Category: The Campaign | Page 4

Self-Administration Can Be Fun, Fun, Fun!

By Chris Holmes

The Non-Smoker Tries a Cigarette

Remember your first cigarette? Or to be more precise, do you remember the first time you inhaled tobacco smoke properly and experienced the effect on the way you felt, physically and mentally?

If there was no alcohol in your system already at the time – or any other recreational drug like cocaine, amphetamine or cannabis – if you were – like myself – eight years old and hiding at the bottom of your friend Ian’s garden having helped him steal a (now rather crumpled) Embassy No.1 from his Mam’s packet, and a single match… after a few puffs on that, you may have felt like this:

Nauseous… head fuzzy… feel rather sick and faint… got that uncomfortable feeling like I don’t know where to put myself… feel really unwell… don’t feel safe… bowels churning… feel rotten, very definitely ill. Poisoned. Really want to feel normal again, regret trying this…

So I lay down on the grass and waited, feeling stunned and very sick. It would be four whole years before I tried tobacco again.

Now of course, there are a lot of chemicals in tobacco smoke, not just nicotine. But nicotine was certainly in there, and according to the British Medical Association’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary (Dorling Kindersley, 2002 – I have it open in front of me)… nicotine “stimulates the central nervous system, thereby reducing fatigue, increasing alertness, and improving concentration.”

Really? Then how come I was lying there like a stuck pig watching the sky whirl round? Also, why does the same medical dictionary include amongst the side effects of nicotine replacement therapy “nausea, headache, palpitations, cold or flu-like symptoms”?

After The Sly Smoke at School

As we headed back into the main building Stuart said, as he often did: “You know lads, I really feel ready for Double Physics now! I feel energised, alert… the only problem is that my noticeably-increased powers of concentration might give me away this afternoon! Better stash these cigs somewhere…”

It was a hazard of which we were all too keenly aware. Anyone who works in a school will be able to spot the smokers – full of life, really alert, always concentratin’… come to think of it we had a bit of an unfair advantage, didn’t we? No wonder we all did so well.

The Non-Smoker Tries A Nicotine Patch

Many years later, long after I had ditched tobacco I found myself putting the finishing touches to a book about nicotine and smoking (working title: Whose Stupid Idea Was All That Then?) when it suddenly occurred to me that although I had tried tobacco when I was a non-smoker and found it stunningly nauseating… experienced tobacco smoke as a regular smoker and grown accustomed to it but it never seemed beneficial… and also tried Nicotine Replacement Poisoning as a regular smoker and found it slightly weird and pointless, I had never tried nicotine alone as a non-smoker. What would it be like? Perhaps, all those years ago in Ian’s garden I had been overwhelmed by all the other poisons in the smoke. Maybe, if I just tried “therapeutic nicotine” all by itself, nicotine would indeed “stimulate the central nervous system, thereby reducing fatigue, increasing alertness, and improving concentration.” After all, that’s what the British Medical Association say it does.

The Experiment

So I obtained a single nicotine patch, a NiQuitin CQ 21mg 24-hour patch. I also put by a pen and some paper upon which to make notes of the experience as I went along. I didn’t really intend to leave it on for the full 24 hours but I did aim to leave it on for most of the day, just to monitor the experience. As it turned out, it didn’t quite happen that way. What follows is directly quoted from Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was:

“This was at 10.15 on a Sunday morning, April 22nd 2007. We were planning to take the kids to the park at about eleven, which I was looking forward to because it was a nice day. This is an exact transcript of the notes I made at the time.

10.15 am. Stuck patch on inside upper left arm.

10.20 am. Tingling in both hands, mild tightening feeling in the throat.

10.25 am. Feel nauseous, patch burning skin a bit.

10.30 am. Feel like blood pressure is up, not a pleasant feeling. Tense. Uncomfortable, want to take it off actually. More nauseous, feel a bit ill. Patch really burning. Bowels upset a bit.

10.35 am. Head fuzzy. Feel rather sick. Got that feeling like I don’t know where to put myself. Feel really uncomfortable and irritable now.

10.37 am. Took patch off. Don’t feel safe. Big red mark on arm. Hands/wrists aching. Feel sick and faint, balance and even speech abnormal. Wrists and hands quite red. Bowels churning. Feel rotten, very definitely ill. Poisoned. Really want to feel normal again, regret trying this.

10.50 am. Still feel just as rotten, but feeling of real alarm that made me take it off now subsiding. Just feel ill.

