Category: Smoking | Page 5

Remember When You First Started Smoking?

No smoker started smoking for the effects of nicotine, and no smoker can tell me what nicotine DOES! So they are not smoking for the effects of nicotine, because they don’t even know what those effects ARE. It is a habit, not “drug use”.

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

This month, the readership of this site has absolutely gone through the roof – and no, it doesn’t have anything to do with Edzard Ernst! Or at least, not much to do with him. “Inconsistencies in the Addiction Story” is the page everyone is reading, and despite recent fuss over other pages this remains the most viewed page on the site after the homepage.

Smokers, I hope, are reading this. Ordinary smokers and particularly those who would really prefer to be non-smokers but they don’t seem to be getting anywhere with willpower (though some do!) or any of the pharmaceutical aids.

Readership of this site has been steadily climbing every month since it was launched in March 2008, but it has suddenly doubled during March 2010, and that’s the post that did it. The fact is, smokers have been told a load of misleading rubbish about the tobacco habit and far too many of them end up suffering and dying as a result. So a very warm welcome to all the new readers around the globe – read on, you don’t have to buy anything.

Early Smoking Experiences

There is an interesting difference in the way some of the smokers who have no intention of quitting anytime soon describe their early smoking experiences and the way my clients nearly always descibe them. This shouldn’t surprise us because very few people are thinking positively about tobacco by the time they reach the hypnotherapy stage.

“What made you think of using hypnotherapy to quit?” I ask each new client, which is a way of assessing how many are direct referrals from previous clients, which is most of them. If not, the usual response is: “Because I’ve tried everything else!”

Naturally, the first time a smoker attempts to quit the habit they are likely to try to do it all by themselves using willpower. If that doesn’t work they are probably going to have a go with the thing that is most extensively advertised, namely nicotine replacement poisoning (NRT). If they knew that it had pretty much the same long-term outcome as willpower they probably wouldn’t bother – but most of them do not, because that is a fact the Department of Health were trying to keep to themselves.

Then – once it became obvious NRT had no lasting effect – the smoker might try some of the pills, willpower again, a self-help book with a CD, NRT again in a different form, then eventually find their way to hypnotherapy. “You’re my last hope!” is an expression hypnotherapists hear every other day.

Sometimes these smokers are beating themselves up about having ‘failed’ so many times. Not so: they have been given the wrong information, and with the best will in the world thay have been trying to use that information to quit smoking. It is the method that has failed, not the smoker. In explaining this point to them, I often compare it to trying to open a combination lock. If you have been given the wrong information you are going to struggle, and no amount of willpower is going to change that. If someone suggests that the problem is that you’re just not trying hard enough, or you don’t really want to open the lock, they would be quite wrong. Equally it might appear to either party as if it were “really difficult” to open a combination lock. Which it is, if you have the wrong information.

But if you have the right combination, it’s a snap.

Then I explain to these smokers that they are, in fact, typical of the kind of people who successfully quit smoking. “The ones who do not succeed either keep putting off the attempt – which you never did – only try once or twice and don’t have the heart to go for it again – you evidently don’t lack that – or decide in advance that there’s “no point” trying other methods because the first method didn’t work. The fact that you’re here proves that you are not that poorly motivated or unimaginative. In fact,” I conclude, rather to their surprise because they hadn’t really thought of it that way lately, “you are EXACTLY the sort of person who is going to succeed because you clearly won’t settle for anything less!”

That usually perks them up a bit, because right up until that moment they’d been giving themselves a hard time over it.

At some point in the conversation I will ask them to cast their mind back to their earliest smoking experiences, and put the question: “Do you remember why you were doing that, at the time?” Never once in the ten years I’ve been helping smokers ditch the habit – and we’re talking about thousands of individual smokers here – never once has anyone said: “For the effects of nicotine.”

Next question: “Do you remember how it made you feel when you first learned how to inhale the smoke?”

Now it is not that unusual, if in conversation with a person who isn’t aiming to quit anytime soon, or has an axe to grind about alternative therapy, or is just cheerfully pro-smoking, to hear them declare: “Actually, I really liked it! Yes, I took to smoking like a duck to water and I didn’t even cough! In fact I love nicotine so much that even during the night I have a couple of patches stuck to my forehead so I can dream that I’m smoking all night long!”

I’m sure you’ve met someone like that, but it is almost unheard of for that person to book a hypnotherapy session. Nor should they, they’re obviously quite happy the way they are, being all ‘nicotine friendly’. And why not.

No, I only work with people who have already decided that they want to get rid of the habit, and they only give one of two responses to the question: “I don’t remember” or “It made me feel dizzy and sick”. There are hardly any exceptions to this apart from the relatively few smokers who first tried tobacco when they already had alcohol in their system. Some of those people will have experienced the effects of inhaling tobacco smoke much more like a ‘high’ than the rest, who just found it a sickening experience they don’t particularly enjoy recalling, so of course some of them don’t recall it. This is normal – many people who didn’t have a very nice childhood will report that they don’t remember much about their childhood at all.

The Actual Effects of Nicotine

I ask all smoking clients: “Do you know what nicotine actually does?” I have yet to encounter a smoker who does know. The most common guess is: “I think it relaxes me, or something…” Can we find a parallel in real drug use? A heroin user who doesn’t know what heroin does? A coke-head that doesn’t know what cocaine does? No, of course not!

If any future client were to confidently announce: “Why, yes! Nicotine makes my heart beat faster than it should, reduces blood flow to my extremities which causes the poor circulation that can eventually result in amputation, and the combination of these two changes causes a rise in blood pressure. It also raises blood fats levels, which is useless and possibly a contributory factor in heart disease, and finally it raises the risk of thrombosis!”

…then I would immediately ask them if they imagined for one moment that they were truly smoking for the effects of nicotine.

Smokers smoke because of cravings, that is true. But cravings are nothing to do with nicotine or anything else in the smoke. And we get lots of cravings, they’re not all about tobacco. They are impulses from the Subconscious mind which prompt you to do what you would usually do at that moment or in that situation, and the factor that has confused everybody about cravings is that they are transmitted via the body and they are real physical experiences that can be mild or very unpleasant indeed, and they will always be interpreted as a ‘need’ or a ‘desire’.

If you respond, the signal will cease which is why it has been misinterpreted as a ‘withdrawal symptom’. If you don’t respond you get another signal and they will often become more frequent and progressively more uncomfortable and distracting because the purpose of the signal is to distract you from what you are thinking about just long enough to recognise what the circumstances suggest (to the subconscious) you should do, and also to ‘prompt’ you to do something other than what you were already doing. If you don’t respond the subconscious assumes you didn’t notice that signal so it sends another, more insistent one.

