The Growing Worldwide Team – Netherlands

We are so fortunate to have such a great team of people within the global Allen Carr’s Easyway organisation. Smokers who want to find out how to stop smoking easily sometimes find it really hard to imagine that it is possible. They are so used to previous attempts to quit smoking ending up feeling like a huge never-ending battle that leaves them feeling miserable. In looking for a stop smoking method, it can often be inspiring for them to hear how our team around the world has been brought together. This is another 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 smokers on the planet to becoming happy non-smokers and world-leaders in the field of stopping smoking.

Petra Kruijt, Allen Carr’s Easyway To Stop Smoking Netherlands writes:



I smoked my first cigarette when I was 12 years old, first clas of secondary school. Everybody know how that goes…..secretly, exciting, and oh so dirty! My friend and I bought a package a day and smoked that together, but soon I needed a package a day on my own. I was very prone to sinus infections and needed several antibiotics a year and eventually surgery, but I never realised that my smoking caused all this misery.

At the age of 23 I was a policewoman in the centre of Amsterdam and so I had a job with a lot of stress, danger and pressure and so I had enough reason for to ‘justify’ to continue smoking.

On my 29th I got pregnant and I tried to quit but unfortunately I did not succeeded. I lived in constant fear and guilt that time and and I so was not able to enjoy my pregnancy. I’m incredibly lucky that I gave birth to a very healthy, beautiful daughter but it could very well be otherwise!!

During my life I have numerous stop smoking attempts that all failed. I used nicotine gum, pads, tried acupuncture, visited a docter but all in vain. I read Allen Carr’s book and that helped me quit………….but unfortunately not for long. By now I was completely desperate and gave up the hope that I was capable to quit smoking.

A few years later, with fear and trembling I finally made an appointment with Eveline de Mooij at the Allen Carr’s Easyway clinic in Amsterdam. And on that day, now 7 years ago, I smoked my last cigarette.

It’s almost impossible to describe how happy I was and how easy it was. Now I know better. I now understand very well what the difference was between my decision to quit seven years ago and all these attempts that were unsuccessful before.

I was so confident and so enthusiastic about the Easyway that I wanted nothing more than become a therapist myself. A few weeks later I had an interview with the Dutch therapist Eveline and one year later I had my first session.

I’ve had various jobs during my working life, but my job as Allen Carr therapist still makes me happy every day!

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Petra works as a therapist at Allen Carr’s Easyway stop smoking clinics in the Netherlands Here are contact details for all our quit smoking centres worldwide.