Who is Allen Carr?

Allen Carr – the savior of smokers

Allen Carr was born into a working-class family in London, England, in 1934.

As an athletic teenager, he was strongly opposed to smoking. Nevertheless, he began smoking at the age of 18, and by 1958, when he qualified as a chartered accountant, he could already be described as a chain smoker.

Allen Carr describes himself as someone who, on a bad day, would smoke up to five packs of cigarettes — but never less than three.

On one hand, he was a heavy smoker; on the other, he was also a “serial quitter,” as he called himself.

From his many attempts, he learned that quitting smoking is hard — but what’s truly exhausting is staying smoke-free and not starting again.

“Once, I managed to stay off cigarettes for six whole months of sheer hell,” he recalls.

“Eventually, I gave in and lit a cigarette. I’m not ashamed to admit I cried like a baby. I felt condemned to be a smoker for the rest of my life.”

Shortly after that traumatic experience, a series of events led to what Allen Carr describes as a moment of revelation:

“Suddenly, I realized that my smoking wasn’t because I was weak, or because cigarettes gave me such an amazing feeling I couldn’t live without them. It was a form of mental illusion — a trick of the mind — that made me believe cigarettes helped me cope with heartbreak and stress on one hand, and gave me pleasure on the other.”

“I understood,” says Carr,

“that in order to quit smoking, I had to address the root cause — the symptoms that make us want to smoke in the first place. Just thinking this way made me feel like a non-smoker for a few minutes. And once I truly grasped this simple truth, my desire to smoke vanished. From that moment on, I haven’t touched a cigarette. After years of struggle and repeated attempts to quit — I finally succeeded. And, honestly? Without suffering!”

“Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking”

Allen Carr founded the first “Easy Way to Stop Smoking” center in Wimbledon, England, in 1983.

From that point on, and for the next 23 years, he dedicated his life to guiding and teaching smokers how to quit through the method he developed.

His method was based on a one-time seminar that included regular smoking breaks and did not involve any medications, substitutes, or treatments.

As demand for the seminars grew, more centers were opened across the UK and worldwide. Today, the Allen Carr network includes over 150 centers in more than 50 countries.

In 2006, at the age of 71, Allen Carr was diagnosed with cancer. His family history did not work in his favor — his sister died at age 40 from lung cancer, and his father passed away from the same disease in his early fifties.

Carr, a philosophical thinker, used to say:

“If I hadn’t quit smoking, I would have died 20 years earlier. These last 23 years have been the happiest of my life — I wouldn’t change a thing!”

As The Economist so aptly described him:

“Allen Carr — the savior of smokers.”