“The patch was only in contact with my skin for 22 minutes. Before I began the experiment I felt fine – healthy and in good spirits. Now I felt absolutely terrible, really unwell and although I don’t usually scare easy…” [as a former intravenous drug user over many years, I’ve done some pretty mad and dangerous things] “…actually afraid to leave the patch on any longer. But here’s the thing – according to the B.M.A., nicotine:

“stimulates the central nervous system, thereby reducing fatigue, increasing alertness, and improving concentration.”

“So, did “therapeutic nicotine” make me feel more alert, able to concentrate better, as the B.M.A. described? Well, by the time I took the patch off I was very nauseous, anxious, irritable and no longer able or willing to hold a normal conversation – so I would have to say no, it certainly did not. Well, why not? If that is what nicotine does, that is what it does. I would have noticed. It just made me feel poisoned, and actually it did remind me of the first cigarette I ever tried, when I was eight. My pal Ian Coates stole a single Embassy No.1 from his mum, and we hid at the bottom of his garden and smoked it. It left me feeling pretty much like the experience I described above, but with a foul taste in my mouth as well. It was years before I tried one again, and even then it wasn’t because I liked it the first time. It was just because I wasn’t allowed to, and because smoking makes you look grown-up and cool, despite being twelve and pimply with awful hair and silly clothes. And feeling very queasy, if not actually vomiting.

“At eleven o’clock, we all left for the park. Sure enough I felt very queasy, delicate and anxious that I might suddenly need the toilet – that IBS feeling. I really didn’t want to go out at all now, I felt more like going for a lie down, which I hardly ever feel like doing even when I am ill. Of course, some fool might suggest that the dose was too high for a non-smoker, or that I was irresponsible to try that without medical advice, as if that were the reason it made me ill. But that’s ridiculous: none of us took medical advice before we tried our first cigarette, did we? And very few kids start with a low-nicotine cigarette – certainly not my generation anyway, or the previous one. So it was, in fact, an experiment that roughly replicated many initial, real smoking experiences but this time focussing entirely on nicotine itself – and guess what? Nicotine just makes you feel ill, because it is nothing but a poison. I’m not saying you can’t get used to it – professional boxers get used to being slammed in the face with a fist to the point where they hardly notice it, and I’m sure that stimulates the central nervous system too, but that don’t make it medicinal, baby.”

Talking of Crazy Experiments That Aren’t Exactly Scientific…

Who discovered penicillin? That’s right, Fleming. Who invented the hypodermic syringe? Louis Pasteur, correct. Both well known names in the history of medicine because the things they gave us are used by millions of people all over the world. So: who invented nicotine replacement therapy?

You don’t know, do you?

Well, he was also the man who insisted that tobacco smoking was not just a filthy habit, as everyone had been quite happy to regard it for several centuries. He insisted it was a drug addiction, and he claimed in a letter to The Lancet that he had ‘proven’ this by gathering together a group of 35 habitual smokers and – with their permission – injected them with 1mg of nicotine whenever they felt like they wanted a cigarette. He insisted that because the impulse to reach for a cigarette then subsided, this proved that the reason they smoked was because they were addicted to nicotine.

The man was a Glaswegian GP called Dr. Lennox Johnston (1899-1986) and the main reason you have never heard of him is because everyone thought he was loopy. He isn’t credited with inventing Nicotine Replacement Poisoning because he wasn’t suggesting using nicotine to get people OFF smoking. In fact, that would be an insane suggestion from anyone who was insisting that the smoking problem was a result of addiction to that very poison. No, he simply used that method to try to demonstrate his theory that smokers’ cravings are in fact a physical “need” for nicotine itself – but the experiment doesn’t even do that in reality. If I had still been a smoker when I tried that patch experiment, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to smoke for quite some time after that, just as I never wanted one when I had a hangover or felt under par for any other reason. Lennox Johnston’s 35 volunteers were habitual smokers so they were more used to being poisoned than I was, but if they didn’t feel much inclined to smoke for a bit after an injection of a lethal insecticide (nicotine) then we shouldn’t be surprised.

Short-term reactions to interventions of that sort are no proof of anything. This is why the Advertising Standards Agency recently blocked an advert by the NHS Stop Smoking Services which tried to use reported cessation rates at four weeks as if they were real success rates. They said it was misleading, and I have already shown in the Evidence section of this site how the difference between those short-term results and the real outcomes at a one-year interval can be as great as 90% short-term, falling to 8% by the end of the year we have to conclude that the ASA are right to object.

