Bangalore: Are you a chain smoker who wants to quit, but has never been able to? Well, a few Bangaloreans are thrilled to have finally found a way to kick the stick.
Like filmmaker Meera Pillai who used to smoke over 30 cigarettes. Everyday. For more than 20 years till eight months back.
"It was not cool anymore. People would ask you to leave the room. People would cough, do things ... and you start feeling unwanted," she says.
According to a 'Indian Journal of Chest Diseases and Allied Sciences' report, urban Bangalore are found to have one of the highest number of women smokers among all the cities.
The Allen Carr therapy is a 6-hour group session that combines cognitive therapy and a light relaxation exercise to remove the smoker's belief that smoking provides any sort of genuine pleasure or crutch.
Meera who hasn't touched a cigarette since then, says the programme is the winner - the `Allan Carr therapy' dwells more on talking people out of smoking, rather than handing out a pill or a patch.
Says de-addiction specialist Dr Suresh Shothham: "Smokers are branded as people who lack will power. That's not true. Smokers don't smoke because of lack of will power, but conflict of will."
Saravanan, a tech consultant, says: "There was always this timer running in my head...have to smoke...smoking was governing my life.. but after this program, the difference is that I am not craving."
Not everyone though is willing to make a beginning to the end.