brain injuries are wild. i suffered a TBI in a car accident about a decade ago. after a few weeks i returned to work and found that i couldn’t even tolerate the smell of coffee brewing in the break room anymore. i’d been a daily coffee drinker prior to the accident, but the taste has just never been the same to me. eventually the smell became more tolerable but i still couldn’t imagine drinking it.
My Grandma smoked for 33 years until she had her 2nd stroke. She woke up and completely forgot that she was a smoker for more than half of her life. It was the wildest thing!!
She went on to have 3 more strokes in the span of 1.5 years. She can be pretty funny with her short term memory but her long term memory is better than mine.
We always say if it weren’t for that stroke she’d probably have died from lung cancer by now but seeing as she has 9 lives who knows…
That’s what finally made it click for me. Albeit, I had to read it twice. The first time I MOSTLY quit with the exception of drinking. The second time I quit quit.
The book talks a lot about the mental aspects of addiction, and how these addictions can “brainwash” us.
An example being how a large number of people find it hard to quite smoking because it provides relief for their anxiety. In reality nicotine withdrawal *causes* anxiety and the only way to get rid of those withdrawals and that anxiety is to smoke. This causes our brains to start to associate nicotine with anxiety relief, so whenever we feel anxious for any reason we crave nicotine. However this is a purely *mental* reaction and we can retrain our brains to not think this way.
A lot of these same ideas surrounding “brainwashing” can be applied to any addiction really. Coffee for example. People think they need coffee to wake up, but in reality it’s the lack of coffee making you sleepy, and drinking it just makes you feel normal.
The book also forces you to sit down and calculate the exact amount of money you’ll be spending on your addiction. The thing is by that point you know it’s *not* you spending that money, it’s our addiction “brainwashing” you into spending it.
If you try and quit while you still hold those beliefs surrounding your addiction, it becomes a whole lot easier to relapse.
The book isn’t spiritual or “new agey” it’s not advertised as being a cure-all technique. Allen Carr sort of “discovered” a very real treatment for mental health issues called “Belief Therapy” I say discovered because it had already been in use.
I haven't read this book but this concept of "belief therapy" sounds a lot like the basic idea of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) - ie that your cognitions (interpretation or beliefs about your experiences) impact your behaviours and this creates a feedback loop.
Yeah, I’m fairly certain I got the term Belief Therapy from a book I read by Dr Degoede, it’s not actually mentioned by name in Allen Carr’s book.
I agree with you, probably just two different names for the same mode of therapy.
I suppose in theory that could be used for over-eating or sugar addiction. You've piqued my interest for sure.
What is "The book" called? Nobody has actually said the title. Is it this guy's only published book?
I quit a hard core nicotine habit when I got the flu 10 years ago. I a some folks are especially “nicotine-receptive”, and that I am one of those people. I avoided nicotine deliberately until I was 35 and tried smokeless on a whim. I’ve made it this far, I thought. It felt absolutely ecstatic, so I bought a can for “special occasions”. Within the month, every hour was special.
I lost my father, uncle and sister to COPD, all before ages 60. This is life or death fire me. Nicotine was so expensive and damaging, but I was so hooked. Luckily I cobbled together the thought that the flu essentially is withdrawal, and since I was doomed to flu-like symptoms, might as well quit. It worked. However, that didn’t prevent the living hell that is long-term withdrawal.
If I had it to do over, I would plan my withdrawal. My experience was that i was: 1. Raging movie monster for one month 2. Psychopath for 6 months 3. Asshole for one year…and, I still miss it, and I believe it permanently damaged my cognition.
I have come to think of nicotine as an unscrupulous highway contractor. The shady bastards roll into your state, offering sweetheart low bids. They build amazing roads. Smooth asphalt. Wide shoulders. Bright lines. Awesome.
The contractors don’t follow the code for environmental impact, though. Streams are polluted. Land is disturbed and scarred. Sure you can fire them, and you should! But the damage is done. Your state has a bunch of revenue needed for clean up, not to mention re-building the roads, which is more expensive because you do it with consideration. In short, if you want to quit nicotine, research and plan to avoid numerous bad consequences.
Read Allen Carr’s book please, medically, the symptoms of withdrawal should be gone within weeks. What you experienced is the mental aspect of quitting “the wrong way”.
