It is not nearly close to the power of the The Easy Way to Stop Smoking: Join the Millions Who Have Become Nonsmokers Using the Easyway Method obviously his other books have been a build-up from the popularity of the aforementioned. Nevertheless being in the midst of the process of cutting down on alcohol consumption it certainly helps.

If you’re absolutely sure you want to quit drinking then this book WILL help. If you doubt your decision to quit this book MIGHT help. Its an easy read although extremely repetitive at times but there is plenty of useful information to help you better understand why people get hooked in the first place and continue to drink. Allen Carr understands addiction. If you really want to quit then read the book. If not it’s not necessarily gonna be a waste of your time but it probably won’t work if you’re on the fence.

4.3 - Great!

Had already read This Naked Mind which many say is a rip-off of this book. It's a fair comparison. Perhaps the most blatant copy is the pitcher-plant analogy. And the general strategy of the book - to stop you thinking that alcohol is adding something to your life and that giving it up will be a sacrifice. Both books systematically show you that alcohol in fact is taking life away from you, it's poisoning you and that giving up is more like lifting a curse from yourself. It's not "I can't drink alcohol", it's "thank god I don't have to drink alcohol anymore!".

The book is a little repetitive. The author however does state this in the introduction. And it's repetitive for a reason - to really hammer home the main points of the book. That alcohol is doing nothing for you. Everything you think it's doing for you, it's actually making worse.

The author does succeed in his task very well. By the end I did feel a sense of relief that I didn't have to drink anymore. He reminded me that my body has been evolving for millions of years to cope with stress. I don't need this extra substance to help me cope. My body has built in mechanisms to help me do that. Alcohol actually makes coping with stresses worse.

I also liked that the author doesn't like the term 'alcoholic', implying there's something wrong with the person experiencing problematic drinking. He uses examples of other substances where we don't blame the user but the drug itself. It's helped me to stop thinking that there's something innate about me that requires alcohol to function. It is made clear that everyone is on the slope to losing control of their alcohol consumption. I just happen to be a little further down the slope. I do however think there's something to be said for Jordan Peterson's view that, in some people, alcohol does produce an opiate response. However, if that is the case, I have to realise that and act accordingly. The same way someone who puts on weight easily might have to restrict their junk-food intake more than others, I will have to restrict my alcohol consumption more than others.

I liked the general ethos of the book. Not blaming yourself but realising that alcohol is, as he puts it, 'DEVASTATION', and that our whole culture revolves around it in some capacity. Given these conditions, one shouldn't blame themselves so much for not being able to control alcohol consumption. The odds are stacked against you. But if you recognise alcohol for what it is, you can choose to do something about it and not feel those pangs of yearning for it; something that's no good in any way.

Very effective at what it sets out to do and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it (and This Naked Mind) to anyone that told me they were struggling with alcohol. Very happy with this book.

After reading Holly Whitaker and Annie Grace, this offered the final push I needed to shift my mindset around alcohol. Allen Carr is an old-school British "guy's guy," so the patriarchal/misogynist undertones were distracting at times, but his overall argument won me over. Alcohol is a highly addictive poison that we train ourselves to acquire a taste and tolerance for, and everyone has the capacity to become a so-called "alcoholic."
While at times his metaphors felt a bit hokey, many of Carr's points hit home, and I found myself re-listening to helpful chapters. I can see why this approach has worked for so many people. It worked for me.

This book is full of repetitions and sales pitch. Then there is the outrageous claim of 90% success rate for his method. Even so, if you are struggling with alcohol Allen may well be able to help you. I had been a moderate but regular drinker for 30 years. One day I finally realized that alcohol did me no good at all; so I stopped drinking, and never looked back. Afterwards I started reading about the subject out of curiosity. I was wondering if other people had similar experiences. They had, especially after reading this book, as this is the basic message: once you understand that everything that seems good about drinking is merely illusion you stop; it is the logical thing to do. Allen has his own style which may take a little getting used to but he is able to deliver the message; it is well worth to put up with the frequently over-the-top language and stick with him from the begin to the end of the book, and be warned that the end will be surprising, to say the least.

Drinking has given me my wildest moments and just as easily led me to my worst. I can immediately point to a half-dozen drunken nights that were amongst the most surreal, cartoonish, adventurous, and giggle-infused of my life, just as I can instantly name a half-dozen relationships, both romantic and platonic, that were negatively impacted, perhaps even destroyed, by way of booze.

