Brilliant!

I particularly liked Chapter 21, "Benefits of smoking" and followed by a blank page. I actually thought a page was missing...Cheeky writer! :)

Very practical advice about how to quit smoking.

Focuses on removing the reasons you smoke (which is the same for all smokers- to alleviate that slightly panicky feeling you experience created by the nicotine from your previous cigarette leaving your body.)

Carr does not use scare tactics. The REASONS that people smoke are not the same as the reasons they ought not to smoke.

In fact, I say reasons, but ultimately, all smokers smoke for the same one reason: to relieve the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal, which really are not that intense at all.


Quitting has nothing to do with willpower; It's all about understanding nicotine addiction, nicotine withdrawal, and the thousands of lies about smoking perpetrated by our society and tobacco companies.

The brainwashing aspect of why people start smoking and why they can't quit is an amazing aspect of the book.


Highly recommend this book for smokers who want to quit.

You are allowed to smoke right through to the end.

If you've ever tried to use willpower to quick, you most likely failed. Read this book.

I am now ONE year without cigarettes and I owe it all to this book. My mom bought it for me like so many other anti-smoking articles and books before but I held onto this one for awhile. I smoked for over ten years. The idea of quitting was slowly creeping in but I wouldn't be budged or pressured, it had to be on my time.

n  n

Allen Carr nailed everything on the head for me. For me, as a smoker you don't want to hear about how or why you should quit from a non-smoker, but I didn't mind hearing about it from one of the worst smokers on the planet. I slowly let this book take hold. I liked that he encouraged not stopping until the end, no pressure. I related to so much of it, it was like an awakening. He was right about everything...and if you need any further encouragement - he died of lung cancer!! He was a brilliant soul who fought smoking until his very end.

n  n

I also downloaded the app above to track how much money I saved and my health since I quit - its called "Quit it"

If you truly want to end it, read this book! I've now bought three copies for friends and I would buy a hundred more. I don't try to shove it down their throats but I get excited about it. It works! Anyone can do it! Don't let these cigarette companies make you think otherwise.

2023 update:
This was my first review on Goodreads, and the only one for quite some time. I wrote it because I truly wanted to share my experience, particularly because prior to reading the book, it was hard to believe it could ever help me quit smoking.

I am now 8 years smoke free, I never think about smoking and, so far, I don't have the drive/ need to pick up a cigarette. Quitting smoking remains the hardest thing I ever had to do, and I am not sure I would have the strength to do it again.

Regardless, if you want to quit, do pick up this book. Thank you Allen Carr!

2019 review:
It is the worst book I ever read but it worked for me. I’ve used to smoke a pack per day for 10 years and am now 4 years smoke free.

The book isn't perfect. Carr annoyed me at the beginning of the book by tooting his own horn; he obviously felt the need to prove he has credentials--and that makes sense, but there's too much.

But what makes the book amazing is that it systematically breaks down the myths about smoking (even the ones that I didn't think I subscribed to) and subtly sort of brainwashes you into hating smoking. You smoke as you read, which keeps the pressure off. And Carr's thinking is rational--and friendly. He doesn't condescend or use (many) scare tactics. Some of what he says is a little silly ("Now you can think, 'Yippee, I'm a non-smoker!'"), but that's okay. Sometimes you can see the wheels turning, but that doesn't detract from the book's effectiveness either.

His central idea is that quitting smoking isn't difficult as long as you don't see it as a sacrifice--perception is important. You aren't giving anything up; instead, you're freeing yourself from drug addiction.

The book really helped me feel ready to smoke that final cigarette and quit. I don't know for absolutely certain that I will never smoke again (although I hope I don't), but I feel better having his book to re-read whenever I need to.

