Easy Way to Stop Smoking

I'm not a smoker and never have been. But I'd heard great things about this book from lots of ex-smoker friends, all of whom said they'd read this and it had instantly turned off for them the need to smoke. INTERESTING. I've had some similar experiences in the past with addictions that just turned off one day; I was curious to see if my mental techniques for dealing with that were the same things Carr advocates here.

The psychology is fun to watch without having any stake in the game. Carr spends the whole book painting his past self as the most pitiful smoker of all time — I suppose so smokers don't feel like they're being lecture to by a non-smoker. Simultaneously, he brooks no positive feels about smoking. He calls it things like “the choking poison” and “that evil weed.” He gets people to focus on all of the terrible aspects of it, in very visceral language, and I imagine people walk away from it being disgusted with tobacco and being a smoker.

It's a pretty fascinating study, really.