Podcast 4
The show is hosted by Colleen Dwyer, a senior Allen Carr’s Easyway facilitator who is joined by Ty Gray El – Internationally Renown Poet and Author
Available from wherever you get your favourite podcasts https://www.allencarr.com/podcasts/#subscribe
Featuring Ty Gray El – Internationally Renown Poet and Author
Please click the video below to watch the podcast
In this episode of Allen Carr’s Easyway podcast, John Dicey and Colleen Dwyer are hearing from listeners who have been in contact with questions including –
· Why do we use the term quitting when Allen Carr was against using this phrase
· Does the book work the second time around?
Ty Gray El also joins the conversation and shares his history with smoking and heroin addiction and how he quit drinking with Allen Carr’s Easyway book.
If you’d like your questions answered drop us a line on pod@allencarr.com with whatever you’d like to say or any questions that you have.
Hi, and thanks for joining us on Allen Carr’s Easyway podcast.
I’m Colleen Dwyer.
I’m a senior Allen Carr’s Easyway facilitator.
I’m the presenter of our series of online video programs and your podcast host.
It’s great to have you back and I’m looking forward to sharing some inspiring insights into the revolutionary method developed by Allen Carr.
We offer an approach that helps people overcome their addictions without the need for willpower
or substitutes.
We begin with our addiction Central segment and regular contributor John Dicey the global CEO of Allen Carr’s Easyway, who is also the co-author of Allen Carr
Books and a senior Allen Carrs, facilitator who has helped literally millions of addicts to freedom over the last 25 years.
John and I are hearing from listeners who’ve contacted us with questions,including Why do we use the term quitting?
When Allen Carr’s against using this phrase and does the book work the second time around?
If you’d like your questions answered, drop us a line on pod@allencarr.com with whatever you’d like to say
or any questions that you have.
And we’re also joined today by Tigre El, who is an internationally renowned storyteller and author, activist, poet, playwright and public speaker.
It was so interesting to hear Ty talking about his history with smoking and heroin addiction and how he quit alcohol with Allen Carr’s
book.
He’s got a great voice and he’s a fascinating character and I’m sure you’re going to enjoy the conversation.
If you have any questions or comments about any addictions or about the podcast.
Please get in touch.
And even if we don’t actually feature your question and a future episode of the podcast, we will personally reply to every single question we receive, providing you with detailed advice and guidance.
So don’t forget, get in touch on pod@allencarr.com and do also check out www.allencarr.com and there you’ll see the host of Addictions and Issues, Allen Carr’s Easyway has now been applied to.
So let’s get started here I am talking with John Dicey
Hello, John. Good to see you again.
So we have three questions from three listeners today and I’ll start off with Jasper, who is in London in the UK.
Jasper says, Why do we use the word quit in the book titles now when historically Allen Carr
was always against using it, i.e. you’re not quitting or giving in to anything.
What do you say to that John?
Well, this is great, isn’t it?
Because we have we should have full disclosure here.
We’ve kind of emailed about this this morning and we’ve come up some really interesting stuff because this question, it comes up a lot on our social media.
And I, you know, I work with Allen, you work closely with Allen as well. I always got the impression somewhere along the line that the quit was one of those sort of words we want to avoid if we can really.
And I think that that does go back a long way.
I think possibly, you know, we’re getting old only to the last century, you know.
Oh, my God, Yeah.
Allen was always quite rightly saying, we don’t talk about quitting.
We talk about getting rid of it or Skyping or whatever.
I think the quitting thing might have got mixed up in that
and I think I’ve been
could be one of these urban myths
because I’ve been asked about it
so frequently, so often
on always say the same thing,
which is, yeah,
you know,
Allen and I, we used to talk about, about
language and
terminology, thinking
this might have come up
when the book was first published
in the USA since we corresponded early
on, racking my brain to think
what might have caused it.
And I think it might have been something
in the USA.
where nobody talks about stopping smoking
or quitting smoking.
In the USA they talk about quitting.
That’s what they talk about.
So almost got lost in translation.
And some people are things like think,
you know, quitting.
Quitting is a bad word.
We don’t think about quitting.
Whereas I think
most people have got a negative
view of quitting, have a, you know,
a bad relationship.
You quit, get a wife.
If you’re a bad job, be quit,
go somewhere else or whatever else.
And this is the interesting bit
is the way you were brilliant.
I sort of flagged this up with you
earlier,
thinking that, you know,
the old people taught us, right,
that some point in the past
and it must have been
disparaging about quitting and quit
or definitely talk to them about it.
And this is going back in
sort of the early 2000s.
And it came up and we thought,
well, we’ve got to
we’ve got to start using it more
because it’s unavoidable and partly
because even back then, the search
engine optimisation of websites
require you to use the word,
you know, the phrase quit smoking if you
if you use the word
quit smoking in certain countries.
I’ve got a clue what you’re talking about.
And even the sort of internal
what are they called algorithms on Amazon
or whatever the book with the word quit
and it will work
its way up quicker, higher, more quickly.
So we had these conversations about it.
I don’t, I honestly don’t remember
Allen having a problem with it.
Yeah, obviously there must have been
somebody people were talking about it,
but then we did some research today.
Well, I got my book out. Yep.
My third edition book of Allen Carr’s
Easy work, and that was published in 1999.
Allen said, You know,
we don’t talk about quitting.
We talk about quitting, we talk about
stopping, we talk about escaping.
His favourite one, he said, was escaping.