I cannot give this book enough stars. I started smoking when I was 19 and was a pack a day smoker when I made the decision to quit and began to read this book. It really is the BEST way to quit smoking - I finished reading this book, threw out my cigarettes and never smoked again. I have suffered no withdrawal or pangs of desire ... I tried quitting several times before reading this book, either using the patch, the gum or cold turkey, and every time I tried, I was so miserable that I always started smoking again. Now, not only am I a non-smoker, I am overjoyed to be a non-smoker and I have no desire to ever smoke again, even when surrounded by other smokers! I recommend this book to any smoker who says they want to quit ... sadly, many of my smoking friends are too scared to quit. Once they decide that they do really want to quit, this book will do it for them. If you are a smoker and you want to quit, I'll bet you've tried all the gimmicks, and they don't work, right? They didn't work for me! This book ISN'T a gimmick - it works!!! I have been smoke-free for almost 2 years at this writing (I finished reading the Easy Way to Quit Smoking on 05/11/2007 and haven't had a puff since), and I feel great. I can't say enough about this book.

Read this in preparation for giving it to my dad in an attempt at getting him to quit smoking after it was discovered he has heart problems.

The author goes overboard to insist that he isn't going to list the health issues or guilt the reader or any of the common things people do to smokers in order to get them to quit and instead focus on the psychology of it. He claims that when you understand the psychology you can just quit on the spot without any downsides.

That's all well and good, but I noticed he contradicted himself periodically. First by stating that you can quit cold turkey and never have withdrawal symptoms to openly talking about how to deal with withdrawal symptoms.

The books is about 110 pages, but if you cut out all of the times the author repeated himself or went on and on about how the next chapters will help you and then leaving the reader on a cliffhanger at the end of the chapter, you could really shorten the whole thing down. He's definitely trying to sell consultations for his EASYWAY method and get people to buy other people the book.

His advice basically boils down to making the decision that you're no longer a smoker, teaching yourself to have a positive outlook about quitting and realizing you aren't losing anything other than a bad habit, and then weathering the 3 weeks of withdrawal while staying positive. That's seriously it. I just distilled the book's message into a sentence.

That said, he has many good analogies that could help give smokers some realizations about their behavior, and his ideas about staying positive and not focusing on what you're losing but what you're gaining are really nice.

I just wish the whole thing didn't read like one of those "How to Date and Seduce Beautiful Women" mailing lists.

I had been a smoker for over fifty years. I smoked two packs a day. I tried to quit many times, paying for hypnosis sessions, using Nicorette gum, using nicotine patches of various dosages, and even being active in exercise and recovery programs. Nothing worked. I would quit for a few days, once even for a month or two but then would start up again smoking more than ever.

Four years ago my wife gave me this book. She said, "Don't start reading it until you are ready to quit. It really works!" Needless to say, I was skeptical, but she had not picked up a cigarette for a couple of weeks, so I decided to give it a try. I read the book over the next two days (while smoking). When I finished the last chapter, I also threw away my cigarettes. I have not found it necessary to pick up a cigarette again.

I am not sure exactly how it works. Part of it is psychological: convincing the reader that most of the fear of withdrawal is caused by propaganda, fed by those who would get rich off of the various "quit smoking" schemes. Also, a reminder that gum and patches and other system use nicotine so they just prolong withdrawal. Part of it, I'm sure is a but of auto-hypnosis because many of the ideas and suggestions are repeated in different ways throughout the text. But the fact it that it works and it worked for me after years and years of trying every other method. It also had no cost beyond the price of the book. Perhaps that's why none of the smoking clinics and not even the American Cancer Society has spoken of it. It undermines the corporate system of making the most money possible from addictions. Shame on them. This book should be promoted by every health professional.

Standard work of smoking cessation, including ruthless billing with established withdrawal concept

Please note that I put the original German text at the end of this review. Just if you might be interested.