If you have made a conscious decision to stop smoking, the Subconscious doesn’t know, so it (quite innocently) keeps sending the reminders which the poor old conscious mind is now trying to ignore using willpower (conscious effort). The problem with that is that willpower is an extra effort we don’t normally make, so you can’t keep that up. You can do it for a while, but it is an effort! And an effort that you cannot sustain so as soon as you run out of steam – or get distracted by something else – the smoking habit is simply reasserted by the Subconscious mind because those conscious efforts didn’t change anything about it, they were simply a temporary conscious effort to repress the behaviour by force.

If I were wrong about all of this, and it were all about drug dependence, addiction and withdrawal then all of my smoking clients would walk out of my office the same way they walked in. As would the drinkers, the gamblers, the cocaine-users and the chocoholics… but they don’t. Cravings and habitual behaviours can be shut down in a hypnotherapy session provided the therapist is a successful specialist in those matters and the client is quite happy to be rid of the problem and has chosen the hypnotherapy route willingly. True withdrawal symptoms can not be shut down in that way.

In Chapter Ten of Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was I define the Compulsive Habit as distinct from addiction which is the big gap in the medical understanding of these matters, which has got all messed up with theories about dopamine etc. because an understanding of the Subconscious mind is not a part of their training, not is it part of our general education but it should be. We were all raised and educated in the first place with no mention of a subconscious mind, which leads to the current generalised notion that the conscious mind is the mind and it doesn’t really like the idea that there is another one! Which is why I repeat the observation in the book a number of times that “the conscious mind doesn’t really believe in the Subconscious mind, except perhaps in theory”.

And by extension, doesn’t really believe in hypnotherapy until the results are encountered for real. It is not a magic trick. It is not a parlour game. It is not mysterious in any way, it can all be explained and accounted for. It is not remotely dangerous or risky, but stage hypnosis unfortunately makes it look as if it might be which is why that always needs explaining before we start doing any therapy!

Hypnotherapy is often regarded as alternative medicine, which is wrong on two counts. Firstly, it is not alternative because it was officially recognised as a valid therapeutic approach by the BMA and also their American counterparts in the mid-1950s, so it is orthodox and it has been, and is, used in both medicine and dentistry, though nowhere near as often as it would be if it were not for all the misinformation, prejudice, unnecessary fear and ignorant scoffing that we have had to contend with for the last couple of centuries. Secondly, although it has medical applications hypnotherapy is not medicine, it is 100% communication so it has more in common with educational procedures than medical ones, and the current, almost universal lack of understanding of the Subconscious mind is entirely down to the Subconscious-shaped hole in our traditional models of education.

more about hypnotherapy

Just in case you thought it was just me…

…when I suggested that the Department of Health KNEW THEY WERE LYING when they made all those claims for the supposed ‘effectiveness’ of nicotine replacement poisoning:

http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2010/03/17/patrick-basham-the-doh-is-wrong-about-cessation/

Now: the plot thickens, as we hear rumours that the ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE is very likely to be BANNED in the U.K. towards the end of June – the only competition for nicotine replacement products made by drug companies. Then this message has come in from across the pond:

Subject: J & J merger with Pfizer Consumer Health gives J & J a monopoly in the pharmaceutical nicotine marketplace

What precautions have been taken by the EU to prevent this monopolistic business practice?

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2008/06/nicoderm-manufacturer-alza-is.html

Additionally, since Johnson & Johnson’s (J & J) partner Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has been funding groups ($446+ million) like the American Lung Assoc., CTFK, ASH, etc. to lobby in favor of smoking bans around the world, they are unfairly manipulating the marketplace in order to increase sales to their monopoly stranglehold, pharmaceutical nicotine, commonly referred to as rent seeking legislation.

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2007/02/smoking-bans-good-public-policy-or.html

So all you Lab Rats over on the Bad Science blog, all you Ben Goldacre + Edzard Ersnt groupies who scoff at any mention of Big Pharma being up to no good, conspiracies involving government departments and evil global interests using misinformation disguised as ‘science’ to manipulate smokers’ choices simply to sell them a useless poison posing as a medication…

…wake up and smell the corruption.

Of course, there is a way around all of this. Find a good hypnotherapist and ditch the lot. And before anyone suggests that’s just ME trying to make money out of smokers, here’s the difference: the vast majority of my smoking clients will be saving £1,800 every year they live after that, which will be likely to be a lot more years than if they listen to those liars at the Department of Stealth.

safer alternative

Chantix Champix 6

Many of the rave reviews of Chantix (Champix) are posted early on in the smoker’s use of the drug. Short-term smoking cessation with this drug is quite common, but the success-rate at 6 months is much lower. Bad reactions often happen after many weeks, not always straight away, so some of the sufferers of serious side effects may have already posted rave reviews of the very drug that then went on to damage them, innocently encouraging others to decide to try it. Some sufferers report only becoming ill during a second course of the drug.

Chantix Champix Reviews: How long does the suffering have to go on?

*Update: If you or a loved one has suffered a bad reaction to Champix and you are based in the U.K., you can report it to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) here. The more people do that the clearer the true picture will become. Protect others! Report it.*

**Update 2, 4th November 2011:

The American Food & Drug Administration (FDA) were reported in the Business section of the Washington Post as reassuring smokers that Chantix (known as Champix everywhere outside the USA) does not increase psychiatric problems, according to two small studies involving 26,000 smokers. Since this flies in the face of everything else they know about Chantix already, it is surely irresponsible to say such a thing at this time, because the caveats added to the story further down do not carry anything like the weight of the inevitable headline. Meanwhile, this article in the Daily Mail reports a study which states exactly the opposite.

Why? Because the Daily Mail is not bending over backward to assist the pharmaceutical industry – even at the expense of smokers’ lives, if that’s what it takes – whereas the FDA very clearly is. The testing and approvals system is corrupt as hell, using every possible means of dragging their feet so that Chantix/Champix stays on the market and remains ‘approved’ regardless of how many individual smokers’ lives are ruined by the drug.

The Truth Will Out Campaign has been trying to alert smokers (and doctors) to the dangers of this drug since Autumn of 2008, but just imagine the frustration of this commentator on the new Daily Mail report:

“Oh now they make this a huge statement. My mom used it in mid 2007. She ended up in a mental hospital. Thanks Champix. This stuff shouldn’t even be on the market!!! I still can’t understand why it is, with all these accounts of suicide! I read horror story’s back then after this happened to my mom about people killing themselves or having illness such as bi-polar disorder activated in them. My rule with all drugs is, if it hasn’t been on the market for more then 10 years…DO NOT take it. You never want to be the guinea pig. Sorry for all those who ended their lives because they were manipulated this drug.

– Danielle, USA,
3/11/2011 6:08″**

Chantix Champix 6

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

Recently a couple of contributors to this blog – who have started to take Champix or Chantix themselves and feel fine on it – have commented that the page they are reading here “seems very negative”.