Yeah, yeah.
So I think
it’s one of these urban myths
about quitting or being wrong speak,
which are going to be I’ve well, I’ve kind
of suffered that for years and years.
So, you know, I’ve always got an answer
for it, which is what we spoke about.
And we’ve used and quit more and more
because the US thing and
it was just a fact of life.
We had to wonder whether there might be a
there might be something
in one of the other books that, that where
Allen talks about it maybe prior to the US,
maybe he got some feedback or something.
But okay, that’s not a bad show.
Anybody out there who is under
the impression that Allen said,
Don’t say you quit, let us know.
Well, you know, we’ll find the reference.
And we would love to know because we can’t
we can’t find one.
You haven’t got a first edition, a clean.
I definitely have.
I can dig out another copy.
I’ll give you
I’ll give you a first edition because I’m.
I’m imagining you’ve got this.
You know, shelves of Allen Carr books,
different editions.
And this is one small gap
where that focus should go.
So actually on that, No,
I do like sometimes
when we’re putting up
the like tick tock videos.
So when people have done
a lot of video of themselves
talking about their experiences
quitting, quitting with us
and the tags that we put on
there is amongst
other tags,
there is the tag quitting smoking.
And we know he didn’t like talking about
and none of us
like talking about quitting.
So that’s a definite
you know, that’s not an Allen Carr
kind of way of thinking about it,
but we still have to use it
because, like you say,
because of the algorithms
and because that’s that’s the vernacular.
That’s what people talk about
when they’re smokers
and we got to meet people
where they’re right.
You know, if people are going to be
searching on Google for quitting smoking,
we can’t ignore that.
You know, we can’t ignore that.
That’s the language.
That comes down to also that search
search engine optimisation, which is
incredibly painful, painful process
to go through with a website
that I don’t really I don’t
claim to understand it at all, but there’s
all kind of keywords you have to use
on a certain number of page
in a certain number of ways or whatever.
And that’s also where, you know, having to
use quitting is really important.
So I mean, sometimes I look at a website
and I love it,
you know, really love what we got there,
but there are pages on that.
It’s all about nicotine,
you know, pages and pages, many,
none of which I would ever want to write,
none of which is relevant,
not not to help anybody.
But is there just for SEO purposes.
But it does bother me because that’s not
that’s really not
what we’re about,
but it’s a sign of the times.
If, you know, if you have big pharma,
other sort of
perhaps unscrupulous people trying to,
you know,
get smokers or addicts
to access their services and they will
they use all that, all the tools
in the are available to them.
Then we’ve we’ve got to
we’ve got to do the same thing.
But yeah, so that was really great
learning experience for me as well.
Never made a proper quick,
which is quite nice
if you are slightly awkward about it
anymore.
And I was Edith, was Edith or somebody.
Else, you know,
that one was from Jasper in London.
Oh, Jasper.
Okay, Yeah, cool.
I think we’ve answered Jasper’s question.
I think. So.
The next one is Edith,
and she’s from Winnipeg, Canada.
So Edith says, I read the Allen Carr book
and listen to the DVD, quit
so easily for a week and for some reason
I was stupid and started smoking again.
And I heard if you do that,
the book doesn’t work so well
the second time around.
So please tell me that is not true.
I still know how
how freeing it was to quit.
I have two adult children with
serious illnesses and that is my stress.
I’m 63 and a retired ICU nurse.
I love the taste of cigarette,
but I know I’m kidding myself.
And also the waste of money is ridiculous.
Thanks for any feedback.
So that’s that’s Edith in Canada.
Well, that’s great.
Get a feel for for Edith there as well.
So it
sounds like she she was free
no problems with it.
And she’s saying
now she loves the taste of it.
But I’m guessing that when she was freed,
she had no problems with it.
She didn’t miss the taste of it.
So that’s quite interesting.
I think one of the things that when you
when you fall back into the trap,
all the old brainwashing,
all the old illusions and myths come back.
I say shame with the most common
one actually is when
somebody quitted
smoking for a year or something
after seminar
and they they come back and they say,
Oh, it didn’t work.
I’m really sorry
to hear about what happened.
I said, Well,
it was fine for you.
You you work fine for me.
Then I went out, drank
too much and smoked and that was that.
Okay.
One of the face of it that sounds
like a reasonable
thing for them to say.
So let’s push them a little harder.
So hang on.
Let me think about it.
So, did you live like a monk for a year?
Not go out drinking, Not, you know.
No, no, no, no.
Was, you know, every Friday night,
every Friday and Saturday night, you know,
so you
a year later, it was a particularly
sort of big night out.
No, not particularly,
no. I’ve been on stag nights.
I’ve been of what
the Cuban-American studied always.
Oh, bachelor.
Actual bachelor news or whatever.
Else. Yeah. Yeah.
Big bowling
tournament’s never had a problem.
I said, Well,
it wasn’t the uncle, it was it.
They sort of petty kind of drugs.
But that’s
once they get forced back into the trap,
all the old myths and illusions come in.
The guy had gone,
you know, a year without a problem.
Now, what happened?
What occurred after that?
Yeah, it was he got overconfident.
You know,
he forgot one of the main instructions
done through out of curiosity
or overconfidence.
Have a cigarette.
As soon as you do that, you’re back in
is one thing,
as I call service facilitators.
We have to deal with a lot.
It’s just not being confrontational
about it, but just really kind of it.
It takes honesty
on the part of the smoker, you know,
You know, if they want to dig their heels
in a kind that no, no,
it was the alcohol
that was appropriate, whatever.