Since I started this Campaign in March 2008, I have often heard it suggested that NRT products have been ‘properly’ tested in scientific trials, so I must be talking nonsense when I say they are utterly bogus and have no long-term effectiveness to speak of at all. Did any of those people suggesting that know that in the original trials that got NRT passed as if it were a medication in the first place, it was passed on the basis of it’s performance at SIX WEEKS. In smoking cessation that is NOT proof of efficacy and it should never have happened at all.

practice website

The Quacks, the Hacks and the Therapists

by Chris Holmes

Edzard Ernst, if we are to believe what certain hacks tell us, is in danger of losing his position at Exeter University – but it has nothing to do with his own behaviour, of course! This is a link to a particularly lame piece from the Guardian’s Sarah Boseley which tries to suggest that the reason nobody seems to want to fund “the scourge of complementary medicine” is because The Prince of Wales has somehow made it so! Since when did he have the power to forbid the funding of University research, Sarah? Don’t be silly.

After 17 years of CAM-bashing, with hardly anything positive to say about Complementary Medicine at all, it could just be that everyone’s sick to death of the guy, except of course for all the pathological cynics like Sarah Boseley, Simon Singh, Ben Goldacre etc etc who seem to have the simplistic, collective notion that all CAM therapists are “quacks”. The repeated suggestion they make in the media is that private therapists make vast fortunes by hoodwinking people who, because they are ‘deluded’ or ‘vulnerable’ pay willingly for therapies that they often seem quite happy with – only their opinion doesn’t count, because they’re ‘deluded’. How patronising is that?

The only thing that does count – according to these few self-appointed “quackbusters” – is the relentlessly negative outpourings of Ernst’s unit which can be summed up thus: whatever therapy he’s looking at, after a selective review of previous studies the verdict is that there’s no evidence that it works and it could even be dangerous! Yes, that’s right: it’s more or less the same verdict for everything he looks into!

This is exactly why most open-minded people have stopped taking him seriously. After all, if he were finding the very reverse with the same consistency – that ALL complementary therapies worked – how long would it be before everyone suspected his methods, eh? So he’s left with only the rabid hard-core of New Simple Scientism, which can equally be named Prejudice.

Has it not occurred to any of these people that for many, many years millions of people have been using these therapies and returning to them because they find them effective? Not only that, but all those people have families and friends who will also have been aware of that, so although it is often said that only 25% of the population use CAM therapies, a hell of a lot more will have heard about the results. The only people who dismiss those first-hand opinions are pathological cynics, and although those people are often noisy, opinionated and usually rude to anyone who tries to explain that they’ve got it wrong, they are actually in a very small minority. They are the only people with an axe to grind about all this, and they aren’t doing that for the sake of the people who use CAM therapies at all! They have nothing but contempt for people who use CAM therapies… but no-one else does.

So Ernst has had an exciting time, drawing attention to himself as the “scourge of Complementary Medicine” as Boseley rather tellingly put it – which is why she approves – forgetting that officially he is supposed to be objective. But no-one normal who is aware of Ernst at all would ever regard him as impartial, he is quite clearly the champion of the pathological cynics and was from the start, although many people didn’t realise that straight away.

Some of these Ernst Groupies call themselves skeptics, but they are quite wrong to do so. I work with skeptics all the time, and I don’t find their skepticism a problem at all. Hypnotherapists are used to the fact that most new clients are skeptical, which is another reason I object to the term “faith-based therapies” which is repeatedly used to denigrate CAM therapies in general. Most of my new clients don’t have any particular faith in hypnotherapy, in fact they are usually very surprised by the results. Of course we partly have the likes of Ernst to thank for that low level of expectation, but it is also partly caused by the fact that many of my clients will have tried to fix the problem through their own efforts previously with no lasting success, so their conscious expectations are fairly low because of that.

The “faith-based” suggestion is a snidey way of making out that the results don’t go beyond a placebo effect caused by their own delusions, which is extremely patronising and (in the case of hypnotherapy, for sure) utterly inaccurate. Although the majority of people are fairly skeptical of all unfamiliar things, they are not cynics. Most people who try CAM therapies are simply being practical: if you want to get rid of a problem, you just try one thing after another until you find the thing that works for you. If the cynics had their way, you wouldn’t have the choice: you would have to take what the doctor recommended even if it kills you (See ‘Trust Me, I’m a Doctor’ on this site, and also the blogpost ‘Daily Mail Article’ in the blog category Drugs On Trial.)

