I Quit! Cigarettes, Candy Bars & Booze [Paperback]

Linda Joy Allan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 16, 2008

A true story, told with honesty and wit. Linda Joy Allan was a 200 pound chain-smoker. Also a heavy drinker, she lived a life that alienated both her friends and family. Linda felt so helplessly trapped in the grip of her addictions that she couldn t imagine overcoming even ONE of them never mind all three. Not finding help from 12-step groups or traditional avenues, Linda found a way to overcome her addictions and start a new life. Learn her method of using faith and determination to succeed in battling your own fears and demons. Learn how to start your life over.

Editorial Reviews

Review

One of the best ways to learn about taking on difficult challenges in life is from those who have been there done that. I Quit will motivate and inspire. --DR. LAURA SCHLESSINGER, Author of Stop Whining, Start Living

About the Author

Aside from a series of surgeries when she was four years old, Linda Joy Allan led a happy childhood in Farmington, Michigan, a bedroom community about twenty miles outside of Detroit. Amid charming Victorian buildings, a good school and lots of friends, she was living the American dream. It was one of the happiest times of her life. Then when she was a teenager her parents told Linda and her brother and sister that they were relocating to California. Subsequently her parents would separate and divorce. Lindas world fell apart. She began stealing, and built a wall around herself. For years she lived under the influence of alcohol and was addicted to cigarettes and food, especially candy bars. Her road to recovery was not an easy one. The one person that had the greatest effect on her and helped her to see her way out of her self-destructive behaviors was her father who believed in her ability to achieve whatever she set out to do. Today Linda lives a rich and productive life in Santa Barbara, California. Her goal is to help people realize they have the strength within themselves to overcome their addictions. In her spare time Linda writes, visits nursing home patients several times a month and is a volunteer on a spiritual public access TV show. She lives with her cats, Wilson and Maggie.

Product Details

• Paperback: 246 pages
• Publisher: Dovelin Publishing (September 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977914909
• ISBN-13: 978-0977914906
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,885,180 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Linda Joy Allan was born and raised in Farmington, Michigan. She was a happy and popular young girl and was devasted when her father got a job in California and decided to move the whole family to California.

She dealt with her depression by eating and gaining 90 pounds in 4 years (from the ages of 12 and 16). Her best friend gave her a pack of Marlboro cigarettes at the age of 16 and told her "these will help you lose weight." She smoked for 28 years.

Then when she turned 19 she learned to love how alcohol made her feel. She lost boyfriend after boyfriend because of her drinking. She alienated family and friends. Her world revolved around alcohol for 12 years.

"I Quit!" is Linda's story about overcoming her 3 addictions. She now lives a happy, productive life. She knows she will never be fat, she will never drink and she will never pick up a cigarette again.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring Read., August 14, 2008

By 

TrishNYC (New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: I Quit! Cigarettes, Candy Bars & Booze (Paperback)

This work chronicles Linda Joy Allan's struggle with three addictions: food, alcohol and cigarettes. She talks about the first time she remembers feeling self conscious about her body and being bigger than the other girls in her class. But the most crushing blow was when she heard her grandmother discussing her weight with her mother. She remembers the binges and the highs and lows that food seemed to be able to bestow upon her. One day she is finally able to quit her food addiction but no sooner had she dropped the candy bar, she picked up the bottle of booze. She drank actively for about eleven years, hurting people along the way including her friends and family and a host of men who tried to love her despite her spiral into severe alcoholism. Regardless of all the love showered on her, no one loved her like her booze(in her mind). Eventually after years of wasting her life away and living very dangerously, she is able to get her life back on track.

Linda Joy Allan is brutally honest in relaying the life she lived while in the throes of addiction. My biggest criticism of the book is that while she spent so much time talking about the various details of her addictions, she spends very little time discussing her recovery. Her recoveries from the different addictions seemed almost simplistic. Don't get me wrong she credits her faith in God and spirituality for finally getting her out of the hell she had created for herself but I wish she had devoted a bit more time discussing the details of how exactly this helped her. She leaves the reader with light and rudimentary details of her recovery process. Far be it from me to criticize anyone's ascent into light after such a dark time but I feel that in glossing over the details of how she achieves her recovery, she missed a great opportunity to help anyone who may have identified with her struggle and tried to use it as a tool to help themselves. Just saying you stopped and now you are better does not cut it.