The first few dozen pages, brimming with self-promotion and self-adulation, must not appear to the willing-to-give, prospective ex-smoker as an arrogant posture, nor serve as a potential justification for premature termination of the reading. As confident as Carr looks, his concept is so well thought out and meaningful that the theatrical staging certainly has its justification.
Moreover, good marketing even more useful, against a perfidious addiction of liberating and the health system helping concepts harms the idea certainly not. Beginning with the symptoms of nicotine addiction and the main lever to be applied in the head, already failed smokers are unfortunately too familiar topics, such as the diabolical power of habit, subconscious and conditioning, self-enslavement on the panicky escape from cold withdrawal, stressful situations and personal Crises and the danger of the method willpower represented.
Under the latter Carr smoker, who with self-restraint and iron discipline survive the critical, first three weeks, the withdrawal from the smoking career, however, not voluntarily motivated, but have heralded health-related or without real faith in a happy, smoke-free life.
The inherent danger associated with a smoke-free exit that does not amount to a hundred percent conviction is to mourn the alleged lucky donors for years, well beyond the actual withdrawal, instead of being able to enjoy the healthier way of life and the money saved. Precisely for this reason, there is an increased focus on the motivation to make the tobacco addict come to the senses, such as pointless, stupid, dangerous, restrictive, detrimental, and in no way enjoyable, aromatic, relaxing, individual, or promoting the creativity of igniting oblong paper pods in actually designed for food intake body openings.
As long as this knowledge and willingness to give up cigarettes happily and voluntarily for a lifetime is not a fixed point of one's thought pattern, the probability of relapse and the suffering is much more pronounced. A smoker who is only physically, but not mentally weaned, will continue to experience the smell of tobacco, smoking people, and all thoughts and images associated with the inhalation process as positive, the need for cigarettes will be more pronounced in both exceptional situations and daily life, and thus pointless Quality of life is wasted and torment generated.
Precisely for this reason, Carr also does not believe in nicotine replacement supplements, as these only artificially prolong the withdrawal and thus the most painful phase. While a full-smoker, 1 to 2 packs of cigarettes daily destroying consumer must feel at least no unpleasant, nervous emptiness, so is a painstaking months for only 5 to 10 cigarettes a day reduced smoker quasi in permanent withdrawal state, which only stress and malaise leads with it and the fear of the total smoke stop still strengthened.
Also, that most of the traditional weaning concepts are associated with the prescription of substitute preparations, which gives the manufacturers outstanding profits, but the consumer in return, nothing good, is denounced. In the case of substitution programs for more stringent drugs, in which withdrawal can sometimes be fatal, the use of methadone and co-formulas is useful and appropriate. In the fact of nicotine, however, it is pointless and counterproductive due to the purely physically weak and in no way dangerous weaning phase.
In addition to the unobjectionable points of criticism, which are not even creeping but offensive advertising, the author's references to his other, diverse products can be asserted that one can calmly expose himself to social events in a nicotine-tempered air. This is blatantly contradictory to the often cited, correct argument that a single cigarette, if not even a few puffs, can lead to withdrawal and relapse. In this respect (and my own experience and the stories of others) both a smoker suffering from withdrawal symptoms, as well as long-term weaning smokers should not work or stay in not often smoke-free restaurants too often and for a long time, or be in a living relationship with active tobacco killers.
Since passive smoking can be used to inhale the equivalent of up to several cigarettes, one would have a similar amount of work as a lighter, active smoker and would thus suffer from a permanent nicotine emergency. So does the notion that a partner continues to indulge his vice, while the weaned phlegmatically watching, in the realm of extreme, exceptional situations.
In contrast to alcoholism, pills and other addictions, both the withdrawal and the direct sequelae of nicotine addiction are less pronounced and even partially reversible.
However, beer, wine, Valium, and painkillers cannot be inadvertently passively consumed and thus far more self-determined than with nicotine. However, the possibility of achieving permanent abstinence from one's own will without sacrificing social life remains a utopia until the establishment of a general, strict smoking ban. Unless you stop breathing for the duration of visits to nightclubs, bars, folk festivals and private parties.
I quit smoking a few years ago and after a ten-year smoking career (between 15 and 30 cigarettes a day), along with several unsuccessful attempts at withdrawal, can only give an unqualified recommendation to read this great work. It takes considerable courage and willingness to suffer, but the lofty goal of a longer life should make the initial pain bearable and burn as a motivating beacon in the future, instead of orange-red smoldering coffin nails. Finally, my favorites among the mantras on the subject. I am no longer sure if they are themselves conceived or stolen: at each tobacco inhalation mentally "cancer," while exhaling "death." Or, alternatively, "lung cancer", "smoker's leg", "barren binge" "stroke attack", "leg amputation", "heart infarct", "impotence", etc. Creativity knows no bounds!

