Easy Way to Stop Smoking, Allen Carr

American Cancer Society, "Smoking Is Very Glamorous," 1972

(May 9) Well, it worked for me -- so, to be fair, I've got to give it 5 stars. I didn't particularly expect it to work, and I didn't particularly care if it worked, and it certainly didn't work right away -- but 11 days after I finished this book, I just spontaneously stopped smoking (and have remained non-smoking till now, four months later).

The "switch" flipped for me, the way the book mysteriously hints it will. I'm not sure just exactly which idea it is among all the ideas that Allen Carr drills into you that does the trick, but he does harp on some basic concepts over and over. Some of them are old chestnuts, but a couple of them were interesting new points of view for me ("a cigarette's sole function is to create the desire for the next cigarette" and "you think quitting smoking is hard because everyone tells you it's hard").

Still, none of these saws seemed transformative at the time of reading. Something unknown just kicked in after 11 days.