I was using my vape 160 times a day, it was costing me a fortune and its toll on my face was truly shocking. Then I discovered a miracle one-day cure… and stopped overnight: MARY KILLEN

Mary Killen takes a deep breath and tries the method that has long been safe for smokers.

When I first started vaping two years ago, I was very happy with my new habit. “I want something 20 times a day and I get it 20 times,” I explained to my friends. ‘Just like smoking; ‘There is no danger or disgust.’

But then I wanted to stop. I was going up to 40, then 160, twenty times a day. If I ran out of cartridges, I would feel irritable and unable to concentrate until I got some more cartridges. It cost around £20 a week and created ‘barcode’ lines between the mouth and nose.

Home rehab for vaping doesn’t exist, and I didn’t dream of turning into a monster in front of my family by detoxing at home.

Then I remembered accountant Allen Carr, who smoked up to 100 cigarettes a day. He died in 2006 at the age of 72 after a battle with lung cancer; but not before he finds a way to kick his addiction. In 1983, at the age of 48, Carr left accounting and began teaching others how to use the Easyway method.

Carr healed thousands of people who signed up for his one-day seminars and sold millions of books describing his methods. It left behind a network of clinics that help people quit smoking and now e-cigarettes. Why didn’t I try one?

My own day-long course cost £379 and included a money-back guarantee if I didn’t stop. As a person who likes to treat myself to little treats throughout the day, I was pretty sure this wasn’t going to work for me. One Monday, however, I went to Allen Carr’s headquarters in Raynes Park, south-west London, to show that I was keen by attending at least the 10am to 5pm course.

I signed up at reception and embarrassingly admitted that I needed to vape really quickly before starting the course. ‘Join the others outside,’ said the receptionist with a smile, directing me to the garden where five women and four men were puffing.

Allen Carr smoked up to 100 cigarettes a day before he died of lung cancer in 2006 at the age of 72.

I immediately loved the ‘back to school’ vibe and loved the classroom, which was a bright, cozy space with views of the trees in the park through the blinds. We lounged on the super comfy reclining chairs as our teacher began educating us. Oh my goodness, even if I hadn’t quit vaping, it would have been worth it in terms of the social and nostalgic burden.

Our teacher, Colleen, told us she would talk to us for 50 minutes and then we could go back downstairs to smoke and vape again. We got comfortable, lay down, and started listening.

He started by making some very compelling points about our addiction. When we were kids, we didn’t need nicotine to be happy. Nicotine does not relieve our stress, it primarily creates stress by creating the need for relaxation. He talked about his life as a smoker, how he made smoking a priority even at weddings, funerals and school awards days.

His cigarettes meant the world to him, but one day he quit smoking. When he looked back, he saw that cigarettes took away much more than they gave him.

This was all a delicate trap, and the big tobacco companies had tricked him into it, just like they fooled us. ‘Because they want what’s in your wallets!’

At this point, one of the participants became a whistleblower. Confessing that he worked for a major tobacco company, he described how, for fear that they would lose access to our wallets if we were freed from their servitude, they had developed new methods to trap us: with snus, nicotine-impregnated pellets that we could hide in our gums and slowly leak nicotine into our systems over the course of a day. The tipster said some contained as much nicotine as 20 cigarettes. They are distributed free of charge at train stations in the hope of hooking a new generation; You can put these in your mouth in class or the office and no one will know.

When the 50 minutes were up we went into the garden and vaped and smoked, but less frantically and faster than before – we were keen to return for more explanation. The day has passed. Colleen was a very attractive woman with good posture and caught our attention. His delivery couldn’t be faulted. Every word he spoke was carefully chosen, his expressions were gripping, he never lost his stamina; In short, he was a great actor, and I bet he really was one. How else can you have the same conversation every day?

Experts recently warned of risk to children’s brain development from vaping

The course ended with a 40 minute hypnotherapy session led by Colleen and I have no idea what happened in the course. Ten of us were just lying on our couches with our eyes closed. All I know is that I haven’t vaped in three weeks, and I don’t even want to. The key points that stuck out to me were how wonderful it would be to be free like we were when we were kids, and how our need for nicotine is a trap, not a choice.

I now know that I should respond to that urge by pushing it aside as if it were a feather in my coat. I focus on starving the ‘bad tapeworm’ in my body. I stuffed myself with gum and Fisherman’s Friends, but I didn’t vape. Reader, I don’t want to.