It’s very difficult.
But if if you can just illustrate
with their own
recollections
how they really didn’t have a problem
with alcohol at that point, then,
you know, the
the cause of that can only be
one of several things, you know,
overconfidence, flippancy or whatever.
So you had freedom
and you threw it down the drain.
And great news is
we can get you free again.
We’re not going to make
that same mistake again.
This time.
It’s really, really poor,
because I’ve thought back
to a sort of Edith
who is wants to get to freedom again.
Was it with the book
she was talking about or just.
Yeah,
she read the book and listened to the DVD.
I think just to listen to
it isn’t a sort of a testament.
What it says.
I read the
whole book and listen to the DVD,
so maybe she’s got an old version. Oh.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, that might be one with this,
some sort of audio
that came with it or something like that.
Yeah, well,
this was for a first thing I’d say
to get the latest up
to date version of the book.
If you can’t attend a seminar
or get the online, be a program,
The most up to date
version of the method in written form
is an easy way to quit smoking
tobacco rather than quit smoking
and really is
includes
probably 20 years worth of learning
and understanding from the life seminar.
So it really is it
it talks more about things
that were mentioned
in the original book. So
Habit habit is
quite often I think in the first version
is it’s
almost mentioned in passing,
but in the easy way to quit smoking.
We talk much more about it in terms of,
okay, how does, how does a habit work?
What do we think is the habit
the schools in the problem
talk about,
you know,
I guess a is for the 21st century.
We talk about the association
between smoking and anxiety
and self-harm,
which we never be in the book
in terms of
use with cannabis, that kind of thing.
Just a whole there’s
there’s an awful lot of stuff in there
which wasn’t covered in the original,
which is probably more, more,
more necessary than ever
today.
And, and, and expanding on it as well.
We’re not taking the other other bits
and pieces forward.
The association between
smoking and White Guide is have handled
much more in much more detail
about avoid going back to smoking again.
It’s handled in much more detail.
So that’s the first thing.
Or do it if it
if you can afford to get get the right
the absolutely latest version of the book
or as I got to say,
get yourself booked into a life seminar
as a money back guarantee.
You can’t you can’t lose really.
And I think I say our approaches
all before we
we put together the podcast and I so
I sent Edith a memory
or a got a couple of pages of advice on
what to do.
She just wants to, you know,
use the book that she’s, she’s still got
that should, that should,
you know, hold in good stead.
She’d rather if she’d rather do that.
And the thing for you to add to that, you
know, cover everything all your business.
If someone’s quit with a book
like Edith says that she was
happy to know it was so easy for a week.
So she knows and she can remember
how freeing it was to quit,
well then she that can
sometimes make you panic a little bit more
because you think, Oh my God,
if I blown my one and only chance,
you know, and absolutely not.
You know, you just
you’ve had a glimpse of what you’re after.
So it’s just about like you say,
are there reading that book again
with the guidance that you provided
or I can’t help myself of saying it,
but better still, you know,
do the do the seminar.
Sometimes I wonder whether people think
it’s like, you know, like some
I don’t know.
It’s not called a pyramid scheme, but like
they get you in at a certain low level,
you know, cheap way of doing it.
And then you have to pay more
to get to a different status
and a different and it’s almost like,
I don’t know, some people worry
perhaps that that’s what this is,
that, you know, you get them in
with a hook of the book
and then they’ve got to pay
a bigger amount to get to the next level.
And the next level is not that.
It’s just that this is the most
powerful way of getting it.
And same as you, John. I read the book.
I liked it.
You know, I found it very insightful
and perceptive and I related to
what was being said,
but I didn’t quit smoking.
I thank goodness there was a seminar
because I don’t know what I returned to
if not.
So yeah, thank goodness
I went along to the seminar.
I was nervous. I was worried.
I thought, Oh, you know,
what are they going to say to me
that’s different from the book?
I know what’s in the book.
So you know, how how is this going to be
any different in the seminar?
And but of course it is
for all the reasons that you’ve mentioned,
you’re in a group with other
people are in the same boat as you.
The facilitator
can actually answer your questions.
They can pick up on any miscommunications,
misunderstand endings.
There are different ways
to demonstrate the trap the book can’t.
So it’s, you know,
if it’s possible at all.
Edith I would 100% recommend
going to the seminar,
but if not, you’ve got great advice
there from John in your email to,
to reread the book.
And with, with that guidance.
I think you’re right about the sort of
some people’s perception
can be a little bit, a little bit skewed.
I think people are quite cynical about
everything, you know, not just about,
you know, stopping smoking with Allen Carr,
but there’s a lot of cynicism
out there
and I do make it my business
to kind of keep an eye
on what sort of other quit smoking
methods are doing in their marketing.
And virtually all of them hook people
in with an advert
for something
that’s either free or cheap and then up.
So I think there’s
the official phrase for that.
So now if you really want to quit smoking,
it’s going to cost you this much
and add this on or whatever else.
And that’s just not us.
We’ve
never we’ve never, ever been like that.
We just we are quite open about it
that the greater the book
makes it really affordable
for everyone to use the method
and has been for normally successful.
As I say, we don’t want people
to misunderstand what we’re saying.
The book is brilliant.
You know, the best selling,
most effective quit smoking
book of all time worldwide
and it’s something else.
But, you know, don’t beat yourself up
if if it does work for you, that’s a
that’s you know,
because you know, it’s like that, sir.