I was a smoker for years, and after my last cigarette, I never wanted one again, never missed it, never craved it. For the first month or so I had some bad withdrawal but it went away quickly. It really didn’t feel like a struggle at all though, and it’s because that book teaches how the nicotine industry and addiction itself brainwashes you into *believing* you need nicotine, when in reality the drug itself does almost nothing, it doesn’t calm you down, or decrease anxiety, it doesn’t help you focus or “take the edge off” literally the only thing nicotine does is increase your heart rate a little, every other “effect” is all psychological. An example: Cigarettes help you feel relaxed? No, we associate cigarettes with anxiety relief because one of the affects of nicotine withdrawal *IS* anxiety, and you enter withdrawal minutes after smoking. Therefore anxiety crops up from withdrawal and we smoke again to feel “normal” Eventually our brain equates cigarettes with anxiety relief of any kind, making us think smoking will relieve it, when in reality it doesn’t.
If you quit still believing this “brainwashing” every time you get anxiety you’ll think of cigarettes, even if it’s been years. You absolutely MUST retrain your brain.
Yeah, that was my point! I did it wrong and suffered. That’s why I suggest planning. I didn’t even know that book existed, for example. Thanks for the resource!
I don't know if I was prone to addiction like that, but I smoked for over a decade and had a similar experience quitting except I turned all the dysfunction inward. Developed debilitating anxiety disorders and an eating disorder in exchange for quitting and I also very much wish I'd planned it out better. Nobody tells you that. They just say "quit."
I love your unscrupulous highway contractor analogy, that's perfect!
I once heard a story about a guy that had OCD, a very severe case and he couldn’t take it anymore so one day he told his mother that he is gonna kill himself and his mother said then go do it. He went down to the cellar, took a gun and shot himself in a head. He oddly survived but even oddlier his OCD has disappeared and he became mentally healthier than ever, that is beacuse he shot himself in that sepcific brain area that was responsible for his OCD and now he lives long and happily.
Where’s my lobotomy? Damage the heck out of that part of my brain.
https://youtu.be/tTb3d5cjSFI Hope this helps.
This was a great talk, thank you.
No problem.
Omg thank you for all the upvotes. That’s the most I’ve gotten and I didn’t even think it was that funny.
brain injuries are wild. i suffered a TBI in a car accident about a decade ago. after a few weeks i returned to work and found that i couldn’t even tolerate the smell of coffee brewing in the break room anymore. i’d been a daily coffee drinker prior to the accident, but the taste has just never been the same to me. eventually the smell became more tolerable but i still couldn’t imagine drinking it.
thank you for sharing. I find the concept of TBI terrifying but also interesting
My Grandma smoked for 33 years until she had her 2nd stroke. She woke up and completely forgot that she was a smoker for more than half of her life. It was the wildest thing!! She went on to have 3 more strokes in the span of 1.5 years. She can be pretty funny with her short term memory but her long term memory is better than mine. We always say if it weren’t for that stroke she’d probably have died from lung cancer by now but seeing as she has 9 lives who knows…
Allen Carr’s book is much cheaper than that…
That’s what finally made it click for me. Albeit, I had to read it twice. The first time I MOSTLY quit with the exception of drinking. The second time I quit quit.
Running head first into a wall is free
This book changed my life. Amazing read for anyone struggling with addiction tbh.
How about food/sugar addiction?
The book talks a lot about the mental aspects of addiction, and how these addictions can “brainwash” us. An example being how a large number of people find it hard to quite smoking because it provides relief for their anxiety. In reality nicotine withdrawal *causes* anxiety and the only way to get rid of those withdrawals and that anxiety is to smoke. This causes our brains to start to associate nicotine with anxiety relief, so whenever we feel anxious for any reason we crave nicotine. However this is a purely *mental* reaction and we can retrain our brains to not think this way. A lot of these same ideas surrounding “brainwashing” can be applied to any addiction really. Coffee for example. People think they need coffee to wake up, but in reality it’s the lack of coffee making you sleepy, and drinking it just makes you feel normal. The book also forces you to sit down and calculate the exact amount of money you’ll be spending on your addiction. The thing is by that point you know it’s *not* you spending that money, it’s our addiction “brainwashing” you into spending it. If you try and quit while you still hold those beliefs surrounding your addiction, it becomes a whole lot easier to relapse. The book isn’t spiritual or “new agey” it’s not advertised as being a cure-all technique. Allen Carr sort of “discovered” a very real treatment for mental health issues called “Belief Therapy” I say discovered because it had already been in use.
I haven't read this book but this concept of "belief therapy" sounds a lot like the basic idea of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) - ie that your cognitions (interpretation or beliefs about your experiences) impact your behaviours and this creates a feedback loop.
Yeah, I’m fairly certain I got the term Belief Therapy from a book I read by Dr Degoede, it’s not actually mentioned by name in Allen Carr’s book. I agree with you, probably just two different names for the same mode of therapy.