Standardwerk der Raucherentwöhnung samt schonungsloser Abrechnung mit etabliertem Entzugskonzept

Die ersten paar Dutzend, vor Eigenwerbung und Selbstbeweihräucherung strotzenden Seiten, dürfen dem entsagungswilligen, angehenden Exraucher weder als arrogantes Gehabe erscheinen noch als potentielle Rechtfertigung für vorzeitige Beendigung der Lektüre dienen. So selbstsicher wie Carr auftritt, so durchdacht und sinnvoll ist sein Konzept auch wahrhaftig, womit die pompöse Inszenierung durchaus ihre Berechtigung hat. Und gute Vermarktung noch dazu sinnvoller, vor einer perfiden Sucht befreiender und das Gesundheitssystem entlastender Konzepte schadet der Idee gewiss nicht.
Beginnend mit der Symptomatik der Nikotinsucht und dem wichtigsten, im Kopf anzusetzenden Hebel werden, bereits gescheiterten Rauchern leider allzu bekannte Themenfelder, wie die diabolische Macht der Gewohnheit, des Unterbewussten und der Konditionierung, Selbstversklavung auf der panischen Flucht vor dem kalten Entzug, Stresssituationen und persönliche Krisen und die Gefahr der Methode Willenskraft dargestellt.
Unter letzterem versteht Carr Raucher, die mit Selbstbeherrschung und eiserner Disziplin die kritischen, ersten 3 Wochen überstehen, den Ausstieg aus der Raucherkarriere allerdings nicht freiwillig motiviert, sondern gesundheitlich bedingt oder ohne rechten Glauben an ein glückliches, rauchfreies Leben eingeläutet haben. Die latente Gefahr bei einem nicht mit hundert prozentiger Überzeugung einhergehenden Rauchausstieg besteht darin, weit über den eigentlichen Entzug noch jahrelang den vermeintlichen Glücksspendern nachzutrauern, anstatt sich an der gesünderen Lebensweise und dem gesparten Geld erfreuen zu können.
Genau aus diesem Grund liegt ein verstärktes Augenmerk auf der Motivation, den Tabakabhängigen zu der Einsicht gelangen zu lassen, wie sinnlos, dumm, gefährlich, einschränkend, negativ und in keinster Weise genussvoll, aromatisch, entspannend, individuell oder die Kreativität fördernd das Entzünden länglicher Papierhülsen in eigentlich für die Nahrungsaufnahme konzipierten Körperöffnungen ist. Solange diese Erkenntnis und die Bereitschaft, ein Leben lang gerne und freiwillig auf Zigaretten verzichten zu können, nicht einen Fixpunkt des eigenen Denkmusters darstellt, ist die Rückfallwahrscheinlichkeit und generell das Leiden wesentlich ausgeprägter.
Ein nur physisch, aber nicht mental entwöhnter Raucher, wird den Geruch von Tabak, rauchende Menschen und alle mit dem Inhalationsprozess assoziierten Gedanken und Bilder weiterhin als positiv erleben, das Bedürfnis nach Zigaretten wird sowohl in Ausnahmensituationen als auch im täglichen Leben ausgeprägter sein und somit sinnlos Lebensqualität verschwendet und Qual erzeugt.
Genau aus diesem Grund hält Carr auch nichts von Nikotinersatzpräparaten, da diese den Entzug und somit die schmerzhafteste Phase nur künstlich verlängern. Während ein auf Vollbetrieb rauchender, 1 bis 2 Päckchen Zigaretten täglich vernichtender Konsument zumindest keine unangenehme, nervöse Leere verspüren muss, so ist ein mühsam über Monate hinweg auf nur 5 bis 10 Zigaretten am Tag reduzierter Raucher quasi im permanenten Entzugszustand, was nur Stress und Unwohlsein mit sich führt und die Angst vor dem totalen Rauchstopp noch verstärkt. Auch dass die meisten etablierten Entwöhnungskonzepte mit der Verschreibung von Ersatzpräparaten einhergehen, was den Herstellern sehr gute Gewinne, den Konsumenten aber im Gegenzug nichts Gutes bringt, wird angeprangert. Bei den Substitutionsprogrammen für härtere Drogen, bei denen ein Entzug mitunter tödlich verlaufen kann, ist die Gabe von Methadon und Konsorten sinnvoll und angebracht. Bei Nikotin aufgrund der rein körperlich nur gering ausgeprägten und in keinster Weise gefährlichen Entwöhnungsphase hingegen sinnlos und kontraproduktiv.
