Abstract
World famous anti-smoking guru and author of The Easy Way to Stop Smoking
Allen Carr enjoyed the status of being the world's foremost anti-smoking guru, claiming he had helped millions to kick their deadly habit. Despite this reputation—or perhaps because of it—he remained at odds with the medical profession to the day he died.
In the minds of the public and much of the media, however, his unconventional approach to quitting smoking was accepted as something of a revelation.
Born in 1934 into a working class family in Putney, in south west London, Carr attended local schools before doing national service. He then trained as an accountant with the firm Peat Marwick, qualifying in 1958.
He smoked his first cigarette at the age of 16. By the age of 24 he was smoking 60 a day. Twenty four years later his habit had spiralled out of control to 100 cigarettes a day. And on the morning of 15 July 1983, after a coughing fit so severe his nose bled, Carr wracked his brains on how he could kick the habit that was killing him.
Willpower alone had failed him every time he tried to quit. That night he claimed to have picked up a medical textbook in a desperate attempt to understand the nature of his addiction. That was when, he says, inspiration struck.
Although he struggled with the biochemistry, it none the less occurred to him that nicotine was the key to cigarettes' addictive power. And he realised that only by making a clean break from the drug's clutches could he realistically hope to kick the habit.
He also noted that even heavy smokers such as himself were able to go without cigarettes quite easily in situations such as wedding ceremonies, where lighting up would be unthinkable. Crucially, according to his theories, this demonstrated that nicotine addiction was not a powerful one in the sense that it led to serious withdrawal symptoms. Instead, he speculated that nicotine provoked a light but rapidly acquired addiction that gave rise to a devious psychological dependence, which he called “the little voice” in the head of addicts, coaxing them to light up whenever the opportunity arose.
His second pivotal theory relating to this said that smokers only lit up to relieve the sense of anxiety or ennui created by their nicotine addiction. They were in effect paying with their money and their health to achieve the sense of satisfaction that non-smokers enjoyed all the time—for free.
Suitably convinced of his arguments, he quit his accounting job to spread the word—and free the planet from nicotine addiction. He borrowed money from a friend, and published The Easy Way to Stop Smoking two years later.
Famously, the book deconstructs, one by one, the myths—and many of the accepted truths—about smoking and dismisses the lies that smokers tell themselves.
Memorably, one chapter of the book entitled “The benefits of smoking” contains a single, blank page. Cleverly, readers are encouraged to continue smoking until they reach the very end of the book, by which stage most are relishing the prospect of quitting.
A short, and deliberately repetitive book, Carr said it was designed to reverse years of brainwashing that addicts had suffered at the hands of nicotine.
Rapturous press reviews and word of mouth helped the book become an international bestseller, with over seven million copies sold. Videos and clinics at £75 an hour soon followed. Carr became a very rich man and moved to a luxury house in the south of Spain.
Celebrity fans of his method, including Anthony Hopkins, Jerry Hall, and Richard Branson, pushed Allen Carr's profile even higher. He even branched out into self help books on weight loss and drug addiction.
However, the medical establishment remained unconvinced of his theories. Where, its members demanded to know, was the controlled evidence that Carr's method was better than other quitting techniques—let alone anywhere near as high as the 90% success rates he boasted of.
Other public health doctors and psychiatrists dismissed the Carr method as being too intellectually demanding for many uneducated smokers.
In turn, some supporters of the Carr method painted a picture of a churlish medical profession, peeved that someone scientifically unqualified had provided such novel insights into such an important sphere of public health.
Carr clashed with leading anti-smoking campaigners and even the government over their promotion of what he considered to be failed smoking cessation techniques. In particular, his uncompromising opposition to the use of nicotine replacement therapy, which he said merely prolonged addiction, put him on a collision course with conventional campaign groups such as Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).
On the day he died Carr published an open letter, castigating ASH and the Department of Health for failing to back his methods. ASH angrily denied that it accepted drug company funding and dismissed suggestions that this explained its support for nicotine replacement therapy. It once again called on Carr to subject his methods to the same scrutiny required of drug companies seeking licences for their products.
Carr preferred less scientific but none the less attention-grabbing forms of evidence. In his second book, The Only Way To Stop Smoking Permanently, Carr decided—to the horror of family and friends—to take up smoking again for a brief period in the 1990s. He did it to demonstrate, he said, to himself and others, that his approach to quitting still worked. In a matter of weeks he was back up to 60 cigarettes a day.
Soon after he quit again, for good. He would not, however, escape the disease that had already claimed the life of his father and millions of other smokers. It was announced that Carr had lung cancer in July this year. Carr blamed his illness on the decades spent in smoke filled rooms helping others quit.
Critics will argue that question marks over his true contribution to public health will remain in the absence of scientific assessments.
Carr, bullish to the last, said shortly before his death, however: “I estimate I have cured 25 million smokers over the years. If my illness is the price for that, it's worth it.”
He is survived by his second wife, Joyce, and four children from his first marriage.