"Nothing so good but it might have been better."
(English Proverb)
The success rate at Allen Carr's Easyway Clinics is over 90% based on the three month money-back guarantee and a recent independent scientific study concluded that, even after 12 months, the success rate was still over 53,3%*
This is unprecedented in the field of smoking cessation
The published studies are as follows:
1. Hutter HP et al. 2006. Smoking cessation at the workplace: one year success of short seminars. Int Arch Occup Environ Health (2006) 79:42-48.
2 Moshammer H and Neuberger M 2007 Long term success of short smoking cessation seminars supported by occupational health care. Addict Behav DOI: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2006.10.002.
Study - Medical University of Vienna (available upon request)
Comparing Allen Carr's Easyway with other methods
Believe it or not, there is no resource for smokers to compare the success rates of various quit smoking methods. Given the amount of money that has been spent in this area of research, we find this odd.
The reason for this is that researchers do not compare methods head-to-head; they typically compare them to placebo, or to no treatment. This enables manufacturers of Nicotine Replacement Therapy products, for example, to make claims such as NRT "doubles your chances" of quitting. However we believe that smokers are much more interested in the question: "Double them from what to what?" Researchers also quote success rates not as straight percentages, but as improvements (or not) over placebo, expressed as Odds Ratios (OR). So for example, if treatment A is twice as effective as placebo then its OR is 2. If it is half as successful its OR would be 0.50. This is not really useful for smokers because it doesn't provide any information about how successful the treatment is in the real world, just how it performs with respect to placebo.
The table above is an attempt to provide smokers with more relevant information.
As a benchmark we have used the success rate for using no intervention (a cold turkey, pure willpower). Studies indicate a 12-month success rate of 2-5%, the average of these studies is 3.4%. We have used this figure to calibrate the OR found in studies using other methods. For example, to calculate the success rate for Zyban, we have taken the baseline 3.4% success rate and multiplied it by the improvement over placebo presented in the quoted peer-reviewed papers.
This methodology is far from perfect, but it's the best we can do with the data. The major area of concern is that it discounts the placebo effect, assuming that placebo is equal to no intervention (although not all trials compare to placebo, some compare to no intervention, in which case the calculation would be accurate as is). For example, if the placebo effect doubles the success of using nothing, then the success rate of the method being measured would also double (though 50% of the increase in efficacy would be due to the placebo, not to the treatment).
As a result of this methodological wrinkle, these rates should be viewed as guides to success rates rather than absolute values. If any researchers can suggest a better method for calculation, we would be happy to amend the below table accordingly.
In the meantime if any manufacturers or practitioners of the methods outlined below have better, independently evaluated and peer-reviewed data quoting absolute success rates, we would be happy to include them.
We can be contacted via feedback@theeasywaytostopsmoking.com