In fact, one of the lowest points of my life was writing a date and time on my wrist as I made eye contact with the old cat of a woman I was dating and driving insane, sipping the last of my whiskey in a coffee mug before I swore off alcohol—the driest I'd been since I was a teen—and joyously swayed my way through a year of therapy. I reconfigured my relationship with alcohol quite entirely, drinking periodically and thoughtfully, and then the pandemic hit and I lost my rhythm quite substantially. I came out of lockdown dragging a relationship with alcohol that was neither bad nor good. The furious fire had been righteously extinguished for all time, and I will forever be grateful for that. But there's been a score of moments in the years since where I've gone well passed what I anticipated drinking and that's never grand.

Eventually, this year, I righted myself yet again and found my lanky ass in Baja with a friend dead-set on quitting two decades of smoking by way of Allen Carr's first book. That was over a month ago and he hasn't touched a cigarette since. So I dove into this one, thinking it could knock some sense into me, somewhere between upper hand and uppercut.

It's a fascinating read because it's essentially making the case for total sobriety—and the only way it's about how one could "control alcohol" is that less drinks are really just a temporary fix or the slowing of pace in the inevitable descent into losing control. Moderation is not seen as an all-time solution here. Carr is someone confidently walking through every single excuse or argument of why people drink and then casually, and a bit smugly, knocking down each myth.

He makes the case that alcohol, no matter how you dice it, is essentially a poison that can only provide short-term glee (good delirium) and long-term misery (bad delirium). I don't think he's wrong, honestly. I sharpened all my senses in just those months of sobriety—followed by a year of having only three or four drinks a month, ranging from a champagne wedding flute to a special holiday cocktail. That was the best relationship I've ever had with alcohol. It was like a rich dessert I would partake in from time to time. Each time, it felt culinary and appreciated, and I almost never overindulged. I'd like to get back there or dry out even more so—and this book really got me reviewing the whole of my drinking life and self. It was an interesting dive as both writer and drinker, as I've been the former one year longer than the latter, and I have a great deal of thoughts about both, naturally.

When it comes to writing, there's an inherent fallacy in thinking you've already proved your point, and this book asks a lot of rhetorical questions from on high. At times, Carr struck me as someone impressively effective, and other times as someone who believed he was. That's the problem with asking, "Isn't it obvious?" (And more so if done repeatedly.) I came to think of this dude I used to work/clash with in advertising who once said, "If your ad starts with a question that leaves room for someone to answer, 'No,' you've already lost them."

But the effort seen here is stellar, really. It's thorough and conversational. Carr really goes to bat for you quitting alcohol. He even encourages you to drink while reading his book because he wants you to have real-world moments of evaluation with tangible takeaways that aren't entirely his doing. I can't think of any other point that could be lobbed after this, really. The only reason you don't quit drinking here is you simply don't want to or you disagree, but there's not much of the case that's been overlooked here.

So, no matter what comes or how it all shapes up, this thing was absolutely and astoundingly worth my time. It reframed my view of booze—truly!—simply by tirelessly wading through each potential point to explain why it doesn't work. Alcohol is a nosedive of a thing, surely, and I get it, but when you ask me to pay attention to the boozers in my life and take note of how miserable they are, and we're all, say, sipping host-made martinis on a Mexican beach at sunset, howling laughter and reminiscing about life with our inhibitions down for the count, it's hard to take it as the ultimate truth.

I don't think alcohol makes or breaks a moment, no sir. I've been on both sides of the table—sometimes the drinker with a non-drinker; sometimes the non-drinker with a drinker—and either way's good with me. I support whatever makes a person happy in their blip of time in the universe. But I do think it takes real introspection to understand who's in control, whether it's the drink or the drinker. I don't see booze ever leaving my life for good, but I'd like to be more active in my selection what poisons I put in me and when (and how much).

I think booze and drugs can be downright terrific. I also think they can be absolutely ruinous. I don't think they're required for happiness by any means, but I believe altering one's brain for departure, insight, or any noun you've got lurking in between can prove wondrous. I don't like the idea of relying on any substance, but I think lowering one's inhibitions a tad or letting your body roll a bit can give a person something that may not be the truth, but perhaps truth-adjacent—as if you were to come to terms with something in a dreamscape.

Sobriety can rule just as hard. It's not a matter of what's better either way. It's about what serves and works for the individual. Ideally, I want to be somewhere in between, and drugs have largely left my life, mostly by the natural course of life, but alcohol's still winning the battle. It's just so heartily woven into what existence is as I understand it. I come across it practically by accident. So it's time for a change.

In the end, happiness is all that matters. Whatever gets you there wins. Sometimes that's booze, sometimes that's drugs, and sometimes that's sobriety. You get one life. Live it how you want. If you feel it's not what you want, try your best to correct course. That's what I'm doing here. Life is the shortest and longest thing you'll ever do. How you spend your blip is your call. Just, above all else, be happy—or work towards it. Good luck out there.

