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.

You learn something new (about smoking) every day

I remember Allen said this to me once - he said that years after he stopped smoking that he learned something new about smoking every day.

I have to admit I wondered what he meant, how could you learn something new about smoking every single day? Having met about 4,000 smokers now as a therapist I do now know what he meant.

Although clients learn from me every single day as the mouthpiece for Allen's method, I also learn from the clients about smoking, aspects which may not have been observed by me when I was a smoker.

For example, a fine gentleman who attended a corporate session I conducted at Ball Packaging came to me at the end and said one thing which stuck out for him was the isolation of smoking. I assumed he meant that by going out in the cold smokers isolated themselves from others.

Actually what he meant was that he and his wife would often go out with two other couples, 5 out of the party of 6 were smokers. He would feel guilt and shame, not for smoking but for the fact that his wife was sat inside with no one to talk to, feeling a little like a lemon! Although she never complained, this man was overjoyed at the fact she would never be left on her own again, as he knows he will never smoke again.

Thanks for the lesson!

Busy times at Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking

It's coming up to the end of March and I have had the busiest first quarter ever at Easyway. I can't put my finger on why this is but would like to think that smokers are finally realising that potions, patches and pills simply aren't effective ways of stopping smoking. In the Liverpool clinic we have now split the clinic area into TWO - we continue to provide sessions in Knowsley at the Express by Holiday Inn but also now we have started session on The Wirral at The Village Hotel in Bromborough. We have done something similar in the North East - traditionally public sessions have only been available in Newcastle at the Novotel Hotel but now we also run sessions in Middlesbrough at The Thistle Hotel. Corporate business has also been good with sessions for Lifetech, Ball Packaging, Towry Solicitors and Partnerships in Care. Good luck and congratulations to all the smokers I have seen so far this year - let's hope we can get the same number out of the trap in the next quarter!

First Blog

It's a dull Wednesday morning in Preston but blue skies could be just around the corner when it comes to helping more smokers quit. For the last 5 years I have been setting up and running Allen Carr clinics in Lancashire, Liverpool, Cumbria, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Today I have started inroads into the corporate market. With my colleague Sarah Poole I am about to convince companies that helping their smokers quit is a good thing and will save them money - it costs companies an extra £2,500 to employ a smoker so to help them quit is a consinderable cost saving. Let's see how it goes!