Quit smoking guru Allen Carr: 'I have nine months to live'

By MOIRA PETTY, Daily Mail - Last updated at 11:07am on 14th August 2006

Allen Carr is philosophical. ‘I estimate I’ve cured 25 million smokers over the years,’ he says. ‘And if my illness is the price for that, it’s worth paying.’

Last month, Allen learned that he has squamous cell carcinoma, a form of lung cancer linked to nicotine intake.

The cancer has spread to his lymph nodes and ribs, and although Allen had hoped to keep the prognosis secret, he now admits it is ‘inoperable’.Publish Post

‘I have been given around nine months to live,’ he says. He plans to spend his last days promoting himself as an example of the foolhardiness of smoking — and the benefits of giving up the habit even relatively late in life.

‘It was a shock to start with, but the surprising thing was that I didn’t feel too upset,’ he says.

‘Smoking was virtually killing me 20-odd years ago. If I hadn’t given it up, I’m certain I would have died long ago. I see those extra years as the most marvellous bonus.’

He’s been told the tumour is the size of a bowling ball, but says he is not in any pain. ‘Suffering pain is my only fear, and if the illness gets to the stage where the pain cannot be controlled, I’ll nip over to Holland for euthanasia.’

For many years Allen, who will be 72 next month, has enjoyed reasonable health, apart from the occasional chest infection, the legacy of the 30-year habit that began when he was 18.

In February this year, while staying at his home in Spain (he also has a house in Surrey), he had a bad fall.

‘I don’t know how it happened, but I had been feeling a bit low. I landed flat on my back and found myself bleeding from the head. I was checked over at hospital, but then I began suffering excruciating headaches.’

Allen, who has been married to Joyce, his second wife, for 25 years, waited until he was back in the UK before seeking more treatment.

His GP referred him to Epsom General Hospital, where tests picked up a large shadow on his lungs. ‘I was aching all over the place, but the one thing that didn’t hurt was my lungs. Doctors found I had a very high calcium level in my body.’

Allen was suffering from hyper-calcaemia, or excess calcium, which was another clue that he had lung cancer. If the cancer has spread to the bones, the secondary tumours begin eroding bone mass, releasing calcium into the body.

In 30 per cent of patients with squamous cell carcinoma, the cancer produces a hormone, parathormone, which affects the body’s calcium levels.

After treating the hyper-calcaemia, the medical team turned to the tumour. It was, indeed, malignant.

‘In this case, there was no point operating. We had missed the boat,’ says Allen’s consultant, Dr Peter Mitchell-Heggs.

Instead, it was decided Allen would benefit from chemo-therapy. ‘If we can bring down the tumour’s size, it will produce fewer undesirable side effects,’ says Dr Mitchell-Heggs.

Allen’s father died of lung cancer in the Seventies, at the age of 56, when Allen was in his 30s. ‘When I was told I had lung cancer I felt so stupid, having watched my father die of the same disease. I thought back to the way he had suffered.’

Allen was at his father’s bedside as his six-month battle against lung cancer neared its end. ‘He was so brave and didn’t complain at all. He tried to say something to me. I put my ear close to him. He could hardly speak, but the message came through loud and clear: he wanted me to promise I would stop smoking.

‘I was so ashamed because I made that promise, and the minute I left the hospital I broke it by lighting up.’

Years later, his older sister, Marion, died of breast cancer at 56 — the same age as their father when he died.

‘She was ill for three years. I was in denial and couldn’t believe it was happening, so it came as a great shock to me when she died. She was such a robust person, I thought she’d get over it.’

By then, Allen was an evangelistic non-smoker, and the loss of his only sister — which he believes may have been hastened by her own smoking — spurred him on to spread the anti-nicotine message.

He had given up the habit on July 15, 1983, at 48, following many failed attempts.

‘The miracle is that I have survived as long as I have. I was smoking 100 cigarettes a day. The first thing I did in the morning was light up. A cigarette would be stuck to my lips all day.

‘I couldn’t understand why my friends could control it to ten or 20 a day while I smoked 100. The reason was the body becomes immune to all that nicotine, so you need more and more to get the same effect.

'I was a physical fitness addict when young, but my lungs got into such a state that I suffered regular bouts of bronchitis, asthma and smoker’s cough. I probably also had emphysema.’

On the morning Allen finally gave up smoking, a coughing fit brought on a nosebleed. ‘I was having them nearly every day.

‘That morning, the bleeding stopped and I reached for a cigarette. It started up again, and Joyce came to see why I hadn’t gone to work. I was a pathetic spectacle, blood pouring onto a cigarette that dangled from my lips.’

His wife persuaded him to see a hypnotherapist that day, but he found the session embarrassing. ‘We use hypnotherapy to relax people at our clinics, but they don’t do any of the exhibitionist stuff they used in that session.’

Later that evening, he began perusing a medical book with a chapter on the biochemistry of smoking. ‘At first it was all meaningless medical jargon. Then I reread it, and like one of those patterns you can’t see first time round, my eyes seemed to refocus and suddenly it made sense.

‘What I understood was that when nicotine leaves your body, it creates an empty, insecure feeling, and when you light a cigarette again, you feel confident. From that moment, I knew why I’d been addicted to smoking — and I knew I’d never do it again.’

Allen says what smokers need to understand is the fallacy behind their habit. He says that as nicotine leaves the body, it produces feelings of edginess and insecurity that smokers think can only be assuaged by another cigarette.

But rather than producing the feelgood factor that smokers claim, it is actually promoting the opposite. Once smokers have this confidence trick explained to them and accept it, most find it relatively easy to quit.

Allen says he felt almost instantly better after giving up.

‘Most of my smoking-related illnesses cleared up after six weeks, and within six months I ran two half-marathons in the same week. When I was smoking, I couldn’t even run around the block.’

Soon, he was preaching what he practised, teaching his method to smokers in one-to-one sessions. Initially, this was in tandem with his other work (he originally trained as a chartered accountant then went into business). But in 1984 he decided to concentrate on Easyway.

Last year, his clinics worldwide treated 45,000 smokers. Among the celebrities he has helped are Sir Anthony Hopkins, Sir Richard Branson, Charlotte Church, Martin Clunes and Ruby Wax.

His clinics charge £150-£200 for a four-hour session, and subsequent classes if necessary, with a three-month money-back guarantee if smokers fail to quit.

Allen had his first chemotherapy session last Thursday and was up bright and early the next day working on his new book, which traces the web that allegedly connects the nicotine and pharmaceutical industries as well as successive governments and the NHS.

‘When I have finished my book, I want to enjoy whatever time is left. We can continue my treatment in Spain, so we may spend time there as well. I also might have a few celebrations of my life while I’m still alive.’

He says that during his smoking years, he thought the habit ‘gave me courage’. In his final battle, he is proving he has plenty of courage without the need of a cigarette.

For more information on Allen Carr’s Easyway methods, go to www.allencarr.com. Allen Carr’s Easy Way To Stop Smoking is published by Penguin at £8.99.