I occasionally get asked questions about the similarities about my materials and Allen Carr’s programs. I am setting up this page as a standard reply.

If you check my page My work in the field of smoking prevention and cessation you will see that I started in the field of smoking prevention in the early 1970’s and started conducting my Stop Smoking Clinics in 1976. My core program and philosophy were pretty well established by 1978. Allen Carr quit smoking in 1983 and I believe sometime shortly after that wrote his first book and developed his program.

I didn’t see a copy of Allen Carr’s book until 2002. Up to that time his book was never widely distributed in the United States and I had never heard of Carr until 1999 when I started using the Internet.

When I started seeing his name on the Internet I was curious if he had seen my materials but from the quick look I had at the book in 2002 I got the sense that he had pretty much came up with a similar philosophy in the same way I did—really watching smokers quit.

If you listen to successful ex-smokers close enough and long enough you can pick up the similarities in their approach. Most long term ex-smokers have never heard of either of us or any other expert yet they have learned from experience or in some cases just seem to instinctively know how to quit and how to stay off.

Many ex-smokers will say from time to time that they still have moments where they would “kill for a cigarette,” but at the same time know that in reality, taking a cigarette would kill their quits and that losing their quit would likely end up killing them. This self learned knowledge it what is keeping their quits going.

I always tell people that they should learn from the experts when it comes to smoking cessation. The experts who should be seen as credible are not the Joel Spitzer’s or the Allen Carr’s of the world, but the real people who you know in your real world who are long-term successful quitters.

The more you listen to the real ex-smoker you know in your real world as well as to the current smokers you know who have lost long-term quits the more obvious it will be that they way to quit smoking and then to stay free is by staying totally committed to Never Take Another Puff!

Related resources:

• Discussing other books at Freedom
• How I started in the field of smoking prevention and cessation
• Articles about Joel Spitzer

Video discusses how I originally got into the field of smoking prevention and cessation and links over to my website with pages set up describing my professional bio, personal story and links to articles that describe my work in the field over the past 43 years.

Related resources:

• How I started running quit smoking clinics
• Why I no longer conduct stop smoking clinics
• Breaking free from nicotine’s grip is more doable than most people think
• What programs do I recommend
• Are people doomed to fail if they don’t get professional help to quit smoking?
• Why my resources are free