Her words in the last few pages are very touching and I felt that they really came from her heart. As someone who has never struggled with any addictions, I was stunned by the revelations in this book. I was shocked at the lengths that people will go to sustain their habit but it also gave me hope that people can change no matter how long that may have been at a particular behavior.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Candid memoir of addiction, December 10, 2008

By 

Callista "from SMS Book Reviews" (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Quit! Cigarettes, Candy Bars & Booze (Paperback)

I read I Quit in two days and only because I went to a party. Otherwise it would have been done in one day. It snagged me in right from the beginning where we learn about all the surgeries Ms. Allan had to go through. I really enjoyed reading the book, even though I've never struggled with an addiction to Cigarettes and Booze. I do over-eat although not quite to the extent that the author has. I appreciate someone who can talk candidly about something so personal and difficult.

My only problem with the book is that the quitting seemed to easy. I'm not sure how to say this without sounding bad but Linda Joy Allan quit with the help of God, which I think is great. I don't deny the role of faith in healing. However (luckily for her) once she did decide to quit her addictions, she stopped cold turkey the first try. I'm glad it was this easy for her but I could see that discouraging others who may be in the throws of addiction and looking for help and understanding. Obviously there is nothing that the author did wrong, she's just telling her story and I'm glad things worked out the way they did for her, I'm just worried about potential readers of the book.

As I mentioned, God and faith are mentioned in this book but it isn't overwhelmingly Christian or anything. I had no problem reading it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Can a Person Overcome not One, not Two, but Three Addictions?, November 2, 2008

By 

Bryan Carey "Bryan Carey" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Quit! Cigarettes, Candy Bars & Booze (Paperback)

Many people struggle with addictions. They battle their desires day and night, hoping to fight back the urges to consume a specific substance or partake in a potentially harmful activity. Many are convinced they can easily quit at any time, and they deceive others and themselves that they are not really addicted at all.

Author Linda Joy Allan understands the problems of addiction all too well. She was hooked on eating and loved the feeling following a large meal. She was a chain smoker and craved the nicotine buzz from her favorite smokes. She suffered from alcoholism and would go out of her way to get hold of a drink. She spent the prime years of her life battling these addictions and while she is now clean and sober, the damage to her social life, personal life, and career potential is likely still being felt today. She wrote this book to tell her stories of addiction and what it finally took to kick these three habits once and for all.

One thing readers will notice right away with this book is that it devotes most of its pages to stories about alcoholism. The addictions to food and tobacco either didn't result in very many problems for the author or she didn't have as many tales to tell. She spends most of the time talking about alcohol and this fact makes the book's title a tad deceptive. I was expecting a more balanced approach that covered each of these three areas more or less equally. But it's the boozing that gets the coverage and the author has quite a few surprising life events to share that involved her drinking.

Most of the pages of this book are devoted to stories involving excessive drinking and even though this is probably covered a little too much, I have to admit that I found the author's struggle very interesting, not because I can relate to her problems myself, but because she had so, so many problems! Just when you thought she had hit the end of her addiction, was going to shape up, and nothing else could go wrong, she experiences yet another episode of misjudgment. You start to wonder if her slow demise will ever stop. She has issues with men and destroys any chance for a serious personal relationship because of her drinking. She drives drunk without a second thought. She shoots off her mouth and makes comments she later regrets. It's just one thing after another.

Well, the addictions are finally under control by book's end but the author didn't cure herself through twelve step programs or traditional means. She beat her addiction through faith. The other methods didn't work but once she renewed her faith, she was able to beat her addictions once and for all. One thing I like about her selected method is that, while it worked for her, the author doesn't suggest that the faith method is the only way to go. This is good, because while religion is certainly useful to some people and it has helped many people overcome problems, it is not something that will work for everyone and I respect the author for not making that type of generalized assumption.

Taken as a whole, this is a fairly interesting book about addiction and it will likely rate most highly among readers who can relate to the author's many struggles. It isn't a very well balanced book and it should have dedicated more pages to the recovery phase. But it is still a decent effort and the endless stories about partying to excess will shock and amaze many readers.