This is my sixth blog post on Champix/Chantix. I check all comments that come in, and with the obvious exception of spam each comment is added to the site, which means that what you read here is exactly what I have received. If I suspect a comment is bogus I will still add it to the site, and then say why I think it is bogus. Even when it seems I’m mistaken about that, I leave the whole exchange up there for everyone to read, I don’t cover it up. Sometimes it is hard to tell what is genuine and what is not.

So if someone suggests that it seems too negative, I suggest that they read all the comments that follow all six blog posts, the majority of which follow the original post entitled “Champix/Chantix” and the fourth one “Champix/Chantix 4: Enough Already”.

Now look at this:

Review Centre

You might reasonably ask the question “Why do these reviews mostly seem very positive when the ones on some other blogs like Truth Will Out mostly seem pretty negative, often alarmingly so?”

The answer seems to lie in the fact that many of these ‘rave’ reviews are posted very early on in the Champix users experience. The fact that they feel no urge to smoke at that stage makes a very big impression, and if side effects are minimal at that point it is not surprising that the review they post is bordering on ecstatic.

But we know from the trials that at least half of those smokers will start again when they come off the medication, so this kind of early assessment is premature. We also know from the comments that have come in to truth Will Out that although nasty side effects can kick in quite quickly, it is more common for them to happen with prolonged use beyond the six-week or eight-week point.

Now read the latest comment to pop up in my mailbox:

Sheanin wrote:

“I’m so glad I found this website – I only wish I had found it a little sooner.

You have confirmed what I had started to suspect myself as a user of Champix. Although I had only smoked on and off for about 6 years, I was prescribed the drug to help me quit a few weeks ago. As I was desperate to quit once and for all, I went for it. I soon wished I hadn’t.

Last week, I had to admit to myself that I was quickly becoming ill on so many fronts that I had to see my doctor again – and fast. I was told to stop taking Champix immediately. I had spent just over a week feeling as though I had been locked into a tiny little cocoon somewhere in the furthest corners of my mind while a robot took me over.

Sure, I got little waves of euphoria here and there each time I reached a milestone – but with each milestone that euphoria would crash to an even deeper low. In addition, my body was going to pieces; I was constantly nauseated, constantly wishing I could curl up and sleep, suffering from aches and pains absolutely everywhere – it was never ending. As a single mum to two small children, one of whom is disabled, I knew – even from the depths of that little cocoon – that I couldn’t let things continue.

I grew up around depression and mental illness and I had always sworn to myself that my children would never be exposed to those things. So, upon seeing the doctor, I was told to come off the drug immediately, which I did four days ago. And even now, I am suffering the consequences. Since that day, I have gone through what I now know to be terrible withdrawal; every side effect suffered during those few weeks has returned with a vengeance. I have been almost permanently locked in my bathroom, unable to eat, unable to look after my children, permanently in pain. At one point, I felt like I was dying.

All I can say is that I am so relieved to have come off this drug, even if I am still suffering now. I’m sure this sickness will pass and I’m positive that I need no crutches whatsoever to stop me from smoking at this stage, I haven’t had a smoke in almost a month and now associate cigarettes with the sheer torture I’ve gone through during the last few days. If I’d never started smoking in the first place, I’d never have been introduced to the absolute terror that is Champix and I wouldn’t be sitting here now clutching my abdomen with tears in my eyes. This drug should be banned completely; the government slaps scary pictures on cigarette packets but continues to sell them – while nobody gets thoroughly warned about Champix and what it’s highly likely to do to your body.

I’d sooner spend the rest of my life licking tar from the footpath.”

Not Worth The Risk

My point about Champix is really very simple: why risk a hideous experience like that if you have not already tried all the methods that CANNOT POSSIBLY do that to you? Especially when hypnotherapy, the Allen Carr method and acupuncture all produce better results anyway! (See Evidence section.)

To save money?

And to all those sweet innocents who have suggested brightly that if they feel a bit funny they’ll simply stop taking it, over to Sheanin:

“I was told to come off the drug immediately, which I did four days ago. And even now, I am suffering the consequences. Since that day, I have gone through what I now know to be terrible withdrawal; every side effect suffered during those few weeks has returned with a vengeance. I have been almost permanently locked in my bathroom, unable to eat, unable to look after my children, permanently in pain. At one point, I felt like I was dying.”

And some people have. Take risks if you want, people, but don’t kid yourself this could never happen to you. I mean even with Russian Roulette, if there’s six chambers and only one bullet, the odds are very much in your favour that you won’t die the first time you pull that trigger. Wanna play?

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

safer alternative

The truth about why this drug is misconceived anyway, like NRT

Two weeks on Champix

Champix Chantix murders and suicide

Champix Chantix suicide

Champix Chantix seizures and epilepsy

44% success rate? No, 86% failure rate for Champix Chantix

More smokers’ comments follow this post

More smokers’ reviews of Champix Chantix

My original post on Champix Chantix April 2008, and almost 300 comments that followed

Article: Why willpower is irrelevant!

The Truth Will Out, Pfizer!

Inconsistencies in the ‘Addiction’ Story

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

The Addiction Myth

Yes, it is the case that many smokers find it very difficult to give up smoking. Cravings can drive you up the wall. Trying to ignore them can make you very irritable or reduce you to tears. Smokers can sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to obtain tobacco.

All true.

These facts have often been pointed to as a way of refuting my statements that nicotine is not addictive, tobacco smoking is not drug-taking and cravings are not withdrawal symptoms. The people mentioning these facts do not know (or simply do not believe) that all those experiences can be shut down in a single hypnotherapy session provided it is conducted properly and the client is content to be rid of the habit. Before the session, the client may have mixed feelings about that but those matters can be resolved during the session itself as long as the therapist knows what they’re doing.

Let’s leave hypnotherapy aside for the time being and examine the addiction idea. It is equally true that some smokers find it quite easy to stop smoking, and wonder what all the fuss is about. Some are scarcely bothered by cravings for long periods during the day if they are out shopping, gardening or playing sports. Sometimes smokers run out of cigarettes but can’t be bothered to go to the shop until the following day if it’s raining or just cold outside. Yet people often say to me: “But isn’t nicotine the most addictive drug in the world?” Let’s just consider a few curious aspects of that notion.

Point One: Nicotine is the only notable ingredient in Nicotine Replacement Treatment (NRT) Products like patches and gum. These products are available for sale in any supermarket, right there in the household health products section, aisle 17, alongside the heroin and the crack cocaine. No sorry, right next to the vitamins and the baby powder. The “most addictive drug in the world”? What is it doing there? It’s not even kept behind the pharmacy desk in the supermarket like baby medicines such as Calpol!