(Can't believe I drank an entire bottle of merlot before writing this.)

Really effective techniques but godawful writing. Sounds like a car salesman.

"Would you believe me if you could wake up every morning feeling like a million bucks AND you'd save a million bucks? I didn't think so!" (not an exact quote but pretty much the same style)

Terrible writing, but a very interesting and helpul read for people who are struggling with alcohol addiction.

For a better written book with the same content, go and find Annie Grace's The Naked Mind.

It's a great way to understand why thinking of quitting drinking might be so hard. For me Friday evening drinks were sacred and if you would tell me before to stop buying Friday night beer, I'd laugh. That was a long awaited treat.
Now I'm free!
The book contains many great ideas, but also lots of bullshit. Some parts writer could have just skipped. But I'm giving this book 5 stars because it was a very effective way to rethink alcohol.

Interesting take.

Well, now that’s out of my life… (this is not sarcasm, it really is that easy, but you’ve gotta read the whole book, in order. No cheating and just skimming the quotes).

Paraphrase: reasons don't drive behavior, choices do.



Quotes:

Like all confidence tricks, drug addiction can fool intelligent people. But once he has seen through a confidence trick, even a simpleton won’t be fooled.

We actually start to grow old the moment we are born but we don’t feel old for many years. Have you considered the possibility that the reason we can’t work out exactly when we lost control is because we were never in control in the first place? Perhaps all the billions of drinkers in the world that lie between grandma and Uncle Ted are on the same downwards slide.

That’s the nature of all such drugs: the more they drag you down, the greater the apparent need for them. The greater this need seems the more you have to try and justify it by pretending – to yourself and to everyone else – that you are in control. But why would you need to do that if you really did feel in control? You didn’t lose control: YOU WERE NEVER IN CONTROL!

We have defined an alcoholic as a drinker who has lost control. Let’s now adjust that definition to: A DRINKER WHO REALIZES THAT HE IS NOT IN CONTROL.

Put aside any self-recrimination for anything alcohol has caused you to do in the past. You haven’t been abusing alcohol; on the contrary, it’s been abusing you.

There is only one real culprit. No it’s not alcohol, but the ignorance that surrounds it. It is this misconception that we drink because we choose to.

The only real answer is to remove the reasons that cause us to drink, or to drink too much.

I’m taking nothing away from you. Alcohol never did give you courage or confidence; you only thought it did. In reality, it has been imperceptibly and systematically destroying your courage and confidence for years.

Inebriation is a process of gradually deadening your senses until you are rendered insensible or, to use the vernacular, until you are blotto. True relaxation is having no worries, cares, tensions, stress or pain. It is impossible to feel truly relaxed, or anything else for that matter, if you have been rendered senseless.

You don’t satisfy your thirst by having a drink. On the contrary, you create a little monster inside your body that has an insatiable thirst, and the more alcohol you give him the thirstier he gets! It is not the flawed genes of alcoholics that, if they take just one sip, makes them want another and another, ad infinitum; that is the effect alcohol has on every living creature, including you!

I took the attitude that I would rather have the shorter, sweeter and more exciting life of the drinker and smoker, than the longer more mundane life of the abstainer. I must emphasize that if that were the real choice, I would still be smoking and drinking heavily. Correction, I wouldn’t be here.

I felt like an old man when I was 46 and I feel like a young boy now I’m in my seventies. What’s more, I look forward, without trepidation, to many more happy and exciting years. The only material change between then and now is that I ceased to poison my body on a daily basis.

Surely a miracle is an event that is not beyond the powers or laws of nature, but beyond the comprehension of mankind.

So much of modern medicine is based on pills or medicines that remove the symptoms of the disease and not the cause.

Our taste-buds are flexible and we don’t have to be slaves to them.

I would define cowardice as: failure to act as my conscience dictates, because of fear of physical injury or ridicule.

How could alcohol possibly make you feel truly brave? Bravery involves surmounting fear. So if you reduce the level of fear, doesn’t it follow that it takes less bravery to surmount it?

Fear is a warning of danger, a warning which, as in the case of the burglar alarm, could either prove to be real or unfounded. To remove fear through any means other than removing the cause of the fear, is like believing that you put out the fire merely by turning off the alarm.

You cannot gain the trust of a wild animal until you have convinced it that you won’t harm it physically. Likewise it is only natural that children should be wary of strangers until they are convinced that person will do them no harm, be it physical or mental. It was nice to learn that my shyness was quite normal and as a result I stopped worrying about it. It also helped me to realize that what I had always assumed to be stand-offishness by other people at social gatherings was really due to their own shyness. By concentrating on helping them to get over their shyness, I become oblivious to my own and get a great pleasure from breaking the ice.

