what genre would allen carr easy way to stop smoking be in

'But people don't like being told that they're going about something the wrong way. 'Allen enjoyed being controversial,' Hayley admits.

His last, posthumously published book was 1998's The Nicotine Conspiracy, in which he set out to expose 'the greatest scandal in the history of mankind': a collusion between governments and the pharmaceutical industry that resulted in expensive and ineffective nicotine-replacement therapies, rather than his own treatment, forming the cornerstone of the NHS's smoking-cessation strategy. 'We try to get away from that preachy, judgemental, white-coat image.' On top of which, the active ingredient in Carr's cure is a paradigm shift an upending of perceived wisdoms. 'We deliberately de-medicalise our method,' Hayley says. He's seen inside my soul.'Īs astute as he was on the matter of the smoker's psychology, however, it's possible Carr miscalculated during his initial efforts to spread the word. Meanwhile, in his office one road along from Harley Street, Robin Hayley, the managing director of Easyway, tells the story of an ex-smoker who'd read Carr's book and was offered the chance to meet the man himself, but trembled: 'Oh no, I couldn't. 'A lot of people who use the method to stop smoking have a real connection with Allen,' one of the company's directors, John Dicey, tells me in Easyway's unassuming flagship treatment centre in suburban south London. In fact, I hadn't enjoyed or depended upon cigarettes at all – I'd merely convinced myself otherwise so as to assuage the cognitive dissonance between the rational part of my brain, which knows smoking is an ill-advised, expensive and dangerous hobby, and the short-sighted, nicotine-addicted pre-mammalian parts of my brain that didn't care, and just wanted another cigarette.

What I discovered in its pages was a deeply shocking truth: that I'd neither enjoyed nor depended upon cigarettes to the extent I'd thought. But ask which book I most regularly recommend to others, or which has had the most significant influence on my thinking and lifestyle, and I'll have to admit that it's my well-thumbed charity-shop find The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently by the late Allen Carr – an extended recapitulation of his 11-million-selling 1985 hit The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. Without wishing to overgeneralise, people like me – well read, sceptical, snobbish – think that self-help manuals are lame and the people who read them are losers.

What genre would allen carr easy way to stop smoking be in