Cigarettes, too, are available for sale in the same supermarket but those have always been for sale in shops, that is not a recent change in the law. Even so, you cannot just pick them up off the shelf, you have to go to the tobacco counter and ask for them. Soon they will be hidden under the counter but Nicotine itself – the most addictive drug in the world! – will remain right there on the shelves next to the Olbas Oil and the Kids’ Vitamins. Doesn’t that strike you as dangerous neglect? Shouldn’t the most addictive drug in the world be in a restricted zone, or something? Aren’t unaddicted, non-smoking people being needlessly exposed to the most addictive drug in the world there? Doesn’t that sort of retail practice suggest that nicotine is no more threatening than the vitamins? True, they also sell bleach and other potentially dangerous substances, but not for consumption! And no-one has ever suggested that those were drugs, or ‘therapeutic’ in any way. The very ordinariness of this mode of presentation does not fit the suggestion that nicotine is the most addictive drug in the world!

Point two: When these products were first licensed, you could only obtain them if you went to your GP, who would check your general health status because it is well known that nicotine is dangerous, especially to anyone with a heart condition and/or high blood pressure. Somehow that cautious position has been abandoned, as if medical people ceased to care about such things, and nowadays you can just buy it anywhere no matter how much of a risk you might be running. I have even heard of smokers who are in hospital after a heart attack being given nicotine patches despite the rather obvious fact that they weren’t going to smoke anyway for a while, being laid up in a hospital and very likely scared to death of pushing their luck at that point even if they did have an opportunity to smoke. Which they don’t, so why anyone with even a modicum of medical training would deliberately feed nicotine into their system at a time like that is beyond rational explanation. And if a second heart attack resulted from that, I’d say that’s manslaughter. They certainly wouldn’t give the poor soul anything else that would increase their heart-rate and blood pressure at a moment like that, so why nicotine?

Because of the stupid ‘addiction’ tale. That is the only reason, and it’s a mistake.

Point Three: When people break into chemist’s shops or pharmacies – to steal real drugs of course – do they ever bother to steal the NRT? Did you ever encounter a dodgy character in a pub selling knock-off nicotine patches? No? Well why not? The place is full of “nicotine addicts”, isn’t it? The truth is, no-one does that because no-one wants the stuff, you would have trouble even giving it away. There is no black market in nicked nicotine whatsoever. I’ve even seen NRT products for sale in Pound Shops! “The most addictive drug in the world”? Think again.

Knock-off ciggies though? Now you’re talking! So it is not nicotine the smoker craves, but their usual habitual object – the cigarette. Or if they are a pipe smoker, they wouldn’t want a cigarette at all. If they are an habitual cigar smoker, they wouldn’t want to smoke a pipe and are highly unlikely to do so even if they have no cigars. Do we see heroin addicts being so sniffy about delivery methods when withdrawal kicks in? No. Which takes us straight on to:

Point Four: Real habitual drug users usually do not give a damn what form the drug comers in. If they have the luxury of a choice they will have preferences, but are most unlikely to do without if anything is available that can be abused. They are notorious for abusing anything from cough medicine to poppers if nothing else is around, but no-one abuses NRT products because there is no buzz, no pleasure to be had. If you ask a real habitual drug user when they first started using drugs, will they answer that question by telling you when they first started smoking tobacco? No, they’d never think of that. They’ll tell you when they first started using drugs. Totally different thing.

Point Five: Why do we never see youngsters or teenagers abusing NRT products? If it’s nicotine they’re after, surely it would be easier to sneak around school wearing a patch than risk getting caught with smelly, smoky cigarettes – what a giveaway! Will we ever hear teachers saying: “Turn out your pockets, sonny – and take off your shirt while I check you for patches!” No, of course not. No kid would be seen dead with nicotine patches, what sort of rebellious devil-may-care statement is that? They wouldn’t bother with them in private either, because nicotine is not what teenage smoking is about. And when we were 13, we all knew that, too!

Point Six: Cigarette smokers who have run out of cigarettes will often politely refuse the offer of a cigarette from a friend because they dislike that particular brand. I did that many times myself when I was a smoker. Much earlier in my smoking career though, I would sometimes find myself searching everywhere for cigarette-ends that might yield enough shreds of tobacco to roll up into a rather pathetic apology for a cigarette, but I certainly never did that after my teenage years. I also learned through experience that some brands were particularly nauseating to me, so as time went on I would politely decline those even if I had no cigarettes of my own. What kind of ‘drug addiction’ develops from quite desperate-looking, indiscriminate indulgence to choosiness as time goes on? Real drug addictions typically develop the opposite way around.

Point Seven: It is quite common to see smokers who have smoked for twenty years who nevertheless only smoke five or six a day, and just as unremarkable for a relatively new smoker to smoke twenty a day or more. I knew one woman who only ever smoked one a day, just before bed, but did that for decades. Some smokers only smoke if they go out, or if they are drinking alcohol. Some people only ever smoke on a special occasion, such as at a wedding reception. “The most addictive drug in the world”? How are they getting away with it?

Point Eight: Nowadays, few people can smoke at work so quite a lot of smokers don’t smoke all day, then go home and smoke nine or ten cigarettes whilst watching TV. It’s not like they need NRT to get them through the working day – the only time smokers buy that is if they are trying to quit altogether! So, are these people unaddicted all day long at work, and then suddenly addicted again in the evening? Are they ill at work because of this? No! They might find that it irritates them when the change is first introduced and they are obliged to adjust their habitual routine, but very quickly they find that it doesn’t bother them much at all. Just like the way smokers adjusted quite easily when it was banned on buses, on trains, in theatres and cinemas. Now that smoking in bars and pubs is no longer an option, many smokers have noticed that the number of times they light up has reduced without them making any effort to reduce it. Has their “need for nicotine” somehow waned? Why aren’t the ‘nicotine receptors’ in their brains “going crazy!” like in the TV NRT advert, forcing them outside just as often as they smoked inside the bar?

Because smoking is a compulsive habit, not a drug addiction. All these are examples from Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was. There are many more in the book, 400 pages of evidence that clearly demonstrates that the nicotine tale is a lie, and explains what smokers’ cravings really are and how we shut them down in the hypnotherapy session. I’m not going to re-write the entire book here obviously, anyone who is interested in learning more about that can read it for themselves. By the way, on the book link above there is a download option to the right of the page that comes up. You can read the whole thing for just five pounds sterling (less than eight US dollars).

People who attack my book (nearly always without reading it) by citing “scientific studies” are just repeatedly playing the “Everyone knows it’s a drug addiction, and here’s the scientific proof!” card, in the hope that smokers won’t bother to actually read the book for themselves, or closely examine the methodology of the actual ‘scientific’ trials but just assume that nicotine addiction is scientific ‘fact’. These are the sort of studies that assured us all that Prozac was more effective than placebo, that Champix and Zyban were effective and safe smoking remedies – nay, Wonder Drugs! Some of the studies that are supposed to prove that nicotine is an addictive substance – collectively known as the animal IVSA tests – are closely analysed in my book and prove to be full of obvious contradictions so they don’t prove any such thing in reality, yet they are still cited by medical bodies like the Royal College of Physicians AS IF they do, because those people are hoping you will just believe them without looking at it any more closely! They are donning the white lab coat and talking down to everybody, taking smokers for fools and it is all because nicotine has become a huge global money-spinner, with smokers and taxpayers picking up the tab.

