Is quitting easy?

There's at least one person who believed it's easy to quit smoking. His name was Allen Carr and he actually wrote a book called The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. It's a very subtle book. It quietly and completely erodes the bubble of blissful denial that a smoker lives in. It tears apart the smoker's self-inflicted brainwashing. It keeps whacking the smoker in the face with stuff the smoker knows is true but has conveniently tucked far far away. Carr points out: Certainly no smoker started out to become addicted. Certainly no smoker said, "I want to be a slave to cigarettes for the rest of my life." I know I sure didn't. When we start smoking, when we're just 'experimenting,' when we're fighting with our parents and teachers over who will be the boss of us, when we're struggling with an identity idea, we certainly are NOT going to stop and say to ourselves, "hey wait a minute, this is nicotine we're talking about here, this is very very addictive stuff and the tobacco companies don't give a flying fuck about whether or not I die from smoking this shit not to mention that it costs a bloody fortune." Carr keeps hammering away, bringing up all the things the smoker wants to ignore. And he should know -- he was a 100/day smoker for 30 years. He speaks from personal experience.
As with any attempt to undo brainwashing, the important thing is to find the key that holds all the pieces in place. Somewhere there's a tiny shift that forces all the other denials and stupidities to crumble. I'm not sure I even know what or when or how, but I do know that reading this book thoroughly undermined any ability I had to delude myself another day.