Did you know that Allen Carr, the bestselling author of The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, actually credits hypnosis with helping him stop smoking?
Carr’s books have been translated into over 45 languages and have sold millions of copies all around the world. They’ve earned rave reviews and celebrity testimonials from the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, Anthony Hopkins and Richard Branson.
Carr’s philosophy is simple: quitting is easy, he says, the moment you really understand that “there is nothing to give up.” For Carr the big lie is that smoking is enjoyable, and that quitting is deprivation. This is really an illusion – the craving you feel is really a deficit created by the cigarette itself. It’s a trick, a dupe, and a scam perpetrated by the nicotine industry. “The whole business of smoking,” he says, “is like forcing yourself to wear tight shoes just to get the pleasure of taking them off!”
Imagine my surprise to learn, then, that Carr (who quit smoking himself in 1983) did not actually use his own method on himself. He used hypnotherapy.
Carr visited a hypnotherapist and, despite lighting up once more on the way home from the session, he quit later that day and never smoked again. While reading his original 1985 book, I was surprised to see him explain it this way:
“I must confess that I was completely sceptical, knowing nothing about hypnosis in those days and having visions of a Svengali-type figure with piercing eyes and a waving pendulum. I suffered many of the usual illusions that smokers have about smoking except one – I knew that I wasn’t a weak-willed person. I was in control of all other aspects of my life but cigarettes controlled me. I thought that hypnosis involved the forcing of wills […] the whole session appeared to be a waste of time. The hypnotherapist tried to make me lift my arms and do various other things […] I didn’t lose consciousness. I didn’t go into a trance, or at least I didn’t think I did, and yet after the session not only did I stop smoking but I actually enjoyed the process even during the withdrawal period.”
So, can hypnotherapy help you stop smoking? Well, despite going on to say that “I would be dead by now if I hadn’t seen him” Carr still claims that his success was “in spite of him, not because of him.”
Now, the first interesting thing here is that Carr demonstrates many common misconceptions about hypnosis – that it’s about losing consciousness, losing control, or going into trance. See here why this attitude could not be further from the truth.
The second interesting thing is that Carr was sceptical. Very sceptical. He described himself as “the worst nicotine addict I have yet to meet” and easily smoked 100 a day. Yet, he still quit after just a single session.
Finally, the strangest thing is that, despite all this, Carr still would not credit the anonymous hypnotherapist with his success. As an author who launched his own multi-million dollar empire and a name for himself as Britain’s anti-smoking guru, I can only guess why that is. Indeed, Carr went on to use hypnosis in his own clinics – his own version, at least.
Allen Carr died in 2009 of lung cancer, possibly from spending years working with smokers in his specialist clinics, which at one point numbered 70 in more than 30 countries. By all accounts he was a hardworking, determined therapist and businessman who changed people's lives.
I’m sharing this story because I'm continually struck by just how effective hypnosis can really be, and Carr’s life is perhaps a testament to that. I’ve seen people quit habits that have plagued them for life, within just a single 90 minute session.
In 1983, an unnamed London hypnotherapist convinced a sceptical man to stop smoking. That man went on to convince an estimated 25 million people to stop smoking.
Can a single session of hypnotherapy really help? YES. Yes it can.
Коментарі