The ‘addiction’ suggestion/interpretation of tobacco smoking plays a very big part in keeping the whole sorry mess dragging on for decades, and it is time for that fundamental medical error to be revealed as such, so that smokers can stop wasting their time with products that don’t work any better than willpower, and get some proper help for a change.

Advertising Standards Slam Bogus NHS Claim

The Advertising Standards Agency block an attempt by the NHS to suggest in a promotional leaflet that smokers are “twice as likely” to stop smoking with NRT and “four times more likely” with NHS Stop Smoking Services because the claims are “misleading”.

by Chris Holmes

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) have blocked an NHS advertising leaflet which claimed that smokers were “twice as likely” to quit with Nicotine Replacement products and “four times as likely” to quit if they also used NHS Stop Smoking Services. For the very first time since the Truth Will Out Campaign was launched, the claims have been rejected because quitting success implies a permanent solution but the NHS were relying on the results at only four weeks, which the agency concluded was not the same thing at all, and was therefore likely to mislead the public.

I’ll say it is. And since we now know from the Borland report that the results dwindle to 6% success at the end of twelve months, which is the same result as a number of studies have found for willpower alone, we feel vindicated in claiming that NRT doesn’t work at all in the long run, and is therefore a complete waste of taxpayers’ money and the NHS should abandon it altogether. Instead they’re going to waste more valuable resources printing up leaflets that say something like: “Did you know that nicotine skin patches and chewing gum can be effective in aiding withdrawal from nicotine?” (The bit in bold type is a direct quote from the British Medical Association’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, Dorling Kindersley 2002.) And now over to the March Hare, for the weather…

Here’s the link to the ASA story:

The Argus

**Update, January 2012: Harvard University publish a study that demonstrates NO USEFUL EFFECT from any form of NRT. Just as I said in the book in 2007, and on this site from March 2008.

Hypnotherapy is the easiest way of all to quit smoking, and despite the best efforts of Edzard Ernst to suggest otherwise, we will establish this as scientific fact and common knowledge in the end. The sooner the better. Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was fully explains the reasons for the complete failure of the medical approach and exactly how hypnotherapy wipes out compulsive habits like smoking, usually in a single session. As it says in the book, there is no such thing as “therapeutic nicotine”. Give it up, Doc.

more info about hypnotherapy for smoking cessation

Killer Chantix Champix Isn’t Magic

by Chris Holmes

The weird and wonderful internet just threw up another amusing splinter of craziness in the form of an email message, sent through the Truth Will Out Contact Form facility, from a website called ChampixMagic. It purported to be from a person called Jay, and it said:

Jay wrote:
Dear sir/webmaster,
I am the responsible person for link exchange at chantixmagic.com I visited your site and feel, it’s a quality one and relevant to my site theme. So I hope that you would consider link exchange with us. If you determine that a link to our site is appropriate, Please let me know whether you are interested or not. If yes please provide your site info.

I find it very hard to believe that Jay has ever visited the Truth Will Out site. I think it is much more probable that this message is sent out automatically to any site that mentions Champix a lot. There follows here an excerpt from one of my earlier posts that mentioned it under the heading CHANTIX CHAMPIX KILLS, BUT A.S.H. WON’T TELL THE SMOKERS, and it also mentions the ChampixMagic site:

Now look at this, which purports to be a “Trusted Information Bank” about Champix (Chantix). At the base of the page, a disclaimer states “We don’t encourage the buying and selling of Chantix without prescription”, which is a weird thing to claim when you can buy it right there, via the site! It mentions nothing about any dangers, but says:

“Chantix is the latest blockbuster drug approved by the FDA on May 11, 2006 that is indicated as an aid to quit smoking. Manufactured by Pfizer Inc., Chantix offers a new approach, different from the existing smoking cessation therapies to quit smoking.”

It does not mention that the drug is now under investigation by the FDA for serious side effects. Instead it uses crude scare-tactics in the first two, very badly written paragraphs about the dangers of smoking to suggest that Chantix is your ‘only hope’, if you are a smoker, to escape ‘certain death’. The site is called ChantixMagic and it is dangerously devoid of any serious warnings about how this medication could wreck your life or even end it.

In reality, Champix is a pretty faint hope because it doesn’t work for at least 80% of smokers even with all that hype. In contrast, expert hypnotherapy has a 60% success rate in first sessions alone. If you include the successes that took more than one session (some do, it’s inevitable, people are not all the same) then the overall success rate is well over 80% PROVIDED the therapist is a smoking cessation specialist with plenty of experience.

I should also qualify the above statement by saying that I’m talking about success rates in countries in which tobacco use is in general decline. I work in the U.K. where only about 26% of adults still smoke, so smoking is not the norm. In countries like Greece and China where there is a much greater proportion of smokers, the long-term success-rate of hypnotherapy would not be as high because the influence of other people smoking has a bearing on relapse rates for all quitting methods, including hypnotherapy – as does the general social perception of what is “the norm”.

So you see, ChampixMagic, I already have a link to your site but I don’t think it was quite what you had in mind. Since all you want to do is sell more prescription medications without prescriptions or proper warnings regardless of whether it harms or kills people, I suggest you go throw yourself off a cliff.

safer alternative

Corruption at the Department of Health

“Evidence-based medicine” is shown to be a hollow phrase when the evidence from the Borland report shows that Nicotine Replacement products and willpower alone have exactly the same long term outcome. January 2012: Harvard University confirm Truth Will Out’s claim that NRT does not help smokers at all in any form.

by Chris Holmes

President Barack Obama said today: “Where there is inefficiency, where there is corruption, we expect those people to be held accountable.”

That is a fine democratic principle. Well said, Mr President. Of course he was talking about the government of Afghanistan, warning those people that they could not expect continued support from Western governments if they did not root out corruption wherever it is identified.

I take it, then, that President Obama would recommend the same remedial action to be taken within the U.S. administration and indeed their counterparts in the UK government, wherever it can be clearly shown that inefficiency and corruption are wasting valuable resources and attempts are made to conceal this, rather than rectify it.

Nicotine Replacement Therapy doesn’t work at all in the long term according to the government’s own research. Already, following the press release in July this year from the smokers’ rights group Freedom2Choose which cited my research demonstrating clearly that the NHS advertising claim that smokers are “four times more likely to succeed” by using those services was actually false, we note that in the latest TV campaign promoting those services, the bogus claim has been quietly dropped!

