Even by my forthright standards, this is a provocative title but it is not hyperbole. Former GP and hospital physician Dr Vernon Coleman has published this book, which warns the public that: “The person most likely to kill you is not a burglar, a mugger, a deranged relative or a drunken driver. The person most likely to kill you is your doctor. This book explains how to protect yourself from this serious threat to your life and good health.”

This echoes the sentiments of Dr Malcolm Kendrick, whose 2007 book The Great Cholesterol Con warns that Statin drugs are dangerous and don’t really work, and the comments of leading psychiatrist Professor David Healy (see Trust Me, I’m a Doctor elsewhere on this site). He is dismayed by the total lack of accountability in the drug industry:

“In other organisations, when evidence of disregard for public safety emerges, heads roll. But there have been no resignations following these drug disasters - barely a flicker of embarrassment. The distortion and lack of corporate accountability makes me much slower to hand out new drugs. I even feel apprehensive if someone I know has to go to the doctor.”

What has all this to do with Nicotine Replacement Poisoning? Same system. Same approval bodies. Same drug giants. It’s just that NRT was approved so long ago, you are just supposed to assume that it was all properly tested and it wouldn’t have been passed if it didn’t work. Professor David Healy knows better than to assume that, because he has personally sifted through boxes concealing thousands of confidential internal company documents concerning other medications that had already been passed by the system as if they were both safe and effective:

“No-one outside the two companies, and few within them, knew what the boxes contained; I saw them because I was an expert witness in a court case.” These experiences have left him feeling:

“…apprehensive if someone I know has to go to the doctor”.

Still confident that nicotine products are safe and above board? Where medications are concerned, it is no longer safe to assume anything, as Dr Coleman wants everyone to be aware for the sake of their safety and indeed their life.

Filed under: Drugs on Trial, The Campaign by Chris
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Sometimes analytical people say to me: “You know, I don’t think I’d be a very good candidate for your hypnotherapy - I’m very strong-minded!”

The implication and the assumption that lies behind that is that people who respond well to the hypnotherapy process must be weak-minded people who are easily influenced! The comment also masks a fear of being influenced, as if hypnotherapy were a battle of wills - as well as being a veiled insult, suggesting that hypnotherapists go around influencing weak-minded people, which obviously would be a dubious occupation.

Occasionally I am asked what kind of people respond best to hypnotherapy. Actually, anyone can respond to it if they have no objection, but the people who take to it immediately and get the best results are pro-active people who are enjoying life.

Pro-active people do not have much use for negatives. They grab positives and opportunities and make the most of them, so they have no hesitation in responding to positive suggestion, they welcome it. They tend to regard change as a potentially good thing, and they don’t trouble themselves too much with self-doubt. Their attitude to new ideas is to consider them with an open mind, see if they are any use - they don’t waste time by questioning them extensively with habitual skepticism, as an analytical person often will, which just slows down the response time.

If a person is generally enjoying life, their outlook is bright and expectant, their mood cheerful. These are perfect conditions for positive responses to hypnotherapy. Intelligence helps, as long as it is not the kind of arrogant, know-it-all intelligence that automatically refuses help from someone else.

In contrast, people who are easily influenced might find long-term success less-easily achievable, since they tend to be easily influenced by all sorts of people, not just a therapist. They usually have little confidence in their own views, so they adopt the views of other people, leaning more to the majority view, assuming that the more people there are subscribing to a notion, the more likely it is to be true.

So if a therapist contradicts the common view - even if it is a detailed, sound argument - the weak-minded person has difficulty in accepting that, because that’s not what most people think, is it?

I remember one of my clients at the law firm, Keoghs (see Evidence, Section G) who did not stop smoking after her hypnotherapy session commenting on her response form: “I think I was very disbelieving anyway - I mean, “Nicotine isn’t a drug?” She was unable to think beyond what the majority assume to be true, and therefore was unable to respond positively. Hypnotherapy is a learning process, but she went out with the same notions with which she came in. Anyone who adopts a disbelieving attitude during the hypnotherapy process can repeat that mistake easily, but they don’t have to.

The fact that most of her colleagues did stop smoking easily, and without any “withdrawal symptoms”, proved that what I was saying was true, but still the weak-minded will not be comfortable with that idea until it becomes common knowledge.

