Anthony Bruns

Nicotine “brainwashing” leads to an unnecessary tug-of-war in the mind of users

Nicotine isn’t actually enjoyable and quitting is easy. That’s the message we should be sharing with students.

Published in 1985, “Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking” promised users that they could not only find quitting nicotine easy, but enjoyable as well–no willpower required, no elaborate gimmicks. How? By eliminating the belief that smoking, in today’s case vaping, provides some kind of genuine pleasure or crutch.

There’s a constant tug-of-war going on in the user’s mind. On the one hand, they know smoking/vaping is horrible for their physical and mental health, but on the other hand they believe it relaxes them, helps them focus, and is generally enjoyable. While informing students of the negative health consequences of smoking/vaping may be enough to prevent non-users from starting in the future, it’s not entirely helpful to students who are already addicted.

We should focus more on exposing the illusory pleasure of nicotine, which will help both users and non-users. This is where “Allen Carr’s Easyway (ACE)” comes into play. On a technical level, ACE is a single‐session pharmacotherapy‐free program that can be and has been adapted to treat various addictions. In practical terms, you read Carr’s book and you’re good to go.

In his book, Carr not only argues that nicotine doesn’t genuinely relax users, help them focus, or provide real pleasure, but that it actually causes users to feel more stressed, more unfocused, and more miserable than they would otherwise. The reason this isn’t intuitive and may even seem completely backwards to some users is because of what Carr labels “brainwashing.” Both societal narratives and nicotine’s manipulation of the brain’s reward circuitry lead users to believe that smoking/vaping is enjoyable.

Yes, users do feel less stressed and are able to focus better when they’re finally able to light up or take a hit, but first time users don’t report feeling this way at all. In fact, first time users tend to report having an unpleasant experience. Why? Because smoking/vaping isn’t actually enjoyable, but once you expose yourself to nicotine your body starts to crave more. 

So yes, smoking/vaping can temporarily relieve stress and help you focus, but the nicotine cravings or withdrawal pangs are the reason users feel stressed and/or unfocused in the first place. Thus, the act of smoking/vaping to feel good is like taking a medicine that causes the symptoms it promises to relieve.

The point that Carr is ultimately making is that the ease or difficulty of quitting is determined by the mindset of the individual. If someone believes that they’re giving up a genuine pleasure or crutch, or if they believe that withdrawal pangs will be too much to bear then they’ll probably be miserable and end up back where they started. But quitting, or more accurately escaping, can and should be a blissful event.

It’s important to inform students about the negative physical health consequences of smoking/vaping, and drugs in general for that matter. But if we stop there then students will effectively view drugs as some sort of forbidden fruit–extremely unhealthy but extremely enjoyable. If we utilized resources such as ACE, we could paint a more accurate picture of drugs–extremely unhealthy with zero pleasure.