Un-addiction the Easyway!
Un-addiction the Easyway!
It seems churlish not to start the New Year the traditional way, with some thoughts on unhooking ourselves from the products that we wish we weren’t quite so dependent on - like vapes, cigarettes, booze, ultra-processed food, gambling, social media or computer games!
And who better to ask about that than the CEO of the most successful un-addiction company in the world, Allen Carr’s Easyway. They have helped millions of people, sold more than 20 million books, and helped hundreds of thousands of smokers quit via their live seminars, which have a 90% success rate on the day – all mainly through word of mouth. The system works so well that live seminars of Allen Carr’s EasyWay to Quit Smoking are now available free to smokers on the NHS.
Regular readers will know it’s not like me to puff up a commercial company, but today I am making an exception! We first came across their approach when Joe was making his Vaping Dilemma film and wanted to send people somewhere useful and positive if they wanted help to stop. The NHS website only offered guidance for smokers on how to start vaping, so we were very relieved when we discovered The EasyWay to Quit Vaping written by John Dicey and team, based in the unassuming South London suburb of Raynes Park.
When we read it in full, followed by the EasyWay to Quit Smoking, and saw the stats on their success rates, we were intrigued. Unlike UK government policy which focuses on pharmacological approaches, and even gold standard services like Alcoholics Anonymous which advocate a lifelong commitment, the EasyWay claims to work after just one 6-hour seminar, or for many just one reading of a book. Many celebs are vocal converts, such as actor Antony Hopkins, Businessman Richard Branson, comedian Lee Mack and Newsreader Krishnan Guru-Murthy and if you can’t quit after the seminar, you get your money back!
We wanted to know, how does this actually work? Dealing with addiction is supposed to be hard and they are making it seem, err, easy!
We were invited to visit John in Raynes Park and he kindly agreed to this Q&A article to talk us through the process of un-addiction without pharmaceuticals and without a backward glance. We are focusing here on vaping and smoking as that’s our current focus, but they have books and seminars on many other addictions too.
John, thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me about your special approach to un-addiction. Let’s start with the most obvious question:
How do you manage to have people quit their addictions without a backward glance, when it is supposed to be so hard?
Most addiction programmes focus on willpower – pitting the addict’s will against their compulsion to take the drug. An emphasis is often placed on highlighting the professional, social, relationship, and physical damage caused by the addiction. This is generally counterproductive because it generates guilt, fear, and stress which most addicts respond to by…taking the drug to which they’re addicted. Addicts already know and understand the downsides of their predicament – they don’t need telling again and again. Instead, Allen Carr’s Easyway focuses not on the arguments against taking the drug, but on the other side of the equation, what’s so great about taking it?
The method dismantles all the individual arguments “for” taking the drug. The addict realises they are a victim of a flawed belief system created and nurtured by the physical and mental process of addiction. If the arguments “for” taking the drug are stripped away – becoming valueless (a process, we call cognitive reconfiguration) then the need for huge amounts of willpower is eradicated, along with the sense of deprivation an addict feels when they pit their willpower against an addiction they don’t understand.
Easyway effectively helps addicts rewire their own brain – restoring it to its pre-addicted condition. They simply don’t see the value of using the product again.
But nicotine, for example, is supposed to be one of the most addictive substances there is, what about the chemical hook and the withdrawal cravings?
It’s perfectly consistent to say that nicotine is one of the most highly addictive substances on the planet – whilst also maintaining that it can be easy to escape from the addiction…as long as you understand how the addiction works.
Nicotine’s strength is in the speed with which it hooks its victims, one puff of a cigarette, cigar, or vape is all it can take. Another strength is the subtlety with which it addicts people. The physical withdrawal is so slight, most addicts are not aware that they’re addicted until they attempt to stop and realise that they cannot.
During the initial, often lengthy period of blissful ignorance, (in advance of the addict’s first quit attempt), they subconsciously begin to believe that nicotine does make them feel better each time they smoke or vape. When they smoke or vape, rather than realising that the slight sense of relief they experience is simply the ending of a barely noticeable, mildly dissatisfied feeling (caused by nicotine withdrawal) they associate the sense of partial relief as adding something to the social occasion, a cup of coffee, a drink in a pub, or the easing of their general stress level. The longer they remain addicted – the more powerful this phoney belief system appears to be.
