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Has anyone read this book? and if so did it help? I
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Seems mixed reviews in the community (I haven't read it), some people say it's useless snakeoil, others swear by it and say it was their key to sobriety.
Kinda what i've seen online, figured id ask here 🤷. Ill update this post when I finish it.
I've read "The Easy Way to Control Alcohol", is that the same book?
If so, it was very good, definitely not snake oil. I'd say not as good as 'Alcohol Explained' by William Porter or 'This Naked Mind' by Annie Grace, but still good.
I believe that Allen Carr's best book was 'The Easy Way to Quit Smoking', and he just sort of copied over the technique to alcohol. As he wasn't actually addicted to alcohol (but to nicotine yes), the alcohol book wasn't quite 100%, and there were even a few errors in it. But even so, I still found it legit and very helpful.
All the good quit lit books help you change your mindset, so as not to rely on willpower alone. They do this by busting common myths and lies about alcohol, using facts, data, info, science, etc.
Yes allan carr has one for smoking and one for alcohol, i kinda figured they'd be one and the same but for different substances. And I will have to check out the others you mentioned once i finish this one. Thank You!
If you read carefully where he talks about the extent of his own use, it becomes clear that he probably had quite a problem.
On one hand, I like his approach of obliterating all the rationalizations we have for drinking (or smoking): It does very little of the many positive things we more or less consciously attribute it the power to do.
He does ignore the fact that there ARE positives to our substances/behaviors of "choice:" In fact, they were probably adaptive at one point.
He focuses extremely on the addiction as biochemical phenomenon, too, and manages to lay out a sort of alternative version of the highly dubious disease model of addiction.
He also implants the idea of loss of control and places great importance on your last drink (or cigarette) being the last!
It seems there's no intent on his part of dealing with the common reality of relapses, other than to imagine they're simply not a thing, if you follow his method.
His "success rate" is based on how many people go to his courses and stay clean... but he counts everyone who doesn't turn up for 3 follow up courses, if they lapse or relapse, as clean, too. Ahem.
For me, "The Easyway to Quit Smoking" worked great. His book applying that method to alcohol? Not so much. When I lapsed after 7 months, I had really integrated the idea, that this would necessarily drag me back into prolonged, sustained, increasing use...
...and so I needlessly dragged myself into exactly that situation, wasting years in the process.
His final drink/final cigarette chapters would and should make anyone who's studied the vast scientific literature on addiction run away screaming.
Can his method work? Sure, but it also sets a person up for a momentous crash, loss of control, and escalation of use if they have just one drink or one cigarette.
So don't, he'd say. And yeah, that's fine. But for the majority, recovery involves relapses - sometimes a few, sometimes countless.
Any model of addiction recovery, that fails to provide a strategy for dealing with relapses, is harmful.
Yes, those are all valid points. I hadn't analyzed the book so deeply. Like I said, for me the book was ok, but not great. Not as as good as 'Alcohol Explained' by William Porter and TNM by Annie Grace, which were (and still are) fundamental for me to stay stopped:)
Because I had quit smoking so effortlessly using that book of his, I went all in on his book on alcohol and really integrated that stuff.
I don't want to lay all the blame on Allen Carr here, of course, but if I had opted for a different approach to what was a very minor alcohol problem (binging on weekends during journalism school, living in a dorm, usually getting too drunk when I drank), I think I might have fared better in the following years.
Preemptively sending myself into what turned out to be a 12 steps based rehab 6 months after relapsing from the Carr method - still with a very minor problem - didn't help things either. There I was a "high bottom drunk, in denial, had to be broken down, probably lied about the extent of my use," and so on.
No one around me believed I had an alcohol problem, not family, not friends... but my dad did, and messed my childhood up with that and benzos, so I thought I'd take radical measures early on. Probably not the best idea it turns out.
It's kind of odd that being hypochondriac or over-dramatizing one's own alcohol use is actually possible, and even more absurd that I made that into a route into full-blown alcohol addiction much later one. Actually exaggerated my drinking to get my work (bank cunts) to pay for rehab lol.
I'm atypical, it seems. Those don't fit in 12 steps so well.
So Carr for quitting smokes? Sure.
For alcohol, though? Hell no, at least not as a comprehensive method; possibly for inspiration, though.
Wish I had known about SMART Recovery back in 2007! Could've potentially defused the whole thing... but that's of course all counter-factual history writing. Good or bad, you never know!
https://jadepanugan.medium.com/the-story-of-the-chinese-farmer-by-alan-watts-b9ca01a16b47
Excuse my rambling. Never really told that story before, because it's absurdly unbelievable, and probably also unnecessary.
I’ll be honest I read the glowing reviews and was like “haha yeah right”, but gave it a shot. And damn I think it got me good. I’d never attribute my sobriety to it 100% but it really helped to reframe sobriety as breaking free from the chains of addiction, rather than feeling condemned to alcoholism/sobriety, if that makes sense. Most importantly though, it will only be effective if you want it. I mean, really want it. If I had read it ant a different time in my life I probably wouldn’t have gotten anything out of it. And dont just read the book and call it done. Still seek out personal and group support. For me, it was just another tool in my toolbelt, next to therapy, AA and mindfulness practices
Thank you for this. This was kind of my mindset when buying it. No matter how good the book is or isn't wont matter if I don't truly want it for myself.
Carr and a bunch of other books folks have reported to be helpful:
https://www.reddit.com/r/stopdrinking/wiki/books#wiki_books_and_literature
IWNDWYT 'cause sober life is quite splendid!
Oh wow did not know this existed! Thank you very much!
Fantastic Wiki/Faq overall!
I read it after I got sober. There's certainly useful insights in the book and it's worth a read.
First, it is important that I be weary of any book or person that says to ignore all other advice besides their own. Not even AA took such a dogmatic approach toward me, which many people find to be "culty". Carr does this unapologetically.
I think the effectiveness of Carr's book depends on if you are a heavy drinker or an alcoholic. If you would benefit from a better understanding of the trap of addiction/heavy drinking, the book could have much benefit.
Also Carr wasn't an alcoholic, but a chain smoker. To the extent the advice regarding these addiction applies to both, the advice is sound. I like his section on why FOMO doesn't do you any good, but is actually kind of manufactured by society. To the extent the addictions differ, the advice is horrible, such as his section on WDs. WDs are *much* more serious for alcohol than almost any other drug, especially nicotine.
Carr sold these books for profit, so he's likely trying to reach the largest audience he can. There's more heavy drinkers in the world than full blown alcoholics, so I recognize I'm probably not the intended audience. If it get heavy drinkers to quit, I very much like and support the book.
But as an alcoholic, I had already tried Carr's method through trial and error before ever reading his book and without knowing it. In my desperate attempts to quit for good, I had already furthered my understanding of alcoholism beyond what Carr wrote.
I listened to the audiobook on Spotify as it's free to premium users. It really helped me to understand some 'why's I was asking myself about quitting and how I got to the point I did. I had my first drink-free day in months after finishing it. It's by no means a miracle solution, but it was helpful for me.
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Will do i ordered it last night and am waiting for it to come in the mail.
The smoking one absolutely works. Im going to give the drinking one a try soon.