When I was growing up, if someone said they were “off to see the quack” they meant the doctor, their General Practitioner. Lately the word has been used by the cynics and a few opinionated hacks to attack the entire field of Complementary Medicine, and what these people are forgetting is that the only people who will agree with those mocking, patronising and extremely negative and ignorant opinions are the cynics of the world. Edzard Ernst’s publications haven’t made those people the way they are, they were like that already. He just gave them – briefly – more credibility because of his bogus title and his academic position, but his “don’t shoot the messenger” suggestion that he uses to deflect criticism is a pathetic attempt to erase himself from “the science”, and nobody with any intelligence will fall for that one! So, all published studies are simply “the truth” are they, Edzard? Never mind the intent, never mind the funding, never mind the methodologies… the studies just selected themselves, did they? The science just happened all by itself, as if by magic, and Ernst is just the guy who told us all what it said, like Moses coming down from the mountain with The Word of God. Yeah, right!

No, Ernst was never a simple messenger, he is an author and an instigator, a collaborator with other anti-CAM extremists and a campaigner against CAM – as Boseley says: “unusually outspoken” and “the scourge of Complementary Medicine”. Not really what we expected from the first ever Professor of Complementary Medicine, because it is so clearly at odds with the everyday experiences of CAM users. When those people try to explain that, their views and their attempts to report successes are instantly dismissed just because they did not occur under laboratory conditions. By contrast, Ernst’s activities are given blanket approval despite the fact that the studies he is looking at never involved any professional CAM therapists and he has never been one himself.

So perhaps the only people who think what he has done is admirable, objective or reliable in any way are the pathological cynics who dismiss ALL complementary therapists as “quacks”. And those people are in such a small minority that I seriously doubt they could fund his work for very long if they all pitched in together with every penny they have.

No-one else is taking him seriously any more, it seems. The fact is, we do not need this endlessly negative anti-CAM voice at all, because even if he never published another word on the subject we all know, already, what Edzard Ernst would tell us: “There’s no evidence that it works…” apart from all the millions of people who happily use it, but they don’t count… “…and it could even be dangerous…” although it hardly ever is. Why would anyone waste their valuable resources generating yet more of that kind of unconvincing drivel after being subjected to seventeen years of it already? And no-one needs Boseley whining on about it either. “We need this voice” to tell us what to think! You might, Sarah, but no-one else does, evidently, or people would be willing to fund it without a special appeal from you! (Is there a brain in there anywhere?)

If Ernst and Boseley do find themselves out of work sometime though, I reckon they could get together and reinvent themselves as a Keith Harris and Orville tribute act. “I wish I could have an original thought, but I can’t!” “You can!” “I CAN’T!”

To explain the reference for non-UK dwellers: Ernst could be Keith Harris, a ventriloquist whose dummy is a large and generally clueless baby duck, so of course Edzard provides the voice for both. And if Boseley doesn’t like the idea of being Orville the duck, maybe she shouldn’t play the role of Ernst’s special media mouthpiece and keep mindlessly repeating the word “quack”. What goes around comes around Sarah.

Central Hypnotherapy

‘New Poison for Old!’ Part 2

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

(Sing!): “What Shall We Do With The Poison Factory…?”

In the original post entitled “New Poison For Old!” I pointed to the amusing phenomenon over recent years of the drug companies who have already spent a lot of money developing the facilities for producing nicotine gum, patches, lozenges, micro-tabs, nasal sprays and suppositories spending research and development cash on probably futile attempts to find a real medical application for this extraordinarily poisonous substance. Good luck with that one guys!

So numerous times over recent years stories have popped up in the medical literature and the press about ‘possible’ new applications for nicotine. The desperate hope of the manufacturers is that the world will accept the daft suggestion (if it is repeated often enough) that nicotine is potentially a useful substance from a medicinal point of view, and ‘looks promising’ in test trials that have nothing to do with the original idea that it might help smokers in some way, which it doesn’t. Most smokers and nearly all medical experts know that now, and even those few that don’t soon will… so the race is on to find an issue or a condition that might be marginally affected by nicotine in short-term drug trials (if they conduct enough of them!) which is all it takes to get the damn stuff passed as if it were a medication for another spurious use… i.e. exactly what happened with the smoking application in the first place anyway.