It’s Allen Carr Lite,
you know, that makes sense.
I know it’s it’s a great point.
I think Edith and other people
listening said well I on
what do you say you want me to say
it won’t work the second time.
I think there is a part you know, in
one of the books where Allen says that
I think all, all he’s trying to do
is have people cherish their freedom.
And that’s all I would say.
It’s everybody.
You know, if you’re listening to this
and you’re already free
from whatever drug it was
and you’re cheating in that out of interest,
you know, never quit
cherishing your free to be Starbucks
brilliant thing you’ve got.
And the only time
people have issues
is is when they take it for granted,
they may start
just being flippant about it.
It’s just which is it seems crazy now.
People forget
what it was they escaped from.
And that’s the only time
really where they get sucked in. So
one hand. Yep. Don’t you worry, Edith.
We’re going to get you sorted out again
next.
There’s no problem on the other.
Once you’re free again, cherish it.
That’s the most
you know, You’ve really got to.
Got to guide it with your life.
And it’s not hard.
It’s not.
You’re not to by the effort into it.
You just need you need to sort of,
you know, I don’t think a day goes by
when I don’t feel so grateful.
I don’t smoke.
I mean,
it sounds a bit boring, doesn’t it?
But it causes my mind,
I suppose, mainly because sort of work
and writing all the time.
But I’d be dead now, I no doubt about it.
A long time ago I
had a, I don’t know, quitted.
You can’t, you can’t smoke.
I, you die
and you have not beat those odds at all.
So every year I might pass this.
I’m just happier,
you know, just it is a real bonus.
So, yeah, be excited about being free
and cherish it.
That’s the really important thing.
Since just a teaching central gig, since
we want to hear your success story
and provide advice is
one to you.
This advice is free of charge.
We’ll answer every question
we receive with no exceptions.
As far as AllenCarr. Com.
Thank you so much, John, and thanks to
everyone who sent in their questions.
And now here I am talking with Ty, so just a little history.
I came, I came from a family where,
okay, I stole my first
cigarette when I was nine years old
and I smoked,
you know, sporadically up until maybe 11.
And then I started to smoke regularly.
As a matter of fact, at 12 years old,
I smoked around my whole family.
It was okay.
So everybody in my family
smoked on my own.
And I lived with my mother and grandmother
and and all of them.
I mean, my uncles, my aunts, my
grandmother, my mother, everybody smoked.
I mean, and, you know, so
I’m a baby boomer.
I was born back in 1952.
So in 1960,
I mean, you were like an outlier
if you didn’t smoke.
You know what I mean?
It was cool to smoke.
I mean, in the end.
So I smoked cigarettes
all the way until August
the 19th, 1979.
And the reason why I know that date
is because
I went to a hypnotist on a dare
because I had been trying to quit smoking
and I couldn’t you know,
I just wasn’t able to do it on my own.
I didn’t have
I didn’t have I didn’t have the easy way.
If I had known the easy way, I would
I wouldn’t have gone through all that.
But anyway,
I go to this hypnotist on a dare.
I told the guy, I said,
I don’t think it worked.
He said, Well,
but you don’t smoke anymore, do you?
And I said, No, I don’t think I do.
And because when I,
when he when I went to the hypnotist,
it was about a 40 minute session
and when
it was over, it was like, Well,
when are you going to hypnotise?
You know what I mean?
In my brain, I was like, Nothing.
It happened.
So. So
I go out to the car
and I look up at the cigarettes
over the sun visor.
I take the cigarettes out
and throw them in the nearest bin.
Never smoked a cigarette since that day.
Oh yeah.
That’s interesting
because we use light relaxation as well
at the Allen Carr seminars
and it is like it’s a really useful tool
to use in conjunction
with the Allen Carr method.
I enjoyed that success with that.
But about the heroin thing,
that’s different.
Yeah. So
okay, so a little bit of back story,
a little bit more back story.
So I was born and raised
in the first all black
public assisted housing project
in the United States of America.
The pilot program for public assisted
housing for black folk in
America is a little place called
Langston Terrace in Washington, D.C.,
about 40 blocks from the capital,
the White House.
And they built these places
back in the early thirties,
a part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Well, I was born in 52,
and I remember the projects
as a child being home.
You know, it’s just where I grew up.
And at 13 years old, 1965,
I remember these things by the years.
In 1965, I noticed that heroin had
just taken over my entire neighbourhood
and it was just most of the people
who I had looked up to
who were role models to me
were seen all over the place
with all of the
all of the things that come
with heroin addiction, like nodding
all of the behaviours.
I mean, you could see people
actually it was so bad
and the heroin was so prevalent,
Colleen, that you could see
people walk up to the lamp
post about to cross the street at the
at the crosswalk, and they start to nod
right there if just in one year
it flooded my neighbourhood
and I look back on it retrospectively.
Now I’ve actually written about this stuff
because it’s clear that it was,
you know, it was designed, it just was,
you know, it was there.
So I got caught up in it.
I was introduced to heroin at 13 years old
and had it for the first year.
You know, I just put it in my nose and
it was semi casual.
But you asked
maybe how does a 13 or 14 year old
even get close to heroin?
How is that allowed? Well,
growing up
in these United States of America,
as a black man
in certain neighbourhoods,
you almost it’s almost you’re you’re
you’re extremely fortunate if you escape
because it’s like everywhere
it’s like what you do it’s,
it’s it’s almost like normal
or it was back then anyway, so it’s okay.