Zu den kaum vorhandenen Kritikpunkten kann man neben der unverhohlenen, nicht einmal mehr als Schleich- sondern Offensivwerbung zu betrachtenden Hinweisen des Autors auf seine anderen, vielfältigen Produkte die Behauptung stellen, man könne sich ruhig gesellschaftlichen Ereignissen in nikotingeschwängerter Luft aussetzen. Dies steht in eklatantem Widerspruch mit dem häufig zitierten, richtigen Argument, dass eine einzige Zigarette, wenn nicht sogar schon ein paar Züge zu Entzug und Rückfall führen können. Insofern (und aufgrund eigener Erfahrung und den Erzählungen Anderer) sollten sowohl ein akut an Entzugssymptomen leidender, als auch langjährig entwöhnte Raucher weder allzu oft und lange in noch nicht rauchbefreiter Gastronomie arbeiten oder verweilen, noch in einem Wohnverhältnis mit aktiven Tabakvernichtern stehen.
Da beim Passivrauchen der Gegenwert von bis zu mehreren Zigaretten inhaliert werden kann, käme man auf ein ähnliches Pensum wie ein leichter, aktiver Raucher und würde somit unter permanenten Nikotinnotstand leiden. So gehört auch die Vorstellung, dass ein Partner weiter seinem Laster frönt, während der Entwöhnte phlegmatisch zusieht, in das Reich der extremen Ausnahmesituationen.
Im Gegensatz zu Alkoholismus, Tabletten- und anderen Süchten sind zwar sowohl der Entzug als auch die direkten Folgeschäden der Nikotinabhängigkeit weniger stark ausgeprägt und sogar teilweise reversibel. Aber Bier, Wein, Valium und Schmerzmittel kann man nicht unbeabsichtigt passiv konsumieren und ist insofern wesentlich selbstbestimmter als bei Nikotin. Die Möglichkeit, dauerhafte Abstinenz aufgrund eigenen Willens ohne Abstriche im gesellschaftlichen Leben zu erreichen, bleibt jedoch bis zur Etablierung eines generellen, strengen Rauchverbots eine Utopie. Außer, man hört für die Dauer der Besuche von Nachtclubs, Bars, Volksfesten und Privatfeiern auf zu atmen.
Ich habe das Rauchen vor einigen Jahren aufgegeben und kann nach einer zehnjährigen Raucherkarriere (zwischen 15 bis 30 Zigaretten täglich) samt mehreren erfolglosen Entzugsversuchen nur die uneingeschränkte Empfehlung zur Lektüre dieses großartigen Werkes geben. Es bedarf beträchtlichen Muts und der Bereitschaft zu leiden, aber das hehre Ziel eines längeren Lebens sollte den anfänglichen Schmerz erträglich machen und als motivierendes Leuchtfeuer in der Zukunft anstelle orangerot glimmender Sargnägel lodern. Abschließend meine Favoriten unter den Mantras zu dem Thema. Ich bin nicht mehr ganz sicher ob sie selbst erdacht oder gestohlen sind: Bei jedem Tabakinhalieren mental „Krebs-“, beim Ausatmen „Tod“ mitsprechen. Oder alternativ „Lungen- Krebs“, „Raucher- Bein“, „Unfrucht- Barkeit“ „Schlag- Anfall“, „Bein-Amputation“, „Herz- Infarkt“, „Im- Potenz“ usw. Der Kreativität sind keine Grenzen gesetzt!

Day 0: 40+ cigarettes/day

Day 1: Well, that wasn't so hard: 0 cigarettes/day

Day 2: Still smoke free, this is going to work!!! A guarded 5 star rating for now.

