Enjoy having a non smoke...

My clients often ask me, during a session, what they should do when they see groups of smokers outside having a chat in the sunshine, apparently enjoying themselves. Sometimes a recent stopper can fall into the trap of feeling envious when seeing their pals out choking themselves.

I tell them to enjoy having a non smoke! Enjoy the fact that while the weather is good (like today) you can go out and breathe in huge lungfuls of uncontaminated air, the very lifeblood of human existence, without having the worry about the black cloud looming above you full of fears about what smoking is doing for you.

My favourite author, Kurt Vunnegut Jr, says this: when you're having just a normal, ordinary time with no worries, just stop and ask yourself - if this isn't good, what is?

Go outside today and enjoy the sunshine and most of all, enjoy having a non smoke.

Then ask yourself, if this isn't good, what is?

Cigarettes are my friends....

Cigarettes are my friends...I hear this many time in our clinics.

We have now started Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking Clinics in The Wirral, in order to better serve the people living south of the River Mersey, not just those living north who attend the Knowsley Clinic.

I was there on Sunday and met a lovely gentleman who said that when had previously quit just using willpower, it was this feeling of loss of a friend which had made him crave cigarettes when watching smokers.

After a short discussion he came to the conclusion that should he make friends with any of the other clients there that day, if he then discovered that due to some weird curse half of their friends would end up dead and ALL of that person's friends would be at least injured, he probably wouldn't want to be friends with that person.

The gentleman is now a non smoker since his realisation that cigarettes are not your litte friend, they are your enemy, a bully.

I remember when the school bully got kicked out of the building.

It was a great day.