All this is driven, not by any attempt at medical advancement, but by the economic reality of having the means of production already up and running but for an application that everyone is fast realising is bogus. Is, was and always will be – so if they don’t find another use for it quick, the drug companies are going to be left with poison factories that they might as well just dismantle, along with the whole bonkers notion of “therapeutic nicotine” – a phrase that makes about as much sense as “therapeutic cyanide”.

This exercise is like someone trying to develop a new application for the swastika. It was dangerous and useless enough last time it was popularised, now that it is recognised for what it really is, the last thing the world needs is someone giving it a makeover.

Anyway, to accompany these farcical attempts to find a useful application for what is simply a very deadly poison, I penned this little ditty which is loosely based on “What Shall we Do With The Drunken Sailor?”

What shall we do with the poison patches, What shall we do with the poison patches, What shall we do with the poison patches, Now that we’ve been rumbled?

Quick, in-vent new uses, Quick, in-vent new uses, Quick, in-vent new uses – Must be good for something!

We need a use for the Poison Factory, We need a use for the Poison Factory, We need a use for the Poison Factory… Cost a bloody fortune!

Might it help asthmatics? Might it help asthmatics? Might it help asthmatics? – No? Then try depression!

Feel down? Try our patches! Feel down? Try our patches! Feel down? Try our patches! Just as ‘good’ as Prozac.

Nicotine may help your memory, Nicotine may help your memory, Nicotine may help your memory… Forget it’s a poison!

(Faster) Now try schizophrenics… Next those with Alzheimers… Wind? Cramp? Shyness? Baldness? – Useless bloody poison!

What shall we do with the Poison Factory? What shall we do with the Poison Factory? What shall we do with the Poison Factory, Now that we’ve been rumbled?

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

Central Hypnotherapy

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

The Trials of Edzard Ernst

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

Show me a hundred different scientific studies into the efficacy (or lack thereof) of any kind of therapy. Will they all produce more or less the same findings? No. But why not? If the RCT is the gold standard of assessment, surely it will just come up with truth, will it not? Isn’t this the reason that Ernst says “Don’t shoot the messenger!” as if he didn’t play any personal role in producing those finding whatsoever, and his followers will point to his publications and say: “The science says…”

Almost as if “the science” just does itself, and Ernst’s role is rather like that of the sorcerer’s apprentice: once he has set it in motion he has no influence over the process or the outcomes…

And indeed this would be the case with all scientists, would it not? It’s just pure science, and it simply reveals pure truth. That’s the idea, that’s the suggestion whenever we have one study or another shoved under our noses by the cynics. So if the cynics were right about CAM therapists – that we’re all just quacks – then all the scientific studies that have already been done (not just Ernst’s activities) would have demonstrated this beyond all doubt, would they not? What would there be left to say? Why bother paying him any longer?

Back in the Real World

Of course the cynics are not suggesting that ALL scientific studies are just revealing pure truth! How could they be, when some of them produce ‘findings’ that seem to confirm their prejudices, and some do not! Clearly they cannot ALL be right! So it becomes necessary to find crucial errors in the way some of those studies were designed or conducted, or the interpretation of the results…

“Really? That can happen in Science?”

“Oh yes, but don’t worry! Don’t lose your faith in the RCT and the Scientific Way! If the results aren’t what we want them to be, clearly we need to do the Science differently until we get the results right!”

For how likely is it, really, that the cynic’s PREJUDICES might be wrong in the first place? Exactly, that couldn’t happen, because a cynic knows everything already and most especially knows for sure that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is wrong. So there is never any need to question The Science That Says The Right Thing (bless the messenger), only the Bad Science That Says The Wrong Thing (denounce the author, attack the methodology, the interpretation… call people nasty names…) yeah that’s way more scientific. In fact the entire history of Science is full of that sort of abusive slanging match… and that’s just how scientists talk to each other, they have even less regard for people who are prepared to think outside of scientific paradigms. Those are just Voodoo People, and should probably be burned or something.

Science says Nothing

“The Science” says nothing, mainly because there is no such thing as “The Science”. This doesn’t make science useless, of course it doesn’t. But it does mean that with any kind of study you read about in The Daily Rag, if you don’t know who funded it, what they are trying to achieve and whether this is part of a wider programme which hasn’t been mentioned deliberately in the press release or whether there were other trials which the authors of the press release decided not to tell The Daily Rag about because they contradict the trials that Say The Right Thing… then you only know what the press release says.