It is an illusion that alcohol gives courage. It does remove fear and inhibitions: the illusion in this case is that this is a good thing.

When in England, I’m in the habit of driving on the left side of the road. When I cross to the Continent, I immediately break that life-long habit without any hassle whatsoever. I confound the platitude that habits are difficult to break.

Christmas can be a wonderful high, but do we get into a terrible panic because there is no Christmas for the rest of the year? The heroin addict has to go through that terrible ritual to try to end the awful lows that the first dose created and the following doses perpetuated.

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.

People are suffering from the same disease, and that is the disease: the belief that alcohol does something for you and that you are dependent on that so-called benefit. You are cured once you see alcohol for what it is: a poison that does nothing whatsoever for anyone.

There is not one single item of hard evidence to show that a chemical defect or an addictive personality is the cause of anyone becoming addicted to any drug.

So if “normal drinkers” occasionally lose control and alcoholics occasionally gain it, the difference is surely not in an inherent physical or mental defect, but one of degree.

All drug addicts feel uncomfortable in the presence of people who aren’t addicted: they know that what they are doing is stupid and people who aren’t in the same prison remind them of their stupidity. For this reason alone drinking is an anti-social pastime. It creates barriers between drinkers and non-drinkers, at parties and other social functions.

The chief effect of alcohol is to deaden you to everything you are going through, and indeed to impair your critical faculties. That is why alcohol seriously compromises your ability to enjoy genuine pleasures.

This is the enigma of all drug addiction: because we know that we could enjoy social occasions and cope with stress before we got hooked, we sense that alcohol does nothing for us. But because we also know that we cannot enjoy certain occasions without it, we tend to close our minds to the fact.

Once you can see alcohol not as the pleasure, crutch or friend that we’ve been brainwashed to see it as, but as it really is DEVASTATION, then the fear about never, ever being allowed to drink again ceases to exist. I can remember this fear about never being able to drink again turning into the joy of never having to drink again.

There is a disease called alcoholism but there is nothing intrinsically or physically wrong with the alcoholic. Alcoholism is an entirely mental disease.

You cure your alcohol problem the moment the desire to consume alcohol is removed permanently.

Once you discovered that the ointment was the cause of the rash rather than the cure, you would be delighted that you had discovered both the cause and the cure, and you would never be tempted to use that ointment again.

It is essential that you realize that your failure to solve the problem isn’t due to your physical make-up. It is due to your mental perception. But it is just as essential to realize that it is not an innate mental flaw like an addictive personality, and that with an open mind the flaw can be remedied.

But we don’t drink for the reasons we shouldn’t! We drink for the reasons that we do. And if you are convinced that you won’t be able to enjoy social occasions or cope with stress without alcohol, then you won’t be able to. The solution then is to remove all of the brainwashing and return to the blissful state we enjoyed before we fell into the trap.

The fact that certain people can’t enjoy certain situations without alcohol doesn’t mean that alcohol provides genuine pleasure. They were perfectly capable of enjoying those situations before they fell into the trap.

I tend to leave certain social functions earlier and not attend others at all. Initially this worried me. It seemed to indicate that I wasn’t enjoying myself so much without drinking. I realized it was the exact opposite. The true reason was that they were boring functions. The only way I could suffer them previously was to inebriate myself.

I could never get hooked again even if I tried for the rest of my life; because what hooks you is not the drug itself, but the illusion that you get some crutch or pleasure from it. Like any other confidence trick, once you understand the trick, you can’t possibly fall for it again.

Drinkers see alcohol as a tug-of-war. On one side fear: it’s ruining my health and wealth. On the other side: it’s my crutch and pleasure. In reality it is fear on both sides. There is no genuine crutch or pleasure. It is a case of: I can’t enjoy life or even cope with it, without alcohol. The fears on both sides are caused by the alcohol: non-drinkers don’t suffer from either set of fears. You didn’t suffer from either set of fears before you had your first alcoholic drink.

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.



Typo location Location 1300-1301: “as you want to and whenever you what to.” (what should be want)

4.5 stars

Very thankful to have never had an alcohol addiction, but I made the decision to stop drinking alcohol recently, and wanted to listen to “quit lit”. A term I learned while looking for related podcasts and books.

I thought this was fantastic and made wonderful points. One of the biggest being that there really is no benefit to drinking alcoholic, but it’s prevalence in our society is a type of brainwashing. I mean, it is poison, and no one would willingly drink arsenic!

If someone I knew was thinking about making the decision to stop drinking alcohol, I’d recommend this to them. But only if they expressed interest of course, as it’s a personal decision.