The belief system develops every time the addict attempts to quit…they confuse the craving caused by their brain’s flawed belief that they have “given up” something which enhanced every aspect of their lives (an entirely mental process) with the physical withdrawal from nicotine – which remains extremely mild even amongst heavy smokers/vapers.
So it’s not about whether or not you have enough will power?
No. When they attempt to quit – most nicotine addicts brace themselves in the hope that they can battle the temptation to smoke or vape – not realising that the driver of the battle is entirely mental. The habit of having a vape as they join friends in a pub, step off a bus or take a break from work can trigger this thought process causing immense discomfort, as can the mild sense of nicotine withdrawal. It’s the mental process that causes physical discomfort – not nicotine withdrawal. Remember the physical discomfort caused by a spoilt child whose toy is suddenly taken away: red face, bulging eyes, high blood pressure, a horrible wailing sound coming out of their mouths!
Once a nicotine addict understands how their moods, feelings, emotions, and behaviour has been manipulated, mainly by a flawed belief system – and that it is easy to dismantle that belief system – they are left with the mild, barely noticeable feeling of nicotine withdrawal to deal with.
Every time they experience a moment when they remember that they previously smoked or vaped – it becomes a moment of enjoyment and celebration of an addiction free life, instead of a moment of concern or struggle.
We were intrigued by the feeling of freedom that many people talk about. We’ve been amazed just how many friends, or people we randomly speak to, have given up smoking or vaping with your programme. They are all so keen to tell us how great it is, and so many say that for the first time they felt ‘free’ from the mental health aspects as well as the physical aspects of their addiction. The opposite of the gritty battle with one’s will power that most quitting or dieting systems promote.
As a former chainsmoker this is what was such a revelation to me. I’d tried so many times to quit using willpower methods: cold turkey, patches, gum, herbal remedies, and aversion therapy to name just a few, it genuinely felt like a miracle! How could something that had previously been impossible, painful, and tortuous suddenly become so easy? When addicts realise that everything they do is controlled by a drug over which they appear to have no control it destroys their self-respect, self-esteem, their entire sense of self. Suddenly becoming free from that life sentence is incredibly empowering and joyous – quite aside from escaping the health fears and expense.
One of the important aspects of the EasyWay method is that you carry on vaping or smoking throughout the session and then have your final ritual one at the end. This is almost counterintuitive, but I saw Dr Chris Van Tulleken and Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel 4 agreeing this is just the way his own book on the addictive qualities of Ultra Processed Foods could be approached - tell us why that’s a good idea.
Yes, we’re really grateful to former smokers who quit with the method and are happy to talk about it – all our celebrity endorsements are entirely unsolicited and unpaid.
Carrying on smoking or vaping while you are progressing through the method is important. Towards the end of the programme the flawed belief system that keeps an addict trapped is entirely dismantled – it collapses like a house of cards. Trying to quit before that point would be problematic and rely on an element of willpower.
Chris Van Tulleken is right – we use the same process with all our programmes including the one for sugar and carb addiction (which majors on Ultra Processed Foods)
We liked the way you explore with participants how companies manipulate our belief systems as an intrinsic part of your method. Our research about vaping with young people for our Vaping Dilemma film showed that knowledge of how they were being manipulated was an important trigger for many of them to rethink. Tell us more about that.
Yes, this is all very deliberate on the part of companies. There is already lots of misinformation and manipulation surrounding vaping propagated by the nicotine industry: it’s harmless, fun, stylish, sophisticated, sexy, social, relaxing, rebellious, grown up, helps with stress, helps with focus/concentration, tastes good, smells good, and it’s buzzy – all nonsense, and exactly the misinformation being peddled when I cured my first ever nicotine addict of cigarettes in 1998. It all adds up to a lifetime of slavery, depriving the addict and their family of their happiness, freedom and wealth.
We expose the elements of manipulation and show how this is deliberately designed to create a false belief that nicotine is providing a benefit people can’t live without. When they are freed from this mental baggage people no longer wish to take part in the charade.
Understanding how the addiction economy works is important and is why I think your work is so incredibly valuable in shining a light on it.
We were surprised how much our own belief systems hamper us until we read your work. In fact, we were speculating from our research that things like warning signs ‘Nicotine is Addictive’ on vaping packs could work in the companies favour by actually increasing our belief that we are addicted and can’t do anything about it. Do you agree? We thought it was odd they embraced them so easily!