All the questions I raised about Ernst, and how on Earth he ever came to occupy that position are perfectly valid, but I know we’ll never get answers that haven’t just come from a fawning interview with an adoring hack or some dodgy press release that came from the Ernst camp anyway. And I really can’t be bothered to exchange another pointless word with the cynics who don’t even understand the difference between skepticism and cynicism. It is impossible to communicate in any useful way with any person who has convinced themselves before the conversation even starts that you must be a fraud, a fantasist or an idiot because you don’t already agree with them.

So I thought I’d do one last post about the boring old duffer but every time I considered it, it just seemed like a chore. Somewhere along the line I realised that although I found it very annoying at first that he said things about hypnotherapy that were totally wrong, he’s really just another dull academic who knows nothing about it. The fact that someone decided he could have a title that makes it sound like he’s knowledgeable is irrelevant, he remains a nobody in the field of complementary therapy, his own university don’t even seem to like him, just about everything he says is negative and no ordinary member of the public I’ve ever mentioned him to has heard of him at all, so although he’s beloved by a few hacks and a small platoon of cynics, the rest of the world could not give a toss.

Therefore: neither do I.

practice website

The Drug That Never Was

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

Please Don’t Bother the Over-Prescriber!

In The Times this week, doctors were beseeching patients with only ordinary ailments like coughs and colds to stop bothering the general practitioner for antibiotics that won’t help anyway – or that they just don’t need, really – and let nature take its course, or in other words have a bit of faith in your immune system.

Very good advice. Mind you, it’s not so very long ago that it was GPs themselves who were being blasted for prescribing antibiotics for these very conditions, when they knew perfectly well that cold and flu viruses are not affected by them anyway and that the overprescribing of antibiotics leads to resistant strains of bacteria like the superbugs that have plagued hospitals in recent years. Not really the patients’ fault, considering that the GP is supposed to be the one with the specialist medical knowledge.

“GPs Hand Out Needless Pills” was the frontpage headline in the Daily Mail only a year ago (04.03.09) when Professor Michael Oliver, emeritus professor of cardiology at the University of Edinburgh warned that millions of healthy people were being ‘preventatively’ prescribed pills to control blood pressure, lower cholesterol or prevent diabetes when there was actually nothing wrong with them. He blamed a “tick-box culture” and also Health Service guidelines for encouraging the widespread use of such drugs.

The article also listed nasty side effects widely reported for such medications, and only a few months later (25.09.09) the Daily Express had “New Fears Over Heart Pill Taken By Millions” as its lead story as scientists at Nottingham university were given a quarter of a million pounds to investigate statin drugs that are prescribed to lower cholesterol. However, the dopey notion that Doc has a pill that will fix everything was reinforced by the very same newspaper when it had “Wonder Pill To Fight The Flab – new slimming drug works faster” splashed all over its front page (23.10.08).

Now before half of you go rushing off to look that one up so you can badger your GP about it, do bear in mind that statins were also hailed as ‘wonder’ drugs, a standard practice also known as ‘marketing’. Now they are under investigation for nasty side effects and according to Dr Malcolm Kendrick’s book The Great Cholesterol Con (John Blake Publishing 2007) they don’t prevent heart attacks anyway because cholesterol is not the real cause. Champix (Chantix) was hailed as a wonder drug too, but now it is under investigation for horrific side effects and it doesn’t work for at least 80% of smokers anyway in the long run, a far cry from the 44% success rate claimed for it in the short-term trials by Pfizer.

The Rise and Rise of ‘Preventative’ Medicine

As drug companies came to realise that there is far more return on investment if you put most of your research and development budget into ‘treatments’ for long-term ‘conditions’ rather than medicines that cure diseases, we have also seen new marketing strategies that create spectres of doom like the avian flu global catastrophe that never really happened, and of course the swine flu that killed far fewer people than seasonal flu strains in reality, but “worst-case scenario” stories of 165,000 dead in the U.K. alone had governments frantically ordering vast stockpiles of vaccines at enormous expense… was it a deliberate scam?

Then there are the side effects. Tamiflu has been associated with suicides and concerns were also raised about the cervical cancer vaccines by Dr Diane Harper who was involved in the clinical trials herself and stated in October 2009 that the jab was being “over-marketed” and could even be riskier and more deadly than the cancer it is designed to prevent, having been linked to 32 deaths in the USA even before it was made available to all teenage girls in the U.K. – once again, at enormous expense. Dr Harper is quoted in the Sunday Express as saying: “All this jab will do is prevent girls getting some abnormalities associated with cervical cancer which can be treated. It willl not decrease cervical cancer rates at all.”