Filed under: Hypnotherapy by Chris
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Support continues to pour in daily:

“Have seen the website and it’s great! We were wondering if we could include it in our newsletter website of the month feature? It is very much in line with our thinking… We will also link your site to ours as it’s the sort of information we want potential clients to see.”

“Hi Chris! As a group of hypnotherapists/stress managers with great success supporting clients to stop smoking we can support your comments totally. On a personal note I totally agree about the drug addicted medical profession - what about statins??? Another example of ‘managing a condition’ which in my opinion is not there… Well done! I’ll be informing our members.”

There’s a movement growing, folks. A generally Pharma Skeptic movement, and it is really a result of colossal over-medication which is fast becoming a global phenomenon. It is not restricted to the over-prescribing of medications any more, now you can buy just about anything from internet pharmacies and have it shipped by post from Canada, from the U.S. and many other places - and the marketing, Jesus! I get emails every day, offering me hydrocodone, Xanax, Valium… all without prescription. In case you don’t know, hydrocodone is a very powerful synthetic opiate quite similar to heroin.

But it’s the Viagra and Cialis that are really being pushed, and I heard on the radio this morning that in the United States, medications are advertised on television!  This is an idea that seems incredible here in the U.K.  They played a soundtrack of people singing “Viva Viagra!” to the tune of “Viva Las Vegas”, which had me gaping. Quite apart from the fact that this is blatant drug-pushing, how symptomatic of American cultural decline is that? Once they had Elvis belting out that tune, a symbol of virility so potent he could only be shown on television from the waist up. Now it has degenerated into a song about erectile dysfunction!

A pill for every ill? No pill is gonna put that right, America. There’s no pill to give you back your soul. You have to search for that, and it’s not in the medicine cabinet, it’s not in the fucking internet pharmacy. Pills suck. Look what they did to Elvis.

Filed under: The Campaign, The Site by Chris
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I see the drug companies are coming under fire again, this time for stopping clinical trials of anti-cancer drugs early, because of encouraging signs of benefits.  They have  the bare-faced audacity to claim that their motivation is to get approval as fast as possible - based on short-term effects only - in order to get the drugs to patients without delay.  Even if that were their true motive, it is no excuse for haste in the process of studying real outcomes, which is simply unscientific to the point of being reckless.

But we know, don’t we, that this is not their real motivation. This is an established strategy, they did the same thing with NRT, which was originally passed on the basis of its performance at six weeks!  The fact is, anything that looks like some sort of success is being passed off as the real outcome, in a way that shows a contemptuous disregard for the whole business of approval.  The medical approval bodies are being played for fools, and there is not a damn thing they can do about it, apparently.

The whole system needs to be scrapped, and replaced with an independent academic system that performs real medical trials that take into account all findings, long term results and side-effects, before any medication can be passed as safe and effective.  The current system is corrupt, disreputable and a danger to the public.

Filed under: The Campaign by Chris
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This campaign is only a month old, but the response is very encouraging already. Comments so far include:

“Well done on the site - it’s excellent!”

“I feel as strongly about anti-depressants… Someone has to take these people on - as my husband would say, if it wasn’t for the one individual who got the ball rolling, we’d still have slavery and women wouldn’t be voting! So ‘one little hypnotherapist’ can do something - you could be the next Emily Pankhurst!”

(To which I replied, “You never know, I may even have been the last Emily Pankhurst!” Entertaining the idea of reincarnation helps me to avoid taking this incarnation too seriously… I highly recommend the strategy.)

“If you are happy for me to do so, I will post this on my blog which is read by thousands daily… I like the message”

“With you all the way”

“I fully support your aims in publicising the failure rate of NRT, but know it will be an uphill battle as the ‘powers that be’ will not easily admit they got it wrong”

“We fully agree with your findings and campaign. Good luck!”

“I totally agree! Good on you”

“Well done Chris. Keep up the good work!”

“Nicely put together content on your site.”

That is just a small selection of the comments so far, and we have yet to see a negative comment come in. All who have voiced an opinion, ever since the article about the book appeared in the Stockport Express on the 9th of January, have been in wholehearted agreement, with the singular exception of Dr Stephen Watkins, Director of Public Health at Stockport Primary Care Trust. He was asked to comment upon the message of the book by Miles Skinner from the Stockport Express, which the good doctor felt free to do, despite the fact that he had never clapped eyes on the book, let alone read it.

