Allen Carr Quotes

“Living with an alcohol problem is just like living with an abusive partner. It leaves you physically battered, destroys your confidence and self-esteem, yet makes you feel perversely dependent on your abuser.

The only difference is that you can walk out on drink any time you like and no one will try to stop you.”

“All addictive drugs have this effect on their victims. The more they drag you down (and I’m not talking about the physical effects; those we can see clearly), the more they destroy your courage and confidence, and the greater your need for your illusory friend and support.”

“Being a smoker can never get better, only worse.”

“I would like you to pause for a moment, and to record your own feelings about smoking: what you think it does for you, why you smoke and why you want to?”

“Occasionally you meet long-term smokers who claim to enjoy smoking so much that they’ve never had the desire to stop. I used to believe them.

The truth is that they are too frightened even to try. This is something else you will soon learn: that no matter how honest they are in other matters, all smokers lie, even to themselves – they have to!

Unfortunately, the fact that a smoker hasn’t managed to abstain for even a day previously is no guarantee that once they do manage to abstain they’ll be free.”

“Alcohol is a chemical depressant and a powerful poison. It destroys us both physically and mentally. By inebriating us, it destroys every survival instinct that we possess and takes the joy of life with it.

In short: it makes us feel suicidal. And that’s what it amounts to: Slow agonizing suicide.”

“Because when you feel physically and mentally low, molehills become mountains, slight set-backs seem like disasters, and the smallest problem tends to be the final straw to break the camel’s back.”

“Client: Could you teach me to have an occasional drink and not get hooked again?
Me: Of course I could. I could even teach you to take the occasional dose of arsenic.
Client: Why on earth would I want you to do that?
Me: Exactly!”

“Having made what you know to be the correct decision, never ever question that decision.”

“It’s a powerful poison and will shorten your life considerably. It is also highly addictive, will debilitate your immune system and impede your concentration. It will systematically destroy your nervous system, your confidence, your courage and your ability to relax.

By the way, it tastes awful and will cost you about £100,000/$160,000 in your lifetime. What does it do for you? Absolutely nothing!”

“Modern man threw a brick through his own window in order to sell himself a burglar alarm.”

“Part of the ingenuity of any addictive drug is to fool you into believing that life without it won’t be as enjoyable, and/or that you’ll be less able to cope with stress.”

“What you really enjoy in an alcoholic drink is not the drink itself, but the ending of the irritation of wanting that drink. Non-drinkers enjoy that all the time.”

“Why would anyone want to drink a poisonous, highly addictive drug that tastes foul; a drug that will shorten your life, debilitate your immune system and impede your concentration; a drug that will destroy your nervous system, your confidence, your courage and your ability to relax?

Why would you want to take a drug that will cost you about £100,000/$160,000 in your lifetime and do absolutely nothing for you whatsoever?”

“You could argue that you made a rational decision to try your first few drinks. I won’t argue with that.

But supposing a confidence trickster had persuaded you to buy shares in a company that didn’t exist.

You made a decision to invest in the company, a decision that was rational given what you knew at the time.

But in retrospect you would hardly describe yourself as being in control of the situation.

Likewise when you sampled alcohol for the first time you believed there was some benefit to doing so.

But the so-called benefits are in fact illusions, and always have been.

So the reason that you began sampling alcohol, whether it be brainwashing, peer pressure or whatever, is completely irrelevant.

You were conned!”

“You might well get that feeling of a void or wanting a drink, particularly over the next few days. If and when it happens, reverse it immediately.

Just remind yourself: This is the death throes of that goblin on my back. It’s what drinkers suffer throughout their drinking lives. Isn’t it marvellous: I’m free!

That way the slight pangs immediately become moments of pleasure. Get into the habit of doing that over the next few days. Unless you reverse those pangs immediately, you will be doubting your decision.

Remember, any slight aggravation that you might suffer over the next few days is not because you stopped drinking, but because you started. Non-drinkers don’t have this problem.”

“You need to stop thinking 'I can never ever have another drink', and start thinking how wonderful it will be when you can stop poisoning yourself.”

“Because they don’t understand smoking or smokers and have no idea how to make it easy to quit, their attitude is: Try this method. If it doesn’t work try another.”

“Just one cigarette, is a myth you must get out of your mind.”

“Responsibility becomes stressful only when you don’t feel strong enough to handle it.”

“Smokers do not smoke because they enjoy it. They do it because they are miserable without it.”

“The moment you stop smoking, everything that goes wrong in your life is blamed on the fact that you’ve stopped smoking.

Now when you have a mental block, instead of just getting on with it you start to say, ‘If only I could light up now, it would solve my problem.’

You then start to question your decision to quit smoking.”

“The odds of me living until I’m a hundred are slim to none, but I’ll try, and I’ll enjoy every precious moment.”

“The only reason any smoker lights a cigarette is to try to end the empty, insecure feeling that the previous cigarette created.”

“There are people who can make love standing on a hammock, but it is not the easiest way.”

“To me this is the most tragic part of this whole business. How hard we worked to become hooked, and this is why it is difficult to stop teenagers.

Because they are still learning to smoke, because they still find cigarettes distasteful, they believe they can stop whenever they want to. Why do they not learn from us?”

“We confuse responsibility with stress. Responsibility becomes stressful only if you are not strong enough to handle it.”

“We think of stopping smoking as something that is very difficult to do. What do we need when we have something difficult to do? We need our little friend.

So stopping smoking appears to be a double blow. Not only do we have a difficult task to perform, which is hard enough, but the crutch on which we normally rely on such occasions is no longer available.”

“Wouldn’t that be an incredibly stupid thing to do? To say ‘I never want to smoke again’, then spend the rest of your life saying ‘I’d love a cigarette.’

That’s what smokers who use the Willpower Method do. No wonder they feel so miserable.

They spend the rest of their lives desperately moping for something that they desperately hope they will never have.”

“You cannot force smokers to stop, and although all smokers secretly want to, until they are ready to do so a pact just creates additional pressure, which increases their desire to smoke.

This turns them into secret smokers, which further increases the feeling of dependency.”