I have found joy in quitting.
I want to tell you how it happened. Some of you are watching someone you love do the things I used to do. Some of you are doing them yourself. Either way, this is for you.
It was late 2022 when I first opened ChatGPT. By late 2023, I had figured out one thing about it. This technology was going to amplify any human being who used it. Coders would become better coders. Researchers would find answers faster. Scientists would compress decades of work into years. Every domain of knowledge was about to start moving, just by the sheer scale of it.
The oldest problem we have, dying, was going to start moving with it.
Death is a technical problem.
In April 2024, it was around Holi. I had smoked for ten years. A pack a day. In the last ten years, I had drunk more bottles than anyone could count. I was eating gujiya with a hangover from the night before. Before I realised, I had eaten more than I had space for in my stomach. Maybe I was trying to get over last night. There was this dark shadow, always walking behind me, telling me that I am doing something wrong.
I had a book in my hand. Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari. Halfway through, I read one sentence. "Death is a technical problem."
A bulb lit up in my head.
Harari wrote that line long before ChatGPT existed. But I knew, sitting there with the gujiya, that AI was going to solve this technical problem sooner than we think. Scientists are about to get more time than they have ever had in the history of mankind. They will spin up AI agents with different personas. They will spar with them. They will pull experts from different domains into one room without leaving their laptops. They will run their own little Manhattan Project from home.
Living to 100 is going to stop being a fantasy. Living past it might too.
I want to be alive when that arrives.
That was the day I told myself I am not dying of anything stupid. Not anything I can avoid by not doing stupid things.
I picked up Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. I had read half of it months earlier and put it down. This time I read the whole thing.
By the time I closed the book, I was not a smoker anymore. I have not smoked since.
It was the first time in my life I quit something that was working against me. I never realised it would be THAT easy.
By June 2024, most of my friends had quit too. Some read the book. Some did the five-hour seminar at allencarr.com. I was elated. I was on top of the world.
And drinking more than ever.
I never considered my drinking a problem. I was doing well in every area of my life. Or so I thought. Maybe at that time I considered only the areas I was doing well in as all the areas of my life.
In November 2024, I picked up Easy Way to Control Alcohol. Same author. Same method.
That was the last month my liver saw alcohol.
By January 2025, most of my friends had quit drinking. None of us could believe it was this easy.
The dark shadow that had walked with me for years was almost gone. But my BMI was double what it should have been. I have a sweet tooth. I had tried the best weight loss experts. Nothing held.
So I picked up three more Allen Carr books. Easy Way to Lose Weight. Easy Way to Stop Emotional Eating. Good Sugar, Bad Sugar.
By February 2025, I quit sugar. I quit junk food. I lost about twenty kilos.
Without hitting the gym. Without doing a single squat.
Then I kept going. Easy Way to Stop Worrying. Easy Way to Start Exercising. Easy Way to Quit Caffeine.
I can quit things that are working against me. I can also quit things that are quietly not working for me.
I cannot tell you in words how free I am now.
What is the point of living without these things?
People ask me this. They mean it.
I ask them back: what is the point of living if you cannot live without these things?
If you are struggling with anything you want to stop, pick up the Allen Carr book that fits. Good Sugar, Bad Sugar is the easiest one to start with, even if sugar is not your problem. The method becomes obvious once you read it. Then pick the book for the thing you actually want to quit.
If you cannot read the whole book, the five-hour seminar at allencarr.com does the same work.
If someone in your family is the one you have been worried about, send them this post. Then buy them the book.
If you quit, come back and tell me in the comments. I want to know. If you read it and it did not work for you, comment too. I will help.
Five hours. To remove a shadow you have carried for twenty years.
