Allen Carr was a chain smoker for 33 years, smoking five, if not six, packets of cigarettes a day. In 1983 he discovered his own method of quitting and helped many others to kick the habit, including Richard Branson, Leslie Grantham, Jerry Hall and Ruby Wax

Carr's Easyway clinics and books are the result of his own numerous attempts to quit. "I never wanted to be a smoker," Carr says. "No-one actually chose to become a smoker. Basically, we are in it because we fall into a trap that we just don't know how to get out of.

"Every time I tried to quit I was just miserable. In those days I believed there were real smokers like me and those who just played at it, and if you were a real smoker then you couldn't enjoy life or handle stress without a cigarette."

All this changed after his son bought him a medical book by the South African heart transplant specialist, Dr Christian Barnard. One of the articles explained that when nicotine leaves your body it creates an empty insecure feeling. The moment you light a cigarette the nicotine is replaced and you feel more relaxed than the moment before.

"I'd wiped out all the other reasons that smokers give for wanting to smoke, and as I was reading this article, it suddenly dawned on me that that was the only reason I smoked. When I was without cigarettes I got the panicky feeling, but when I lit up the panicky feeling left so I was fooled into thinking that each cigarette was giving me some sort of crutch or benefit. Once I knew that it wasn't a weakness in me, which I'd believed before, I knew I would never smoke again.

"The moment I put the last cigarette out, I knew I was a non-smoker. I knew I would never smoke again and it was so easy it was enjoyable.

"It suddenly dawned on me that I had solved the mystery of why everybody smokes, not just me, so I decided that in ten minutes I could get any smoker to give up if I explained that there's no real pleasure in smoking. The only pull is that the nicotine is leaving your body."

From that day on, Allen has been crusading to free the world of nicotine addiction by proving to smokers that it is easy to quit.

"If you can see smokers as they really are - people who really feel stupid and wish they never started - you understand why they have to invent rational reasons for doing it just so they can keep their self respect." Now aged 69 years old, Allen has been free, as he puts it, for over twenty years. Quitting completely changed his life in ways he never imagined possible.

"It was like coming out of a black and white nightmare where I had a permanent smokers cough, struggled to get out of bed at nine o'clock in the morning, lay on the settee after a day's work, and generally had no energy whatsoever. I suddenly realised just a few days after quitting that I felt like a young boy again, waking up at seven in the morning and actually wanting to exercise. I'd forgotten what energy was. I thought only teenagers and children actually had energy in their life.

"The only way I can describe it is like the Count of Monte Cristo, being imprisoned for 13 years at the Chateau d'If, believing he could never escape and then suddenly finding he is free. It happened to me and I've never lost that feeling. If I have a bad day nowadays, I just yell, `Boy you are lucky! You aren't that miserable pathetic creature who had to spend all his money destroying himself.'"

Rachael Hannan writes for www.50connect.co.uk

For more information on http://www.allencarrseasyway.com clinic call 0800 389 2115