This is not enough. Let me just remind you what the Borland report found when that group investigated the long term results of the NHS approach to smoking cessation at the 12 month interval:

What they found, at 12 month follow up, was that the in-practice treatment scored only 2.6% success at one year, whereas the Stop Smoking Services delivered a staggering 6.5%. And then they actually had the temerity to officially conclude thus: “Where suitable services exist, we recommend that referral become the normal strategy for management of smoking cessation in general practice”.

Seriously folks, I ask you: is it possible to believe that anyone – any collective group of people – could be so unutterably stupid as to recommend the continuation of either of those approaches to smoking cessation, at the taxpayer’s expense, based on failure rates of 93.5% and 97.4% respectively? Also, what happened to the supposed 15% success rate claimed by the Ferguson report? Gone – reduced to 6.5% at best. This proves that the report was flawed and misleading and should never again be cited to market NRT products or NHS services. No wonder they buried it.

Finally, if the 1992 University of Iowa report found 6% for willpower over very large sample numbers, as did Cohen (4%), then how is 6.5% “up to four times more likely to succeed”?

The fact is that it is not.

At the start of the Truth Will Out Campaign, I reported that smokers were being lied to about the effectiveness of these services and drug company products, and reproduced in the Evidence section of this site published NHS and DoH documents that claimed up to 90% success rates for short-term results (4 weeks), but did not report at all on long-term outcomes. When they finally did, they claimed 15% success at one year, which I have now proved is also very misleading.

I said, right from the very beginning, that it was 94% failure. Thank you Borland et al, you just officially confirmed it. (Reproduced from the blogpost Dept of Stealth 6)

These results do not indicate that smokers should be directed to the Smoking Cessation Services. In fact they make it blindingly obvious that the whole sorry, stupid failure should be scrapped before any more valuable resources are wasted on it. Any fool can see that, so before we start lecturing the Afghan government about corruption, we should take that fine democratic sentiment and use it to investigate the corruption at the heart of the British government, and the role of the global drug companies that are bleeding the NHS to death.

If you agree, link up – spread the word. Let’s end it! Where are the bloody investigative journalists these days? Wake up, Health Editors! THIS IS A SCANDAL!

*Update 15.01.10
Apparently in some NRT promotions this New Year the ‘Four Times More Likely To Succeed’ claim is still being used. This is not “evidence-based medicine”, unless of course the DoH and the MHRA are going to cynically attach that label to any officially approved medicines REGARDLESS of what the evidence actually is.

Hear that trickling sound, Doc? That’s the sound of your credibility steadily draining away. You’ll miss it when it’s gone.

**Update, January 2012: Harvard University report that NRT does not help smokers quit in any way. August 2011 Tel Aviv University study confirms that smokers’ cravings have nothing to do with nicotine and that smoking is a habit, not a drug addiction – exactly what I said four years earlier when I first published:

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

Central Hypnotherapy

Drug-taking versus Therapy

by Chris Holmes

In response to the post Champix Kills, But Don’t Tell The Smokers a comment came in from James which raised a number of important points, so I have decided to reproduce it here, along with my response to the points he raised:

JAMES on October 27th, 2009 at 7:11 am Said:

I am in two minds regarding Champix. I have many friends who have taken it, the majority have stopped smoking for good (so far). One had a bad reaction and had to stop the course. Depression.

I will be getting the pills tonight and I am optimistic about them. Even though I have read many, many of the horror stories surrounding the drug, I have read many, many, many more that support its use from satisfied patients.

I suggest having a look through this forum: http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/interactive/discussion/viewtopic.php?t=6901&f=11&postdays=0&start=1

There are many people on there who are using/used the drug, detailing all their side effects and most of them come out on top, even after suffering the more drastic ones such as depression. Funny that, I don’t think a single one ever mentioned “suicidal tendencies or thoughts”. I don’t deny this, but when it comes down to either Tobacco companies generating insane amounts of revenue at the cost of my health, or a Chemical company offering me something with a 20% (based on your figure) success rate of quitting smoking that has many people praising, or spending hundreds of pounds on hypnotherapy.. I’m going with the pill.

The one thing I DO agree with, is that the NHS / Health Associations are all corrupt. I read Alan Carr’s book, which helped me stop smoking for 6 months previously. Reading it again does not have the same appeal, naturally, but his points do stand. If the NHS actually thought for themselves, or did some research, they really would find out that hypnotherapy is far more successful than NRT, although the costs of such would not necessarily benefit them. I imagine hypnotherapy is more expensive than patches!!

It does not suprise me that hypnotherapists are very anti-champix, as naturally, it is one-side fighting for revenue against another. Saving lives is the most important, but this can really split peoples trusts.

Needless to say, I will be taking Champix, I am aware of the risks and will keep an eye on my mental state very closely (along with the help of others). If I don’t quit using it, I cannot afford hypnotherapy. Therefore, its either the cigarettes or the Champix that will no doubt, one day kill me.

Even though you have your own ideas about Champix already, and can back them up, if it helps 20% of smokers to become non-smokers, then withdrawing it is a BIG mistake.
Those 20% who do quit with it, may not be able to afford the several-hundred pounds cost of hypnotherapy (based on last time I checked a session at an Alan Carr clinic). You could be giving them a death-sentence, if they continued to smoke.

Smoking is expensive enough, I’ll take my chances with a prescription fee

James

P.S.. Interesting read, nonetheless!!

CHRIS on October 28th, 2009 at 5:45am Said:

Hi James, thanks for your thoughts.

I had a look at the “netdoctor” site, and what struck me immediately was that nearly all the posts on the first page are from people on Day 1 or Day 3 of the course! These are “so far, so good” posts that many champix blogs are littered with, which create a totally false impression. That’s like someone sending you a text message that says they’re 12 minutes into their hypnotherapy session, and so far they haven’t wanted a cigarette! Only people who have been off the tablets for weeks or months can truly report their own experience as a success. Don’t forget, half the people in the original trials who were counted as successes were smoking again within 28 weeks.

Most of the horrific side effects have kicked in after weeks on the drug, so please don’t be falsely reassured by these early comments.

Who or What is netdoctor?

Down at the bottom of the homepage it says that netdoctor.co.uk is a trade mark. Is it? And what trade might that be, then? And do you suppose that the lack of posts reporting serious side effects might be because the site moderators think that those sort of reports might be bad for “trade”, so they don’t get approved for display on the site?

Hypnotherapy v. Champix?

I’m not against Champix simply because it is competition. If it were as straighforward as that I would be against the Allen Carr people and acupuncturists too, but as anyone can see from reading Truth Will Out, I am not – in fact I recommend them. I do claim hypnotherapy has the greatest success of the three, but then I back that up in the Evidence section. This site is all about evidence, and so is the book. You don’t have to buy the book to see that, because I publish a lot of it here for free.

