Looking for an oldish book on stopping smoking, maybe you saved it?

July 19, 2018 3:33 PM

Once upon a time, when I was working on quitting smoking by going to lots of Smokers Anonymous meetings, I read a book I really appreciated. It was an ordinary paperback about the pros and cons of smoking. It had a several chapter long section on all the scientific reasons that smoking is pleasurable, the release of dopamine, etc. The second half of the book was about the negatives, though I remember none of that. This was probably in the 1980s and the book had an especially lengthy title.

I've searched all the smoking posts here including one that once had a link to "Recommended reading for those wanting to quit," now dead. It is NOT one of the currently popular self-help books that are way too new to be the one I am looking for.
P.S. Please don't tell me why I should quit smoking or provide links of how it's bad for me, thanks anyway.

posted by sugarbx19 to Science & Nature (6 answers total)

Was it the one that recommended reading it while smoking? Not being facetious. My husband read that one and appreciated the refreshingly honest approach, and used it to quit successfully. Lmk and I’ll ask him
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:47 PM on July 19, 2018

I think it’s Allen Carr’s The Easy Way to Quit Smoking, originally published in 1985.
posted by toodleydoodley at 3:57 PM on July 19, 2018 [8 favorites]

You say probably in the 1980s. Just in case, your description reminds of Gillian Riley's How to Stop Smoking and Stay Stopped For Good (1992).
posted by Diomedea at 4:44 PM on July 19, 2018

Could it have been an early version of the fringe-y, prolific William Campbell Douglass II's book, The Health Benefits of Tobacco: A Smoker’s Paradox? He was publishing in the 1980s.
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:59 PM on July 19, 2018

For what it's worth, Wayback Machine certainly makes it seem like that dead link was a dead end for your purposes anyway: it's just an old-school blog that eventually tapers off.
posted by teremala at 7:55 PM on July 19, 2018

Best answer: Not Allen Carr, not Gillian Riley since I'm pretty sure the author was a man. Likely not Douglass as someone at Amazon says it's written in "an idiotic, nutty, tabloid style."
Waiting to hear back from toodleydoodley, but perhaps she was suggesting Allen Carr also.
*sigh*
posted by sugarbx19 at 12:24 AM on July 22, 2018