The Growing Worldwide Stop Smoking Team – New Zealand

We are so fortunate to have so many incredible people within Allen Carr’s Easyway organisation across the world. Some smokers find it really hard to imagine being able to stop smoking easily as opposed to battling to give up smoking as they have done in the past.

It can often be interesting and inspiring for them to hear how our team around the world has been brought together. This is the next installment in a series of features that look at the journeys taken by members of Allen Carr’s Easyway To Stop Smoking Therapist team from being some of the most prolific and active smokers on the planet to becoming happy non-smokers and world-leaders in the field of stopping smoking.

Laurence Cooke, Allen Carr’s Easyway New Zealand writes:

I had my first cigarette at age 11. As a teenager I already knew I was hooked. I remember trying to quit by switching to clove cigarettes. But they just made my lips numb and made me feel deprived because I couldn’t have a “real” cigarette. That feeling of deprivation accompanied all of my quit attempts during my twenty plus years as a smoker, and it was the reason why I could never survive for long before caving in. In the end I became very good at avoiding the topic of quitting entirely. It was something I would definitely get around to one day … but the time was just never quite right.

Then one day I offered a friend of mine a smoke and he shocked me by telling me he’d quit smoking. It was the way he said it that struck me. He wasn’t saying “I’d love one, but I can’t, I’m trying to quit,” he just confidently announced “I quit. I read a book by a guy called Allen Carr. It was easy.”

I hadn’t heard anyone talk about quitting smoking like that (easily). I knew I had to get that book. But then the fear kicked in, the fear all smokers know, “but will I be able to enjoy life as much without my cigarettes? And how will I cope with all of the stress that I’m under? And will I suffer that feeling of deprivation again? Will I always suffer it?”. So stupidly I put it off and wasted another year in the nicotine prison.

Then in May 2004 I finally read Allen Carr’s Easyway to Stop Smoking. I felt elated when I finished the book and smoked my final cigarette. On the first night I went out for drinks, surrounded by my smoking colleagues. It felt so different this time; I just had no desire to smoke. Several drinks later still no cravings. When I woke the next day, I knew for certain I was free and I started recommending the book to others. I sent a copy to my brother who also stopped smoking immediately. Nine months later he required an urgent heart by-pass operation. Had he still been smoking, he would probably have been refused the operation.

It didn’t take long to dawn on me that Allen Carr saved his life, not to mention my life and the lives of millions of other smokers. Later, I applied to join the Easyway organization and now I consider it a privilege to be able to conduct the seminars in New Zealand.

Details of Laurence’s stop smoking seminars in New Zealand can be found on the Allen Carr’s Easyway New Zealand website

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For more information about how to get help to stop smoking with Allen Carr’s Easyway To Stop Smoking Clinics and how to find it easy to stop smoking rather than feeling like you have quit smoking (and feel deprived) click on your country’s flag at the top of this page. Did you find it easy to stop smoking rather than feeling like you had to give up smoking or sacrifice something? Maybe you could help to spread the word? Do you know of anyone who you would like to help stop smoking? Tell them about this feature and if they mention it when they book a session at any one of our stop smoking clinics across the world they can obtain a 10% discount (not valid in conjunction with any other offer or promotion).