So I got caught up in it.
And so for 15 years
I still have the marks that could roll
my sleeves up and show you.
But I still had the marks
for 15 years of heroin addiction.
I sent me to jail.
I lost everything.
I had ten different times
that.
But I can say now, well, I laugh about it
because on September
25th, again,
I know these dates because they’re
well, everybody
everybody who’s ever been through
any sort of real addiction,
especially if you’ve gone through
any of those rooms like
in a or AA, you know, the
you know, you clean day.
So my clean date is September 25th, 1980.
And I know that for two reasons.
One is that day
I got arrested, got locked up in the way,
and the other is my daughter’s birthday,
who she was
six years old then
is September 25th, the same day.
So I actually got arrested
on her birthday.
But that’s the last day I did any heroin.
And I didn’t I didn’t use any.
Well, I went through I went through
a whole bunch of training program.
I never did the 12 step program,
but I got sent to a federal
correctional institution
here.
It’s it’s called Lexington, Kentucky.
And it’s still it’s still open today.
It’s been open since the fifties,
where anybody convicted
of any kind of crime
for rehabilitation
purposes can go to Lexington, Kentucky.
And so I went there and I started studying
self image, psychology,
rational behavior therapy.
I was in a therapeutic
a therapeutic community.
And I learned,
you know, so much about myself
that I never had the desire
to do heroin again,
especially after all the stuff
that I did. So.
But I wasn’t through with addiction
because one of the things that stands out
about Allen cause easy way.
I think the thing that hit me
the most was his chapter on
having an addictive personality,
because I thought until I read that
book, that I had an addictive personality.
I thought
I thought three quarters of
my family was the person that I thought
that most of my friends
and family had addictive personalities.
And so his that
that book changed my mind about that,
because while I got away from cigarettes
and I got away from heroin,
I never fully got away from alcohol.
I would still I would still revert back.
I would I would go through these
long periods where
I was in remission.
If that’s a good way to put it, I would
I would use in using willpower,
just not drink.
So I’d go six months,
eight months, a year and a half
and over the last, you know,
all my life, actually, since then,
I think I took my first drink
when I was about 12,
stole that from my family.
You know, that was
I had it.
I had it.
It is Your culture is so different
from ours.
You might well,
you you may be able understand this
because you may do
some of the same things.
But I come from a family where
on Fridays and Saturday
nights, the weekends,
everybody played cards, everybody smoked,
everybody drank.
They big fried chicken,
fried fish made food.
You you, you gambled and you drink.
That’s what we eat.
And so
so I think I took I think
I may have stolen my first sip of alcohol,
which this book resonates with me so much
because I stole so at storage of
I remember this
clearly of friends of the family
used to drink ghibli’s vodka
and it would always be on
ice and it looked like water
at Tully.
I remember I took a sip of that stuff
and thought I was like, Oh my God, What?
What are you drinking it?
And so I think for the first
like six months
or so after that initial drink,
I never drink again.
And then later that same year
I’m thinking I’m still about 12 years old.
One of my cousins
who was visiting for the summer,
he we stole some vodka
and put orange juice
and we had this drink called orange flip.
So he said,
We’re going to make some orange flip.
And while it wasn’t,
it still wasn’t palatable.
You know, you could still
with the orange juice, I tolerated it.
And I think that’s
when I started drinking.
And so I have this the I’m 71,
I got a 60 year drinking history.
I mean, I never
I never was a person who drank
to just to the place
where I was in a stupor
a couple of times.
I drank too much and just felt sick.
But I’d never,
you know, drink myself to sleep.
It woke up the next day, but I would drink
so consistently and so regularly
I could feel myself running,
you know, being run down and get up.
The next thing you know, you drink,
you’re drinking every day of the week.
You get up the next morning,
it’s like, Oh, man, you’re dragging.
And then those times
when I had these periods
of respite from it,
you know, I felt so much better,
you know, because it is it’s poison.
It’s like attractively packaged poison.
That’s what it was.
I mean, it’s what it is.
And now that I’m free from it
because it’s been
two years now, it’s like it’s so clear.
It’s like, wow, man, how did you.
It’s amazing
how we can be so convinced that
this thing is an integral part
of our enjoyment of life and stuff.
And and
and see it from the other perspective.
Now, like,
how could you have been so, so gullible?
Absolutely. Yeah. These societal norms
will have
you feeling like you’re an outcast
if you don’t imbibe
when in truth it’s the other way around.
It’s like,
you know,
you’re you’re actually poisoning yourself.
You’re you’re
contaminating your liver.
You’re I mean, when I look back on it,
it’s easy now, this is the easy way,
but it’s easy now to see, you know,
how just how foolish it was and
and how I get and how
90 it seems like
I know they say 80% or 90%.
It seemed like 99.9% of human beings,
at least in these United States,
are caught up in it.
They’re just well, now
it’s starting to stall.
It’s sort of changing a little bit
because with cigarettes
being,
you know, ostracised the way they had been
and people
not smoking the way they used to,
thing
is changing a little bit with alcohol.
You see a few places
that are alcohol free,
you know, no drinking
and that kind of thing.
And so and that’s good.
But for the most part, well,
excuse me, what I’ve been coming at
while I was coming up,
the opposite was true.
If you didn’t drink, they looked at you
like, Well, can we trust this guy?
You mean then doesn’t drink?
You know what’s wrong with it?
And then and you know, to that point,
I remember a few of my friends
who never smoked or drink, and we would
look at them as if they were nerds.