It is clear that drug companies are successfully manipulating and maximising general fears of conditions or illnesses that people DO NOT HAVE to sell them – en masse – the drug equivalent of an amulet to ward off the fear. This amulet may not protect them anyway – it is impossible to test its future effectiveness, so this certainly is not “evidence-based” medicine – and some people who were perfectly healthy in the first place will inevitably be adversely affected by bad reactions.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that where you stand on the whole subject of the new ‘preventative’ business model of drug companies comes down to how you feel about drug companies. Two ‘Schools of Skepticism’ have emerged: the New Simple Scientism of Uncle Edzard Ernst which scoffs at the alternative field (where harm to the public is pretty rare really, but they can always find an exception or two with which to frighten people) but turns a blind eye to the enormous damage done by pharmaceutical drugs the world over… and the Pharma-Skeptics (such as myself) who find this recent shift of emphasis from treating real illnesses to warding off suggested possible future illnesses particularly creepy.

What About Nutritional Supplements, then?

Vitamins, minerals and plant extracts in pill form or similarly presented as if they are a form of ‘medication’ to prevent or treat one thing or another may also be regarded as suspect in this respect, and I have concerns about that too because of the extent to which the imagination can be driving the motivation to purchase things like that. If any are proven to be hazardous then they are withdrawn from sale however, which is very different from what happens with pharmaceutical drugs. All kinds of mayhem is required for a drug to be withdrawn from the market – instead it is ‘investigated’ but doctors carry on prescribing it! Prozac was eventually revealed to be no more effective than the placebo in the trial data, some of which was witheld from the FDA to get it passed as if it was genuinely effective. That is obviously fraudulent, yet it officially remains an “evidence-based” medicine (Ha, ha, ha, Professor Ernst! Somewhat undermines your posturing about CAM therapies, doesn’t it? Why don’t you write an article about that for a change? After all, you used to be actively engaged in the approval of medications when you were a member of the MHRA, it’s not as if you wouldn’t have an opinion!) And the biggest difference of all is that nutritional supplements are just available for general sale, the public are not being told by scientists and medical authorities that they should take them, nor are they being provided to the public en masse at the taxpayers’ expense. CAM therapies aren’t either: hardly any of that is funded by the taxpayer and medical authorities tend to ignore it completely. People are free to choose that or not choose it, those treatments certainly aren’t pressed on the general public by doctors. But increasingly, the ‘preventative’ drugs and vaccines are, and that is a whole New Order Of Medicine which for the drug companies is clearly the road to heaven, but where is it leading the rest of us? Are we all to be medicated from cradle to grave?

Professor Michael Oliver was right: lifelong health should be about a healthy lifestyle, not lifelong medication! If it ain’t broke don’t fix it Doc. The vast majority of us are born with an immune system already installed, a working pair of lungs and a suckling instinct. We are not born with a cannula sticking out of our little arms, are we? And unless there is some dire and pressing need, shouldn’t have one shoved in there either.

Central Hypnotherapy

The Trials of Edzard Ernst

Show me a hundred different scientific studies into the efficacy (or lack thereof) of any kind of therapy. Will they all produce more or less the same findings? No. But why not? If the RCT is the gold standard of assessment, surely it will just come up with truth, will it not? Isn’t this the reason that Ernst says “Don’t shoot the messenger!” as if he didn’t play any personal role in producing those findings whatsoever, and his followers will point to his publications and say: “The science says…”

Back in the Real World

“Really? That can happen in Science?”

Science says Nothing

So I thought I’d do one last post about the boring old duffer but every time I considered it, it just seemed like a chore. Somewhere along the line I realised that although I found it very annoying at first that he said things about hypnotherapy that were totally wrong, he’s really just another dull academic who knows nothing about it. The fact that someone decided he could have a title that makes it sound like he’s knowledgable is irrelevant, he remains a nobody in the field of complementary therapy, his own university don’t even seem to like him, just about everything he says is negative and no ordinary member of the public I’ve ever mentioned him to has heard of him at all, so although he’s beloved by a few hacks and a small platoon of cynics, the rest of the world could not give a toss.

Therefore: neither do I.

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.