The Relative Costs

Although I often state that the Allen Carr Easyway method is a form of hypnotherapy – which is true – it is not the best form by a long way. In fact I would suggest to anyone that the best version of the Allen Carr approach is to read the original book, the one that actually made him famous in the first place. The group sessions involve too many people, it complicates matters and brings down the overall success rate. The book is something you contemplate, and can return to – there are fewer distractions, just as in a one-to-one hypnotherapy session it is a more personal experience.

Please don’t assume hypnotherapy costs hundreds of pounds just because the Allen Carr franchises charge hundreds of pounds for their stop smoking sessions. I confidently regard myself as an expert in this field, but I only charge £120 for the Stop Smoking session I offer. I also have a reduced-fee back up session, so even those smokers who need two sessions – most do not – only pay £160 in total. Most smokers save that back in a month.

Now, some colleagues have suggested that I should charge more, and I certainly could charge more. But it is also true that some smokers – like yourself – would not choose hypnotherapy if I did that, so it would be the opposite of promoting the wider recognition of hypnotherapy as a therapeutic mode, something to which all professional hypnotherapists are supposed to be committed.

You are suggesting that Champix is attractive because you only pay a prescription fee. For many people that may turn out to be true. But over the last two years I have been told of many people who have paid a much higher price. Some of them are dead. So what you are suggesting only remains a valid conclusion if none of that happens to you personally. It is exactly the same “It won’t happen to me” assumption that many smokers adopt with regard to heart attacks and cancer – but in your case you have transferred it to Champix instead, accepting the suggestion that “it has to be better than dying of cancer”, as if those were the only choices! It’s a marketing suggestion and it apparently works very well, but it has a very hollow ring later for the unlucky ones.

Is it really about money? Those people who have posted their horror stories here and on other blogs, the ones who are terrified they will never feel normal, happy and healthy again – how much money would they pay to get their health back, or to be able to turn back the clock and never take the damn stuff in the first place?

How much did you pay for your last holiday? Was it £120? That was over in a flash, and now you have only your snapshots and your memories, but the benefits of stopping smoking last a lifetime.

What I am telling everyone is the truth, and I don’t just state it, I’m providing plenty of evidence and plenty of references so people can find out more – far more than the drug company lackeys are telling them. Then I am suggesting that you make an informed choice, and I think it is logical to try all the non-risk options first: hypnotherapy, the Allen Carr method and acupuncture have never harmed anyone, but they have certainly helped a lot of people to quit smoking.

In the context of your safety, your good health and the whole of the rest of your life, the investment in these non-risk approaches is peanuts, really! How much money do we burn up every year simply on our own idle entertainment?

I am only suggesting that the use of methods that have already harmed people should only be considered when all the safe methods have already been tried. You would think doctors would agree with that, wouldn’t you? As for the NHS funding hypnotherapy sessions for smoking cessation, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

Too many fingers in too many pies, my friend. The annual NHS bill for medications alone topped £10 billion some time ago, and it is rising still… do you really think the use of pharmaceuticals saves the NHS money?

It is killing the NHS. And we’ll see the end of the NHS before we see the end of the stranglehold the drug companies have over the medical profession. Hypnotherapists can’t stop it. Doctors can’t stop it. Even the drug companies can’t stop it, because they are in competition with other drug companies, and they have obligations to their shareholders. They have to sell more drugs, which means the NHS has to buy more drugs, which means people – such as yourself – have to take more drugs. They can’t have you going off to see a hypnotherapist – if everyone started doing that it would only mean one thing for drug companies: hard times. So of course they do everything in their power to steer you away from that, and netdoctor.co.uk is doing its bit there.

The question is, who do you trust? Those of us who have never hurt anyone but have helped thousands of people to safely stop smoking, or the people who have a long and apparently shameless history of killing and maiming tens of thousands of ‘unlucky ones’ with a whole list of nasty concoctions over the years, every one of which was mistakenly passed as “safe”?

Whatever you choose to do, James, I wish you well. Please do keep us posted about your progress.

*This exchange was four weeks ago. So far James has not been back to tell us whether he did start taking Champix that night as he planned, or how the first four weeks went.

the safest quit smoking method is also the most successful

On a Lighter Note…

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

This development, I am certain, has nothing whatever to do with the Truth Will Out Campaign, but it is a bit ironic: I’ve just been invited to become an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Medicine!

This is because I am involved – to quote the letter – “in one of the many medical and related professions”. There are several advantages to attaining this status, which the letter goes on to list, including: “The comfort and exclusivity of a ‘Members-only’ Society” – which sounds a bit snobbish to me – “Private fine dining” – which I’m not really into – and “access to one of the most modern medical libraries in Europe”.

Question: Has it got my book in it yet? it’s called:

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

Volume I: The Biggest Medical Mistake of the Twentieth Century

No? Thought not. In that case I’ll say: Thanks, but no thanks. Ask me again when it does, because that will indicate that medical science is finally beginning to catch up with the world of Hypnotherapy.

My name’s Chris Holmes by the way. And if you’ve never heard of my book yet, Doc, don’t worry. You will. It is the first book ever to prove, by clear, logical argument alone – in other words, scientifically – that the nicotine tale is a lie, and that Nicotine Replacement products are entirely based upon a myth.

Cravings are behavioural impulses controlled by the Subconscious mind which we can easily shut down in hypnotherapy on request, usually in a single session. Tobacco smoking is entirely a compulsive habit, not a drug addiction and the whole ‘nicotine’ angle is bogus and incorrect, which is the main reason NRT has no long term success outside of the normal willpower range of about 6%.

So you can ignore it if you like, Doc, but smokers aren’t ignoring it! They are reading it in ever-increasing numbers and the reviews are terrific. In fact I challenge anyone – anyone at all, it doesn’t have to be a smoker because the book is about compulsive habits generally, not just smoking – to read that book cover to cover, and then tell me they still believe in a thing called nicotine addiction. And that’s why doctors are going to have to address this sooner or later whether they like it or not, because the plain fact is they are wrong. They are wasting smokers’ time with NRT, and vast sums of money that actually belongs to the taxpayer, and they have the temerity to blame the failure of all that on the smoker. But the Truth Will Out.

hypnotherapy info

Chantix Champix Kills, but A.S.H. Won’t Tell The Smokers

by Chris Holmes

It’s not just doctors that are failing to warn smokers about the more deadly serious side-effects of Champix Chantix. The so-called “public health charity” Action on Smoking and Health (A.S.H.) have conspicuously failed to update their advice to smokers and health professionals in the light of all the horror-stories over the past eighteen months, choosing instead to take their lead from N.I.C.E., the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, who don’t seem to have updated their recommendations about Chantix Champix since 2007.