Yeah. Yeah.
What’s wrong with you?
And, you know, it’s
so the glory and the shame are misplaced.
You saying before about talk about the
the addictive personality theory
and kind of laying the blame
at the door of the, the individual
who’s imbibing, you know, the,
the alcohol or the drug
rather than blaming
the substance itself and society
that rams it down all through
at such a young age as well.
And it’s it’s
very empowering, isn’t it, to recognize
that actually the fault doesn’t lie.
There’s no inherent weakness
in in ourselves.
It’s just the circumstances of the society
that we’re kind of born into.
Yeah.
And it’s also hard
because we are bombarded with I mean,
you can’t, you can’t turn on the telly,
turn it all in here
without being bombarded with all these
commercials, these advertisements
asking you or telling you
that you’re just not cool
if you don’t drink,
you know,
or any of that like 99 different brands of
food or brandy of cognacs, 99 and wine.
Oh, my God,
If you’re not drinking lot, you know,
just reading this book
one time I was actually taking a tally and
I just got tired because it’s too much.
Too much.
I was I was looking at how many times
a commercial
come on, that has or TV show or movie
that has somebody
with a drink of alcohol in their hands
it’s product placement.
It’s called product placement
and it’s normal.
You know, it becomes normal in your head
and therefore you are
you become a victim to it because this
the these you just bombarded
with all these advertisements to say
this is what you should be doing.
You know, you’re you, you,
you could be golden
if you drink this right now
you’re you know, you’re just like copper
or you’re not even silver,
but you could be gold.
I mean, it’s just so it’s so,
so blatant and in-your-face
and so regular that you are
it just you don’t even think about it.
But now but once something like,
you know, the easy way
because, you know, you,
you know,
I started with easy way but I also
got an
easy way to quit drinking,
quit eating sugar.
The easy, easy, easy way to lose weight.
I lost about 15.
Pounds.
From after after the alcohol.
And then you start thinking about the
all the sugar that’s in the alcohol
and then all that sugar, this
and all this other stuff.
And then you just start to do better.
So I look back at the book
and I read everything on Kindle, right?
So I’m looking back at the book
and I’m like,
Did he just hypnotise me through the book?
But the words because the words, the
the references and the way is laid
out, the way the book is laid out
with you, with you,
when you get to the end, you realise,
Oh my God,
he just unravelled the whole thing
and I really don’t need that.
When you’ve quit yourself,
when you’ve kind of seen the light,
so to speak, and, and gone
from being entrenched in this,
this view that you need
drinking or cigarettes or drugs
to function properly and to shine,
you know, in certain situations,
and then to see that you don’t need it,
you really
you want to help other people
who are still in the under
the illusion that they need it,
because you see them struggling
and you see them
kind of doing the, you know, three months
on, three months off or whatever.
And you just your heart goes out to them.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
And and yeah, you know, we,
you know, believing
that I had had an addictive personality
and seeing such an addicted society,
it really makes you want to
you do you want to help?
It’s like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
You don’t have to be going through this
because it’s so much better
on the other side.
It’s just so much better
when you’re clean and sober.
It’s just so it’s just better.
And but you don’t know that
if you believe if you think
that is something,
do something about your chemical makeup,
something about you
personally in your chemical makeup
that makes you have to use these
chemicals, That’s that’s the bullshit.
That’s the
that’s the lie that you knew. You
you live with it.
You like, Oh, man.
So you wrestle.
You know, listen,
there’s been times in this, you know,
I don’t know how many people well,
probably a lot of people go through this,
but I would be driving down the street
and saying
to myself, I’m not going to drink today.
I’m not going to drink today.
I’m not going to drink today
and pull right into the liquor store
and go in and buy two bottles of wine.
After
I’ve said to myself just minutes ago,
seconds ago, I’m not going to do this.
It’s like the automobile steering itself.
And that that is that is
it’s it’s it’s debilitating because
it lowers your self esteem.
It makes you feel bad about yourself.
It makes you feel like
something else is in control of you.
So every chance I every chance.
Well, the thing with this
with the easy way though, is that
I don’t it it is done in such a fashion
that you don’t
really want to
ballyhoo like, Oh, I don’t drink anymore.
You should quit.
Because I think the education that you get
through this methodology
makes you compassionate enough to realise
you can’t throw that in people’s face
because it’s
that monster that hasn’t.
It’s not them, it’s that monster.
And so
I’m just glad it came my way.
I think one of the questions you asked
was, How did I find out about the easy way
I was searching, to be honest,
I was looking for
I over the years,
I went to a couple of hypnotists
about the alcohol and it wasn’t
the same as with the cigarettes.
I don’t know, after six or seven months or
so not drinking, I’d end up in a
in a set of circumstances
where everybody was drinking.
I remember
one time I slipped off the wagon
at a wedding
I had excuse me.
So I end up with a one flute,
one one flute champagne.
Right.
And the next thing you know, I drink
half a bottle.
Now, at night,
my little man, you’re calling.
Listen, I didn’t drink anything
for, like, six, seven months
In that one
situation, I was back on it. So.
So that the hypnosis for that
for that never really took all the way.
And so
over the over the years
and especially in the last like the last
before I actually quit with the easy way,
I went online and
if you go to YouTube,
they have several people
who have programs that say,
you know, quit, quit with hypnosis.
I don’t know how many times I’ve set up
in this place with some headphones on.
Listen to that.
Listen to those sessions.
