Can't recommend this book enough! It works. Twelve step programs are virtually useless as shown by their own poor success rates. I read this book in one sitting and quit drinking: simple as that.

This book saved my life.

Since November 27, 2017, I have been completey sober from alcohol, caffeine, nicotine and other drugs. Later on, I limited consuming refined sugars to facilitate my recovery process.

Before I read this book, I had a severe poly-drug problem, including, alcohol, heroin, amphetamines, ketamine, morphine, GHB, antidepressants, antipsychotics, cannabis, MDMA, cocaine, sleeping pills, psychedelics and more. I always knew that alcohol was the root of all my problems. My drunken episodes would give me a hedonistic manic rush that lasted for weeks. During these binges, I would usually indulge in all kinds of drugs. I never succeeded in quitting alcohol, except for one month, but relapsed and binged again. This cycle repeated itself.

Alcohol is often the hardest drug to quit, not just for me, but for many others as well. In my community, being a teetotaler can make you feel like an outsider or even an outcast, given its omnipresence in modern-day society. While illegalization isn't the solution, society should stop normalizing and advertising alcohol. It has become like the smoking of the past, which was also very normal back then. Furthermore, many people are unaware that addiction to hard liquor can be more severe than heroin addiction. Severe alcohol addiction can lead to lethal withdrawal symptoms if not tapered off properly. In contrast, heroin withdrawal is severe but is almost never lethal. Additionally, when you quit heroin, people don't try to convince you to start using it again, unlike quitting alcohol, where many will pressure you to start drinking again. This negative stigma around heroin comes from our history, media, and movies. Despite this, statistics and science show that alcohol is worse than heroin.

Even though the version of the book I read was outdated, it was still incredibly valuable to me during that time. It helped me to rationalize my addiction and to see alcohol for what it really is - a toxic liquid that provides no real benefits. Since becoming sober, I have found that sobriety has given me everything that drugs and alcohol promised but never actually delivered in the long term.

This book was precisely what I needed to break free from this unhealthy habit. No other book has impacted my life as greatly, which is why I give it a 5-star rating.

Lock the door on the monster forever, and tell a friend.

Awful writing. Rambling, repetitive, and lacking structure. I had to skim read the latter 2/3 after persevering for the first 1/3. Scientifically lacking too, underplaying the potentially deadly effects of stopping drinking alcohol outright if you're a physically dependent drinker. Many better quit lit books out there.

It is almost too easy. The late Allen Carr was a master of using logic to help smokers, overeaters, and drinkers look objectively at their vices and see a clear, simple way out.

I was brought to this book by a mention in Holly Whitaker's Quit Like A Woman, and she was right-- in a couple days my relationship to alcohol has turned around. Painlessly. I bought a copy so I can refer back to it if my motivation every gets low again.

If you're struggling with alcohol -- whether you think you're an addict or not -- read this book. It changed my life & it made the change easy -- not hard.

Yeah, I drink too much and read self-help books. Don't judge me.

I think anyone who drinks alcohol (even the occasional 1 drink) should read this book or research more into alcohol because it just makes you reevaluate what you’re doing and WHY you’re doing it. This book was ultimately about toxic relationship with alcohol but about halfway through, I related it to other toxic relationships/tendencies I have in my life. The alcohol stuff got really repetitive LOL. Cons to book - there are no sources of any of the statements presented as facts so just something to consider. And then the book ended with a link to a free hypnotherapy session — not doing that lol.

Книга о том, что такое вообще курение, почему это плохо и как от этого избавиться просто хорошенько подумав над этим. Сам автор много лет курил, даже когда у него нашли рак, но смог избавиться от этой пагубной привычки

This book is a clear, no nonsense takedown of everything you’ve ever conditioned yourself about alcohol. This book will not allow you to feel comfortable with casual or “normal” drinking. It’s very binary - you’re either willingly poisoning yourself, and lying to yourself about your need for booze (and you’re miserable and making everyone around you miserable), or you’re not (and you’re still dealing with ups and downs, but you’re better at handling it as a non drinker than you are as a drinker).

