Allen Carr's Easy Way to Control Alcohol (Allen Carr's Easyway Book 9)

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Put aside any self-recrimination for anything alcohol has caused you to do in the past. You haven’t been abusing alcohol; on the contrary, it’s been abusing you. John Dicey, Worldwide CEO & Senior Therapist, Allen Carr’s Easyway, interviews Ania Martin, Allen Carr’s Easyway to Stop Drinking Therapist, Birmingham & London Once you can see alcohol not as the pleasure, crutch or friend that we’ve been brainwashed to see it as, but as it really is DEVASTATION, then the fear about never, ever being allowed to drink again ceases to exist. I can remember this fear about never being able to drink again turning into the joy of never having to drink again. Hotjar sets this cookie to identify a new user’s first session. It stores the true/false value, indicating whether it was the first time Hotjar saw this user. Ania: To be perfectly honest, I didn’t have any ‘Wow’ moment. In fact, whilst everything the therapist told me made absolute sense, I didn’t really feel any different. But as I’ve already said, having read the book I knew the method worked and so from that perspective I was excited. I decided to go out that evening and actually found myself at times quite fixated by other drinkers, not because I was envious of them, but because I was aware of a new found confidence about being out with friends and enjoying myself without feeling the need to drink alcohol. Over the next few days I didn’t experience any unpleasant alcohol withdrawal symptoms and there really is not a word to describe the elation of feeling total freedom from alcohol.

I didn’t drink socially or to excess. I drank two glasses of wine every night when cooking dinner because I was exhausted and lonely. Coming home after work and having to reluctantly cook dinner alone for tired children is sooo depressing! Wine was my friend. I eased into this window of the day better. I yelled at the kids less. I got dinner made, done and survived until the kids got to bed. That doesn’t sound too bad does it?! But the latter... he can call it DEVASTATION and poison all he wants as that's true for many people. But he also insists that any and all alcohol doesn't taste good to anyone ever, and if we think it does we're just lying to ourselves. There are many straight spirits, beers and wine varietals that I find unpleasant or foul. But a lovely Scotch, herbal gin, sweet cabernet, or bourbon barrel aged beer can taste fantastic. My taste buds aren't lying to me - it's actually very enjoyable to consume. I don’t think this would work necessarily if someone just bought it for a gift for someone else. You can definitely come into it not necessarily wanting to give up alcohol and hoping that you can control it, and in fact you may be able to, but by the time you finish the book you probably won’t want to drink at all. I was familiar with Easyway and the method when I read the book in 2006 for quitting smoking. I had just turned 40 and had vowed to myself that if I didn’t quit, I was probably going to be a lifelong smoker and that terrified me. I already had 26 years under my belt.

If you think you might have a problem, which you clearly do if you're reading this review, then listen to this book! It seemed impossible to me to, but you will see what I mean.

Very hard to give this a star rating, I'd give the style of writing 2 stars but the message 4 or more if it truly works. National 12 month Clinical Trial finds Allen Carr’s Easyway almost twice as effective as other smoking cessation methods available on Health Service. Keogan, S., Li, S., Clancy L. (2018) Allen Carr’s Easyway to Stop Smoking – A randomised clinical trial. BMJ Tobacco Control, Issue 4 Volume 28 Can you picture the fly alighting on the plant as the teenager sampling their first shandy? Can you visualize the lager lout just about to throw up as the bloated fly before it tries to take off? And when the alcoholic can no longer close his eyes to the fact that his life is being dominated and ruined by drink, doesn’t he try to cut down and control his intake, rather like someone who is grossly overweight attempts to cut down on food. But does dieting make food appear less precious? Quite the contrary. The more you cut down, the more hungry you get, the hungrier you get the more deprived you feel, the more deprived you feel the more precious each morsel becomes. Exactly the same happens when you try to cut down on your drinking. At the times when you won’t allow yourself to drink, you feel miserable because you can’t drink, and when you do allow yourself to drink, you still feel miserable because you can’t drink enough. Aren’t the struggles of the fly similar to the abortive struggles of the alcoholic who is trying to control his intake? Drinking hasn’t become less precious to him. On the contrary, it now dominates his whole life. The more both the fly and the alcoholic struggle to escape, the more imprisoned they become. Are the semi-digested insects not comparable to the down-and-out meths drinkers of skid row, whose entire existence is now confined to begging or stealing the next fix, and trying to find somewhere warm to sleep off the effects? Does the fact that the fly can see the partially digested bodies prevent it from joining them? Who knows?” You can start a new, clean and healthy life, and all you need to do is attend an Allen Carr’s Easyway Centre. NICE guidance on treating tobacco dependence says that the Easyway in-person group seminar should be available through the NHS for adults who smoke..Evidence shows..[it is] cost effective and value for money for NHS. Tobacco: preventing uptake, promoting quitting and treating dependence NICE guideline [NG209]Cutting down doesn’t help, it just makes the booze seem more precious. The more you cut down, the hungrier you actually get and deprived you feel. After all, only 10% don’t fall into the trap, but once you understand how ingenious it is, you will wonder how anyone managed to avoid it. The fly was never in control! The moment it got a waft of the nectar, it was being controlled by the plant. That is the nature of the beast and it had no choice to follow the instincts. You were never in control! We defined an alcoholic as a drinker who has lost control, let’s adjust it to “A drinker who realizes that he is not in control” My problem was that when I wanted to lose weight and look at my overall health I COULDN’T give up those two glasses. I tried with will power but I was miserable and felt deprived. I became angry that ‘my little helper’ was gone. Life just didn’t seem worth it. Live Seminars (now also available via Zoom) remain the most powerful and effective way of using the method (the books and online video programme were created to help smokers who didn’t have access to the live seminars). I think one of the best things about this method vs the willpower method is I don’t constant want a drink. I have literally lost the desire to drink. Now do not get me wrong, there are times where I have had a bad day and could use a drink but I think that is more of what society has told us to do vs what my body actually wants. There are some really good points and new perspectives in this book that I honestly hadn't considered before. Unfortunately they are shadowed by some equally bad logic and absolutely absurd assertions, which makes it hard to trust the author even on the better content.