But they never really worked.
Nothing worked until I discover
it and cause the easy way.
And it was like, Oh my God,
I’ve been wrestling with this thing
and it really is easy.
It was like, I just don’t drink anymore.
I just don’t drink anymore.
And, and add to it
is that, you know, I’ve told my wife
like several times
they’ve been through quit.
I’m done. It’s over. I drink.
This is now.
Okay.
When I read Allen’s book,
I didn’t it wasn’t I didn’t go to her
and say, Honey, I’m done.
I didn’t do that.
I didn’t even feel the need to do that.
I just And she said,
I think maybe six months into
after the first year,
because this is the second year,
she said, You really quit this timer.
Yeah, it was easy to start.
Sometimes people worry
when they quit drinking that they’re going
to suffer with horrible withdrawal
from the drug or cravings.
TIE What was your experience?
You know, I didn’t after okay,
maybe halfway into the book,
I was still getting great.
But I think the book
I don’t know
if this is the right way to say it,
but it saved me so much that I wouldn’t
allow this this thing that just in
this monster, this big lie,
this attractively packaged poison
to manipulate and control my life
the way it did.
I think I just
know a no withdrawals, none of that.
I mean. Well, he talks about that.
You know, it could be out.
No, no, no.
Go back.
Historically,
I know what it feels like to have
to have withdrawal symptoms because
like I said, I did heroin for 15 years.
And in those 15 years, I want to say
at least ten times, there were situations
where I couldn’t get heroin
for whatever reason, I couldn’t get it.
And those two or three days
that I did not get it, it was horrible.
But reading Allen Carr’s
easy way,
I fully understand better
now that even then
that was 99.9% psychological,
because even though my body did crave that
after two or three days of not having it,
no, the symptoms weren’t even there.
It was no symptoms.
And so
to your question
this time.
No, I didn’t.
No symptoms of withdrawal.
No. No craving, no wishing.
Now, I’ll be honest, there are times
when I say to myself, even now I was like,
Can you believe you just had a thought
about drinking some alcohol?
Because those thoughts
go, I guess because I did it so much,
those thoughts just pop up.
It’s like we went
we went to a retirement party
and, you know, was a retirement party.
Remember, I retired.
I didn’t I had no craving,
no, no, no, no.
I had no compulsions to drink.
It’s just
I think the education that you get through
Allen Carr’s easy way is so
subtle one,
because it sneaks up on you
with what you just learned.
It’s like
it’s it and it’s almost like,
you know, I knew that.
I knew that.
But the way it’s articulated
just brings it home.
And so
I have it.
No, I haven’t craved
or had any real compulsions.
Every now and again
I have a thought about,
you know, I’m watching television.
I’m a sports guy.
You know, I watch American football.
I watch the real football, too.
And then I love I love soccer
and which every if you’re watching any
you know,
I watch basketball, baseball,
if you’re watching any of this stuff,
every it every break,
there’s a investissement about alcohol.
Yeah.
And, you know, I say to myself, well,
how could I if, if, if, if the athletes
drink as much as they advertised,
they couldn’t even play.
And there’s so much brainwashing.
But actually the Allen Carr program
is very skillful at removing
all of those impressions and kind of
clearing your mind of this idea.
The drug is, is providing you
with any benefits.
All this clever.
It’s like, it’s like, it’s like when he
when he, when he tells from the start
you have to read it
all the way through and keep an open mind
all the way through.
As an organiser,
I’m like, okay, all right, I’ll do that.
And if you keep your mind open,
it’s like all these revelations, Oh man.
And it’s a series.
It’s like, like, like, like the ocean,
like one wave gets involved
with another wave
that gets involved in the wave
that’s behind it.
And the next thing you know, you’re
you’ve arrived at that and it’s like
it’s just it’s it’s great.
It’s a
I’m trying to think of a metaphor.
It’s like it’s it’s it’s it’s almost like
you’re lulled into your sobriety.
It’s yeah, that’s not the right way,
but it’s like.
I do quite like that.
The waves are quite gentle and yet
the culmination of all of the waves
kind of leads you back to shore.
Yeah, it’s like.
It’s like easy.
It’s the easy way. It’s like.
It’s like.
Like you.
You were caught up in this tumultuous
whatever at sea,
and then you grab hold of this easy way,
and the next thing you know, you just.
And it was easy.
And you got to the and it’s like,
Oh my God, I was dying
over here.
And I got rescued by this little
this little teeny little boat.
Like, I just I don’t know. So.
Yeah, yeah, it’s
so tore.
You didn’t know
anyone who had quit with the program.
You were just Googling
and you just came across the book.
You didn’t.
No one, right?
Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no.
As a matter of fact,
I’ve recommended it to
my son,
who’s 32,
and he quitted the easy way I sent him.
I just. I just.
I just sent him the book
and I said because he had gotten a DUI.
I don’t know what you called him there.
Yeah. DUI. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah.
He got in one of those young kid.
I mean, and,
you know,
I feel that sort of I felt, you know,
almost like 100% responsible
for his drinking because.
Yeah, you know, that
I got it from all you know, it’s like.
It’s like,
almost like you inherit this thing.
And in your mind, you thinking again
that you have this
flawed gene
and you’ve passed this flawed gene down.
Yeah.
And so as soon as I I’ll as soon it
and when I didn’t immediately
send it to him, but when he called me
and told me he had to do. Yes.
He said to you,
you really want to quit drinking.
I said,
I got an easy way for you to do it.