Two things I’m personally struggling with:
(1) I do still feel more sociable and creative after a couple drinks
(2) I do still think I genuinely like the taste of alcohol - specifically wine and cocktails

Tl;dr I do still feel like I’m depriving myself of something when not drinking, but that’s precisely the mindset that Allen Carr says will prevent you from quitting.

I read this more out of curiosity than a desire to find a way to stop drinking and now I find myself with a significantly reduced desire to drink. It mindfully reframes the way we view alcohol and hammers home the ill effects of drinking to the point that if you do have the desire to quit and follow the instructions laid out then you'll find the desire to drink either diminished or evaporated. At least, that's what I took away from it. So if you are looking to quit, and you've tried other ways and failed, then it doesn't hurt to try something else. I'd recommend giving the contents of this book a shot.

This book was recommended by Nikki Glasier as the way she stopped drinking. So I decided to read it because this summer has been a summer of questioning many things, including my alcohol consumption. If you are looking for help falling out of love with booze, this is a book that will help with that. It’s odd, for sure. But maybe that’s the point?

Allen Carr's Easyway is a fundamentally different approach to recovery than conventional substance recovery programs. As opposed to most other methods, Carr's program works without the use of willpower (hence, Easyway). Developed in his first book, Easy Way to Stop Smoking, Carr's approach helps people quit their addictions by getting them to challenge their assumptions of benefit. The method is simple: realize the ugly truth about the nature of your problem and deliberately undo your conditioning toward it. This approach works by changing one's desire, not by changing one's behavior toward the desire. As one learns more about their addiction, their internal cost-benefit equation regarding it changes. When what was once seen as fun and pleasure is now seen as dangerous and toxic, avoiding the behavior is effortless. In contrast to willpower techniques (various types of forced abstention techniques), which logically and inevitably entail an internal, psychological conflict between "I want" and "I shouldn't," Easyway doesn't involve any conflict at all. It is a method of destroying the basis for "I want" so that all that remains is a sober view of the object of the addiction and "I shouldn't" wins by default. His approach isn't unlike some types of CBT.

Quit Drinking Without Willpower is a book using Easyway to help people eliminate the desire to drink alcohol. Overall, Carr's claim is certainly true. Most drinkers ("normal" and otherwise) are not aware that they are addicts to a drug that will harm their health, spend their money, ruin their relationships, corrupt their happiness, impair their judgment, and impede their progress; being unaware of their own addiction, and the subsequent rationalizations an addicted mind makes, they believe alcohol is genuinely a good thing, that it adds substantial value to their lives, that it improves their sociability, that life would be much poorer without it, etc. However, if they reeducate themselves and reinterpret their "fun habit" as something vicious, then they begin to see the so-called poison as real poison, and they can escape the alcohol trap easily and become a happy nondrinker (just as we are all presumably happy nondrinkers of arsenic).

Beyond the value of Easyway as a whole (which deserves 5 stars) and its application to alcohol addiction, I found Quit Drinking to be a little too dogmatic. Carr's assertions that the only benefit from alcohol is that it satisfies a prior craving for alcohol (created by the unease of detoxing the previous drink), that any benefit to alcohol is merely perceived and not real (because the terrifying prospect of chemical addiction forces one to rationalize their enjoyment of alcohol), and that all of alcohol's "virtues" are false is too strong a claim to make. Alcohol has many terrible effects, but it does have a few true non-circular benefits. For example, alcohol is known to temporarily reduce self-consciousness and social anxiety. Carr himself admits alcohol is useful as an antiseptic and anesthetic. These facts undermine Carr's message in Quit Drinking - which sometimes can take an aggressive tone - but not the Easyway method. I am not sure I will become a lifelong nondrinker, but reading Quit Drinking destroyed almost all of alcohol's appeal to me.

Related: Annie Grace's "This Naked Mind" is a personal retelling of Quit Drinking, but more plausible, more entertaining, and with updated scientific information.