit when you WANT to quit, until then there isn’t much point of trying.
You’ll know what I’m saying when you get there.
Wish you the best.
That is why I really wish no one had “summed up” the book. That misses the point completely.
It’s about changing this belief, Malthus. Of course you think it’s fun, that’s why you keep doing it. Wouldn’t you like to STOP BELIEVING THAT?
Read the damn book.
Sampiro, I was smoking like a chimney during the time you quit for 4 years. I remember going out to Sous la Terre with you and Arroway and bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t seem to quit.
Well, now I’ve been off cigarettes for 4 years, and I’ll repeat what you told me then (and what I suspect you already know.)
There is no way to do it except to quit. Skip the patches, the gum, and the drugs. Just. Quit.
It’s going to really suck. Hell, even now, the urge to smoke when I drink is very powerful (I’ve tamed that by smoking a pipe occasionally when I drink. No inhalation. Not healthy, per se, but I only do it every now and then.) You’re going to have nasty cravings, evil moods, physical pangs, and mental hangups*. But in the end, it’s about nothing more than will and mental power. And as you know, the urges become more and more managable over time.
And since you have one of the most powerful minds I’ve ever encountered, I have little doubt that you can manage it. Hell, you’ve done it before. Please do it again, and soon. I seriously don’t want to attend your funeral from smoking related heart disease…and as you mentioned, your family has a certain passing familiarity with the phenomenon.
Hell, I’ll make you a bet, like Andy made me. E-mail me, and we’ll negotiate terms. If you can quit for 1 year, you’ll win. I’ll trust you not to cheat, of course. We can make it in terms of money, or a party I can throw you, or virtually anything else. But it must be worth it to you to quit.
Really, of course, it’s not about the physical prize. It’s about pride, and not caving in to the urge, and having to listen to me bitch and razz you about it, well, forever.
And after having battled it for a year, it should be a cinch to stay off them. That’s how I quit.
*My particular hangup was driving. Whenever I’d get in my car, it was the most natural thing in the world to crank down the window and light up, then drive away. I loved it. God, how I loved it.
Another Allen Carr groupie here.
I first heard of the book here, in this very thread a few weeks ago. I was skeptical, but ordered the book thinking I had nothing to lose. Halfway through it I couldn’t wait to become a non smoker. For the record I’m 36 and have smoked for 24 years, so yes I was very addicted.
I have been smoke free for a month now (well, as of this Monday I will be) and I truly believe this book gave me the skills to quit. No gum, patches or pills (and I have tried them all) could do what it did for me.
I occasionally miss it, more for the social aspect than anything, but it hasn’t been near as hard as expected.
Im sorry to ressurect an old thread, but I really wanted to come back to the thread that saved me and say a big THANK YOU to everyone who recommended the book. Im forever grateful.
You are very, very welcome! I am so glad!
And it only gets better, easier and more joyful.