N.I.C.E. seem to have adopted the position that “Clinical Excellence” means taking forever and a day to even acknowledge the fact that a medication is causing unnecessary deaths, and then to not really do anything about it anyway, except perhaps issue some “new guidelines”. If the guidelines are ignored by G.P.s they wring their hands and say it is “unacceptable”, and that’s about it.

Put simply, these people don’t really care if Chantix Champix kills you. Or your mother, or your best friend, or your son. Not enough to actually do anything about it anyway. They won’t withdraw any medications just because it becomes obvious that prescribing them significantly increases the risk of serious illness or death. They won’t even do anything about it if they know for sure that dangerous medications are being routinely mis-prescribed.

Here comes the Science Bit

Witness the atypical anti-psychotic drugs like Olanzapine and Quetiapine which last year were reckoned – in a conservative estimate, since these were only the fatalities that were officially reported – to have killed 700 people in the previous five years in the U.K. alone. Of the estimated 150,000 elderly patients being precribed these drugs, somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 shouldn’t be, according to the Director of Research for the Alzheimers Society, Professor Clive Ballard of Kings College London. Commenting on this on BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 programme in June 2008, N.I.C.E.’s reviewer of the use of these medications, Dr Tim Kendall said that in his opinion, doctors mis-prescribing such dangerous medications should be disciplined by the General Medical Council.

Well, they haven’t been. So now, more than one year on, more prescriptions, more deaths, no-one held responsible, no-one about to be held responsible.

This isn’t Clinical Excellence. It is a Licence to Kill.

Back to The Great Chantix Champix Experiment

Given this incredibly lax system, why should GP’s trouble themselves to find out whether the drugs they have been advised to prescribe actually have horrific side-effects such as severe psychiatric disturbances which can lead to suicide? Why should they be anxious about it? Nothing is going to happen to the GP if he or she loses an elderly patient to Olanzapine or a smoker to Chantix Champix.

Only this morning a woman who has been a contributor to this blog on a number of occasions, Jane, emailed me to tell me how her doctor had just offered her Champix again, despite the fact she had a bad reaction to it the last time. He apparently knew little about the suicides and other severe side effects, so she directed him to this site right then, during the consultation.

Do you get this, A.S.H.? Are you appreciating the astonishing and horrifying irony of this, N.I.C.E.? I’M EDUCATING DOCTORS, NOW. ME, A HYPNOTHERAPIST. They’re having to find out from Truth Will Out about the horrors that Chantix Champix can inflict upon their patients, because you aren’t making it clear enough or acting fast enough, and it’s all because you are way too close to the drug companies to have the patients’ best interests at heart.

Cash In on Smoking and Health

Action on Smoking and Health (A.S.H.) are officially a public health charity. According to their own official story, they came into existence because “a group of concerned doctors” were unhappy that not enough was being done by the Department of Health to deal with the smoking issue. All very commendable, you might think – so you would then expect that the safety and health of smokers was their main concern and anything that could be proven to help smokers quit consistently would be championed by them.

Not so. Only drug company products are championed by them, and they routinely mislead smokers about all alternative methods (see the Evidence section of this site). In November of 2007, the then Director of ASH Deborah Arnott was forced to apologise to The Allen Carr Easyway International organisation for rubbishing their claims to a 53% success rate with smokers at twelve-month follow-up… a success rate far higher than any of the drug methods ASH routinely promote.

So she apologised. And agreed to pay Easyway’s legal costs for the case. Did she then direct ASH to start recommending the superior, and now proven Easyway method? No, they continue to completely ignore it, which proves that they do NOT have the interests of smokers at heart, they are simply a shop window for drug companies POSING as a public health charity.

ASH are not even up to date regarding the failure rates and the dangers of the drug products they push. Do they explain to smokers that the nicotine replacement products are proven to have a 93.5% failure rate when the results are reviewed at twelve-month follow-up, according to the 2008 report by Borland et al? Do they also warn smokers that the same report found that this failure rate rose to 97.4% if they just got those products from their GP, which means that all the expertise and the efforts of the specialist NHS Stop Smoking Services made a difference of less than 4% across the board – which, by the way, is not “four times more likely to succeed”?

No. And they don’t tell smokers that Champix carries the risk of very serious, even fatal side effects, and won’t work anyway for over 80% of smokers when results are reviewed at one year, which of course is a worse performance than the original trials suggested. Not surprising really, since drug trials these days certainly aren’t as ‘scientific’ as they used to be (see “Trust Me, I’m a Doctor” on this site).

Just in case you think ASH should be forgiven for not getting around to any serious warnings yet, just take a look at this, from December 2007: Medical News Today So, why still no mention of any of this by Action on Smoking and Health twenty-one months later? Simple: they are not really a public health charity at all. If they were, they would be recommending hypnotherapy and the Allen Carr method as the two methods that have consistently proven themselves most effective so far. They are also the safest methods. Instead they continue to recommend Chantix Champix and Zyban, both of which have caused deaths. So much for “a group of concerned doctors”! What were they “concerned” about, drug company profits?

Lowest of the Low: The Internet Drug Dealers

It does not mention that the drug is now under investigation by the FDA for serious side effects. Instead it uses crude scare-tactics in the first two, very badly written partagraphs about the dangers of smoking to suggest that Chantix is your ‘only hope’, if you are a smoker, to escape ‘certain death’. The site is called ChantixMagic and it is dangerously devoid of any serious warnings about how this medication could wreck your life or even end it.

ASH: Stop pretending to be a Public Health Charity with smokers’ interests as your primary concern – you are BUSTED!

NICE: Stop sitting on your hands while smokers are actively encouraged to use dangerous medications without being properly informed about the risks. Allen Carr was right: therapies like ours work far better, so stop pretending they don’t – the public are becoming increasingly aware of these facts, despite all the misinformation generated by the “systematic review” ploy and the bloody Cochrane Library! The truth is a different matter – you’ll end up losing ALL your credibility, and so will the medical profession generally if you allow the Global Drug Pushers to keep running the show.

Doctors: Don’t prescribe Champix Chantix! You haven’t been properly informed, do some independent detective work on the internet – just Google “Champix Suicides”, and have a read of that lot. Then ask yourself: would you put a member of your family on that stuff? Do you trust Pfizer enough, when they sidestep the issue by saying that there’s no causal link proven – which of course is quite different from saying that there’s no causal link – to risk the life of a loved one? Haven’t Pfizer just been ordered to pay a truly collosal sum for the offence of “fraudulent marketing”?

All your smoking patients are somebody’s loved one. Hypnotherapy, the Allen Carr method (which is a form of hypnotherapy anyway) and acupuncture have all scored better long term results in scientific trials, and all carry NO RISK. Look at the Evidence section here, and elsewhere on the web.

Folks, if you share these concerns please help by spreading the word: Truth Will Out is about Health Care, not Health Risk. There are safer and more successful ways to quit – don’t take the suicide pills.

practice website

The Drug That Never Was