Certainly, the extent to which smokers or vapers are constantly told that quitting is very, very hard, the more powerful the flawed belief system appears
In our live seminars we examine how health warnings on cigarette packs were exploited by tobacco companies. Not just the warnings but the images they were deliberately paired with. My favorite example is the B & H “Mobile”.
We ask the clients what the picture is...wait for them to recognise it as a baby's mobile....ask them where a baby's mobile normally hangs...wait for them to answer - that it hangs above a baby's cot...ask them what happens if the packet of cigarettes is taken away...wait for them to answer that everything falls on the baby...it’s appalling.
Then we highlight the health warning that the tobacco company chose to use with the image...even more appalling. We then point out that this advert was placed opposite the page of a women's magazine feature highlighting the dangers of smoking whilst pregnant and that (at the time) the tobacco industry actually targeted specific pages in certain magazines when they covered certain issues.
It's an old example but still resonates even with young smokers and vapers. The same strategy and micro-targeting is being used now on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, for the same purpose.
In essence, escaping addiction is a little like being trapped in a room with a combination lock standing in the way of freedom…if a 10 number combination is required to open the lock, then the addict might get free by repeatedly entering random combinations of numbers - but the chances of success are slim, the task appears impossible, and each failed attempt becomes increasingly disheartening. However, something that appears impossible can suddenly become extremely easy, when you are given the correct numbers, in the correct sequence.
We will be doing more on that interaction between belief systems and addiction in the future, but to focus for a minute on vaping in the UK now - I have been reading your blogs and you warned about vaping, and describing almost exactly how the market has played out, from 2011 onwards and were totally ignored, which must be very depressing. Why do you think that is?
It is a tragedy and a predictable one at that. How did it happen? I think it’s a horrible example of confirmation bias – defined as “the tendency of people to favor information that confirms or strengthens their beliefs or values and is difficult to dislodge once affirmed”.
For more than 30 years nicotine has been considered by the key decision and policymakers as the silver bullet for helping smokers to quit. When nicotine patches and gum disappointed, they decided that the problem was that the addict wasn’t getting enough nicotine, frequently or efficiently enough. The harm reduction objectives were understandable, but anyone with any knowledge of how the addiction industry works knew that young people would be the primary targets…and that’s exactly what happened. And it happened quickly. The early warnings of kids taking up vaping – even as recently as a year or two ago - were dismissed as hysteria – even when the US Surgeon General announced an epidemic of vaping amongst the young.
You don’t have to be a medical expert to know that near constant, repeated inhalation of vapour containing a host of unregulated, unpleasant ingredients is bad news – yet those tasked with protecting the nation’s health left our children entirely unprotected from the vaping industry and even today they reject the notion of plain packaging in the belief that it might deter adult smokers from switching from cigarettes to vapes. Since 2011 it’s been a nicotine ‘gold rush’ and the biggest victims of it can be found in our schools, youth clubs, bars, and clubs.
For more than 10 years we’ve been helping former smokers and young vaping addicts to get free from nicotine addiction and it should be noted that we haven’t sought them out, we haven’t attracted them with any fear-mongering marketing campaigns…they approach us for help.
It’s quite the opposite of the claims that vaping nicotine is no more worrying than having a cup of coffee. Vapes were deliberately allowed to be easily available, sexily, stylishly, aspirationally marketed, advertised, and packaged in the name of helping smokers quit. How anyone thought kids wouldn’t be attracted to them is a mystery…or maybe they just didn’t care.
But all this is not just theory for you John is it. You gave up smoking because of a live Allen Carr seminar, left your job and joined Allen and the company. A great story! What was the trigger that made you see this as something worthy of devoting your life to?
I was so surprised and elated to have finally become free from smoking it really was a revelation. I honestly thought I’d be a smoker for the rest of my life and only really attended the live seminar to prove to my wife that it wouldn’t work. I told her I’d give it a go, as long as when it didn’t work, she’d let me smoke in peace for at least another year! No-one was more surprised than me that it worked. It was so easy, and I just felt compelled to get in touch with Easyway to see if I could help in any way. I was so grateful and inspired to help Allen’s mission and I am incredibly honoured to have worked so closely with him and played a part in helping so many addicts across the world to freedom.
It’s an inspiration to talk to you and hear about your work. Thank you very much John Dicey for your time.
If anyone wants to know more about Allen Carr’s EasyWay and this and other areas of addiction they help people with - alcohol, gambling, ultra-processed foods, phone addiction, cannabis and more - in live group seminars, videos, books and one-to-one, take a look at their website www.allencarr.com.