Day 3: Well I'm a weak willed sucker (not that I needed further proof). It was 2am on Day 3/4, and it ended like all my previous attempts with a delicious Gauloises. Not the books fault though and there is still hope.

After a week, I think it's time for a mini résumé on Allan Carr's quitting method.

As I wrote in the comments, after my lapse on Day 3 I rage quit again (why do I have to make everything so hard?).

Anyway the good news for every smoker is: Allan Carr's quitting method works. I was skeptical at first, but believe the hype, quitting can be easy! The withdrawal symptoms hardly matter, you will feel better immediately.

There is also bad news however, at least for me: Staying clean is the hard part. There still is craving, not as bad as with my previous attempts, and there are still some depressive phases. But now I can glimpse a light somewhere out there; maybe the end of the tunnel isn't so far away?

I do not enjoy smoking. I hate smoking and the cigarette itself is what's making me miserable. I'm tired of feeding the monster. If I were a non-smoker I wouldn't feel cravings and would enjoy moments in life more. These are the things I've learned so far. I can understand why this book makes people want to quit smoking. It's not shock therapy which scares you into quitting. It explains all the good things that will happen to you when you quit, and while you think you like smoking or that it helps you in some way you find out that you don't and it doesn't. It really makes stressful situations more stressful, and so on. It's not hard to quit, it's easy. The book makes you realize that smoking is very unenjoyable. And makes me wonder why I ever thought it was. I am so looking forward to finishing this book and quitting smoking and being freed from the monster. I am also excited to make other people I know who smoke read it. I'm shocked they haven't already.

Training for the New York City marathon last fall didn't magically stop me from smoking, but maybe watching a beloved client die abruptly and excruciatingly of lung cancer last week will do the trick? In case that's not enough, I've got Allen Carr's annoying self-help book to back me up!

I love fucking smoking. I love, love, love, LOVE it. Except, Allen Carr's going to tell me, I actually don't. I can't possibly love smoking because smoking's disgusting! All the loving I think I'm doing is actually just the insidious mendacity of addiction that is warping my mind and encouraging me to flood my otherwise gorgeous long-distance runner's lungs with carcinogens and emphysema and all other kinds of gnarly. I totally believe this, he's obviously right, and I know what Carr's gonna say because I've read this before. And it totally worked the first time -- but of course, quitting smoking's easy, it's the staying quit that's a drag.

I don't relate to a lot of quit smoking stuff, because my smoking occurs under pretty specific conditions. I'm not the kind of smoker who smokes every day, but nor am I really a true social smoker who has one or two on special occasions. I smoke when I drink, and when I do then I binge. I can go weeks without touching them, but once I get started, I'll smoke a pack -- sometimes more -- in a night without batting an eye. Drinking gets me every time, as do smoker friends. Also driving. Rock shows. Writing papers. Etc.... Why do I do this? Because I love smoking!!! No, Allen Carr tells me: that is not why. I do it because I'm addicted, and I tell myself all these crazy lies about cigarettes, like that they're fun and make me happy, and that I enjoy smoking them. God, but I believe that. I believe that I love them. I hope he talks me out of that.... it's a tall order!

I do feel pretty ready for Carr to convince me. I'm thirty years old, and I know smoking's gross. I've had two friends my own age undergo intensely difficult, painful battles against cancer, and i've spent these past few weeks watching a man I really cared about suffer in agony, knowing he wasn't going to get all the years he deserved, probably because of this addiction he'd had since age nine. When he was diagnosed with lung cancer about a month ago, he told me he couldn't wait to get out of the hospital so he could have a cigarette. He even laughed about it, and said that he just couldn't imagine his life without cigarettes. He did get discharged, with referrals to radiology, and I'm sure he smoked his face off once he got home.... only he didn't have much time to enjoy that because he was rushed back to the hospital right away, when it turned out the leg pain he'd been complaining of was metastasized cancer. He died just a couple brutal weeks later without getting to smoke again or even go outside for fresh air. One of the many very, very sad things about it all is that I'd watched this man successfully fight addictions to other things that are a lot more serious in terms of their immediate effects on a person's life. Smoking cigarettes doesn't make you homeless (though with NYC's $10 pack, that could change) or exacerbate mental illness (according to some sources, it can actually soothe symptoms), and cigarettes don't estrange you from family and friends and the rest of society. But in the final analysis, smoking cigarettes can obviously have a way bigger impact than any of those other substances, because terminal illness makes all the rest of that stuff completely irrelevant. Homeless people can find housing, schizophrenics can manage their psychiatric symptoms, and people who've lost touch their families can reunite with their loved ones -- I saw this guy accomplish all those things recently, after seeing him struggle so much in the past. But he didn't ever get to enjoy what he worked so hard to regain, because he died of fucking lung cancer right when he'd finally -- and heroically -- gotten his life together.