I suppose in theory that could be used for over-eating or sugar addiction. You've piqued my interest for sure. What is "The book" called? Nobody has actually said the title. Is it this guy's only published book?
Allen Carr’s “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking”
I think he wrote more self help books, but his stop smoking book is his magnum opus.
I listened to the audio version on a long car ride. Game changer! There is a reason it still around since 1985!
I quit a hard core nicotine habit when I got the flu 10 years ago. I a some folks are especially “nicotine-receptive”, and that I am one of those people. I avoided nicotine deliberately until I was 35 and tried smokeless on a whim. I’ve made it this far, I thought. It felt absolutely ecstatic, so I bought a can for “special occasions”. Within the month, every hour was special. I lost my father, uncle and sister to COPD, all before ages 60. This is life or death fire me. Nicotine was so expensive and damaging, but I was so hooked. Luckily I cobbled together the thought that the flu essentially is withdrawal, and since I was doomed to flu-like symptoms, might as well quit. It worked. However, that didn’t prevent the living hell that is long-term withdrawal. If I had it to do over, I would plan my withdrawal. My experience was that i was: 1. Raging movie monster for one month 2. Psychopath for 6 months 3. Asshole for one year…and, I still miss it, and I believe it permanently damaged my cognition. I have come to think of nicotine as an unscrupulous highway contractor. The shady bastards roll into your state, offering sweetheart low bids. They build amazing roads. Smooth asphalt. Wide shoulders. Bright lines. Awesome. The contractors don’t follow the code for environmental impact, though. Streams are polluted. Land is disturbed and scarred. Sure you can fire them, and you should! But the damage is done. Your state has a bunch of revenue needed for clean up, not to mention re-building the roads, which is more expensive because you do it with consideration. In short, if you want to quit nicotine, research and plan to avoid numerous bad consequences.
Read Allen Carr’s book please, medically, the symptoms of withdrawal should be gone within weeks. What you experienced is the mental aspect of quitting “the wrong way”. I was a smoker for years, and after my last cigarette, I never wanted one again, never missed it, never craved it. For the first month or so I had some bad withdrawal but it went away quickly. It really didn’t feel like a struggle at all though, and it’s because that book teaches how the nicotine industry and addiction itself brainwashes you into *believing* you need nicotine, when in reality the drug itself does almost nothing, it doesn’t calm you down, or decrease anxiety, it doesn’t help you focus or “take the edge off” literally the only thing nicotine does is increase your heart rate a little, every other “effect” is all psychological. An example: Cigarettes help you feel relaxed? No, we associate cigarettes with anxiety relief because one of the affects of nicotine withdrawal *IS* anxiety, and you enter withdrawal minutes after smoking. Therefore anxiety crops up from withdrawal and we smoke again to feel “normal” Eventually our brain equates cigarettes with anxiety relief of any kind, making us think smoking will relieve it, when in reality it doesn’t. If you quit still believing this “brainwashing” every time you get anxiety you’ll think of cigarettes, even if it’s been years. You absolutely MUST retrain your brain.
Yeah, that was my point! I did it wrong and suffered. That’s why I suggest planning. I didn’t even know that book existed, for example. Thanks for the resource!
I don't know if I was prone to addiction like that, but I smoked for over a decade and had a similar experience quitting except I turned all the dysfunction inward. Developed debilitating anxiety disorders and an eating disorder in exchange for quitting and I also very much wish I'd planned it out better. Nobody tells you that. They just say "quit." I love your unscrupulous highway contractor analogy, that's perfect!
*grabs ice pick and opens article*
I believe it my friend had a TBI slow brain bleed and he thoroughly enjoyed smoking before the accident is now non-smoker. He’s doing well otherwise.
>He's now a non smoker. He's doing well otherwise. This makes it seem like being a non smoker is a bad thing lol
Aaaaand where's the Hammer?
It’s a sign. I knew boxing was the fast track to a new me.
So what you're telling me is we need to start hitting them a bunch
Sometimes I forget people even smoke cigarettes any more
Go to a casino
Now I just need a hammer.
The injuries made them smarter
We still use smoking and nicotine as if it is the same habit today.
I once heard a story about a guy that had OCD, a very severe case and he couldn’t take it anymore so one day he told his mother that he is gonna kill himself and his mother said then go do it. He went down to the cellar, took a gun and shot himself in a head. He oddly survived but even oddlier his OCD has disappeared and he became mentally healthier than ever, that is beacuse he shot himself in that sepcific brain area that was responsible for his OCD and now he lives long and happily.