And he called me back after
after about maybe ten days with the book,
he said, Hey, thanks, man.
I don’t even have a desire to drink.
So I recommended it.
But nobody.
No, I never heard of it.
I found it.
I found the easy way online.
I was tired
and I bet I went through several.
Like I said, these quasi training programs
that train in programs.
But, you know, people have written books
and, you know, you do this.
You did almost like 12 steps.
And then, you know, in then they have this
hypnotic set.
You know, they’re using hypnosis.
And I’m like,
but it never really resonates.
It never it never really took
if necessary.
It never stuck with me.
And it has quite far
reaching consequences
because like, when you when you start
treating your body properly
and treating yourself properly,
then you say, why actually, what about,
you know, not everyone does this,
but sometimes people start thinking,
oh, you know,
well, if I can knock drinking on the head,
maybe I could,
you know, address my eating or whatever
things that kind of bothering them.
Yeah.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, Yeah.
That’s a great point,
because I tended to blame every
every problem that I
had, you know, in my drinking.
And, and because that was easy
to do, you know, it’s like
if I just quitted drinking, I wouldn’t.
If I could just quit drinking, I would
If I could just quit drinking, I wouldn’t.
So all of these, you know, if I would have
coulda should
all on that monster, that thing is
very it’s
people don’t most people don’t understand
just how pervasive it is in this society
anyway.
I mean, it just takes over everything.
People,
people live their lives around alcohol.
They live their lives around
that substance.
And they don’t
they don’t believe that they’re abusing it
because they have been tricked
and trained into believing
that they’re not, when in fact,
every time you throw
some of that poison in your body,
you throwing your chemical makeup off,
you growing,
you’re negatively affecting your kidneys
and everything else,
every every everywhere week.
I mean, it’s it’s poison.
You talked about
when I can’t remember how you said it,
but when he when he explained, you know,
what wine actually is
and about how it’s
fermented.
So unfamiliar.
Yeah. Grapes.
Unfair or unfair on an minute vegetable
waste matter.
And think about it.
It’s like, for real.
That’s really what it is.
Because that’s the only way
it gets to be alcohol, is it has to
it has to turn on itself.
So this once good fruit
has now turned rotten
and you’re drinking the rottenness.
Oh, my God.
So that was
that was like, okay, that’s the see again.
That’s the way why it becomes
it is the easy way because it’s like
they need to smack me in the face
with the fact that I’ve been drinking,
I’ve been drinking
rotten potatoes and rotten like my, my,
my had a cousin, I had an older cousin.
My, my, my, my mother’s brother’s
age who who he used to make.
Yeah, he used to make wine from plums.
People, peaches, apples.
And that’s what you go to his place.
You could smell. Yeah.
When it ferments, when it turns, it’s
like the most rotten, stinking is really.
And but they would wait on him
for the weekend
cause he comes with those jugs.
Is a popular. Man. Yeah, well.
Well. It’s funny. Yeah.
When you put it
in those terms in the very, you know,
basic sense is just gone
all fruit and vegetables.
I remember I was in Lexington,
Kentucky, in the institution
that I was telling you about,
and some guys had made
it put up some prominent fruit
to make wine.
Right.
You know, it’s here in the joint.
That’s what they do in
one of the
guys, the guy who made
this particular batch had got shipped off
and the batch went over like this.
It got off.
It went over and exploded up
in the ceiling of the place
where he had it hidden
and it stank the whole place up.
And they you should have seen that.
They were they were running around trying
to figure out where it’s coming from.
And it was
leaking down through the ceiling
because he had put it up in the ceiling.
I forgot all about that.
But now that you now that we’re talking
about it, it’s like that’s again, proof
that that’s all it is.
And we I used to think of myself
as being quite
the sophisticated lady drinking.
This is going off great.
So yeah, how we can turn that
into this luxurious product.
Expensive delight is a bit kind of crazy.
Yeah, well, you think about, like.
Like Courvoisier.
Courvoisier.
You spend $50 a bottle
for it, and it’s just grapes.
It’s just grapes
who have been ferment it
for this a period of time
in this particular period of time,
makes it worth $50,
would have been a shorter period of time.
It wouldn’t cost you as much.
But because we let it rot
for this amount of time
and we let it rotten in this particular
barrel, see,
now you have to pay a little bit more
your money.
Oh, my God.
We feel for it.
You know what? You know, not just us.
You know, generation after generation is
has kind of been duped in that way. And,
you know, I think you’re you’re right
that this maybe
the tide is turning a bit
because when I quit drinking, it was
I almost didn’t want to tell anyone.
I quit because they would judge me.
Perhaps, you know,
what are you, an alcoholic?
What’s your you know, why don’t you drink?
It’s much more mainstream now.
The idea of, if not quitting completely,
at least giving yourself a break from it.
So yeah,
at least the realisation that is poison.
I’m so pleased
that you’ve come across the easy way.
And I’m so pleased
that you gave us the time today.
Tie two to talk about it
because it’s, you know, it’s important
getting the message out there.
I appreciate you. Thank you.
Thank you for being there.
Thank you for for for being there because
it’s certainly it turned my life around.
It certainly has been a game changer.
The game changer because I was
you know, I was
I was down so low
I could walk up underneath of an
earthworm with a top paddle
and then easy wake.
And I got up from under that thing. So.
So populous.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Ty. Yes, ma’am.
God bless you.
Thank you so much.
To Ty and to John DC and of course, to you for listening.
Until next time.