I guess it's not so shocking that as I get older, I understand all the moralistic hysteria about kids smoking way more than I used to. I'm from a generation for whom there was no mystery or obfuscation about the health risks of smoking, and I was fully aware while choking down my first Marlboro when I was twelve that this was a horrifically unhealthy and addictive substance that almost inevitably caused lethal diseases. I mean, as a little kid I was terrified of cigarettes! They spent so much time at school screaming at us about lung cancer that I was distraught for days after walking in on a parent smoking at late night, convinced I'd be orphaned by what I, in my innocence, had assumed was a cigarette....

But I digress. No, what I was going to say is that -- as we all know -- kids start smoking because they know it's bad, and kids love bad things, and they absolutely don't believe for one second that they'll ever get older, let alone die. They really just don't. It's documented fact. See, but now I've gotten on a bit in years so I'm starting to get that if I don't figure something out soon, someday I will die. The older I get, and the more people I see get really sick and/or die, it does get a lot harder to deny that it could happen to me. That.... well, it will happen to me.

Part of me thinks that's why I love smoking -- there's some adolescent nihilism there that I'm really attached to, some big "fuck you" to the horror of mortality when you light that bitch up and suck in a big drag -- GOD, I love that feeling! But what Allen Carr would say, and what he's going to remind me, is that that's total bullshit. That feeling's just some half-assed, asinine, transparently juvenile rationalization for a dull and simple addiction I've been senselessly feeding for close to two decades. Allen Carr's annoying self-help book is going to remind me that all that romance and glamour, all the emotional and intellectual pyrotechnics I associate with my smoking, are just more sophisticated versions of a drug addict's most pathetic excuses. All those reasons aren't true. I don't really love smoking.

Anyway, even if some of that stuff is true, it's way past time to stop. I'm too old for nihilism, and that's not how I want to go, in horrible pain and all fucked-up on morphine. If I want to make some statement, I should jump off a building.

This weekend I hung out with a friend of mine who just went through the unbelievably awful experience of breast cancer treatment, and she was talking about how when someone gets sick, everyone wants to blame them for it. I'm sure you've noticed this too, that whenever something bad happens to someone, other people just go nuts coming up with explanations of how the sick/murdered/hit-by-a-car person's brought the misfortune on themselves. Susan Sontag talks a lot about this in Illness as Metaphor, and one thing I thought was weird but that I also kind of liked was that she shoved "smoking" in with "unresolved grief" and "pent-up rage" as ridiculous factors that people use to blame other people for getting cancer. It's true that lung cancer is one of the last acceptably stigmatized illnesses -- people can happily pass judgment on smokers who get it in a way that they're just dying to but can't for anyone else who gets sick. And I will be DAMNED if I ultimately give any smug asshole that satisfaction! When I have a terminal illness -- and unless I have some kind of terrible accident, chances are that at some point in the future I most likely will -- I hope it'll be one people can't blame me for giving myself. Or, much more importantly, that I can't blame myself for getting. Because that's not a fun thought.

Anyway, I'm planning to read this thing by the weekend. If I can make it through the Fourth of July without smoking, that'll surely be cause for a huge celebration. And if I can't.... well, then it'll probably mean that I'll have to stop drinking.

And that, my friend, is another can of worms.