Thousands of people read that report, and the one in the Stockport Times. Thousands of people will have heard me talk about this on Channel M. Thousands have been to this site already, from all over the world. And yet no-one - no-one, that is, except Dr Watkins - has so far leapt to the defence of NRT.  Not one nurse, not one pharmacist, not one GP… starting to feel a bit lonely, Dr Watkins?

Filed under: The Campaign by Chris
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Now I must admit, after four years slogging away at this book, the months it took to publish it and the months we’ve spent creating this site, I was feeling a bit like going far away and sitting in a dark cave for a while. And maybe never coming back.

Of course I do have a busy practice to run, and a family and everything, so it wasn’t really a practical option, but we all have finite resources, don’t we? None of us are superhuman, not even hypnotherapists!

Now I don’t feel like that anymore, because the feedback and encouragement I am getting is fantastic, particularly from therapists, many of whom wish to help. We have a real opportunity here, and it’s very timely, and everyone seems to be recognising that as soon as they look at the site.

I had half-expected hypnotherapists to be a bit nervous about challenging the establishment, but so far it seems to be the very reverse! The enormous power of the internet may have something to do with this: these are global issues, and an awful lot of people out there will have reason to have sympathies with this campaign. Let’s communicate, people! And to all those who have so far responded, thank you very much for your support! I don’t feel I need that cave now. Every email, every link and every encouraging word has given me new life and enthusiasm.

NRT = Not Really Therapy, and it is doomed!

Filed under: Hypnotherapy, The Campaign by Chris
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At the very end of the book, in the final section called A Pause For Breath which you can read here on the site, I mentioned the announcement of the coming of a new magic pill to stop people smoking, which coincided with my completion of the book in May 2007. What I didn’t know at the time was that the number of smoking clients I was used to getting was about to drop by around 60%.

People want magic pills. They want to believe the doctor can just make their problems go away, just by swallowing a little tablet and then getting on with their day. So as soon as the headlines hit - “New Pill to Stop Smoking! Available on the NHS within weeks!” - my phone went dead, didn’t it? Now all the smokers are waiting for the magic pill.

Champix is supposed to work by ‘blocking the nicotine receptors so that smokers no longer enjoy smoking’, which is nonsense because habitual smokers don’t smoke for enjoyment anyway. Some may believe they do, because habitual smokers tend to smoke at moments of repose, which are usually pleasant moments because they are no longer stressed or exerting themselves. So there may well be pleasure in the moment, but it isn’t coming from the cigarette - smoke is. Nicotine itself is not pleasant in any way, as all smokers noticed on the first day they ever inhaled the smoke - and apparently, neither is Champix.

Since last May, I have been hearing reports from the only people I really trust these days when it comes to quit products: smokers themselves. These reports have, so far, all fallen into the following categories:

“It doesn’t work at all, didn’t seem to do anything.”

“It made me feel so ill I couldn’t carry on taking it.”

“Managed to keep taking it, but felt too ill to smoke. I didn’t want to smoke whilst taking it, but started again once I stopped.”

All this is anecdotal, but so far no-one has told me that it simply worked for them, although one person did report that it apparently worked for someone they knew.

The course of nausea-inducing tablets is twelve weeks, which is a long time to put up with nausea. Not everyone is nauseous for that long, some only reported that for a short period after taking the tablet, but others seem to be regularly heaving or actually vomiting. Since when is medication supposed to make you ill? Does it really just ‘work’ by making you feel too rough to face smoking, rather like a hangover does? That’s a bit unsophisticated, isn’t it? Sounds a bit dangerous, too. Hypnotherapy - by contrast - isn’t nauseating or dangerous, and the whole process usually only takes a couple of hours. For the majority, that’s it: you’re a non-smoker again. No cravings, no willpower needed, no bad moods and no weight gain. That’s one hell of a lot better than taking tablets that make you ill for weeks on end, isn’t it? Not to mention safer, and with a much higher success-rate, when it’s done properly.

Champix Scary Side-Effects

The scariest Champix reports were those that involved unexpected changes to mental well-being, including one woman who told me that she stopped taking it because she was having time-lapses in her day she could not account for, including whilst driving. A five-minute journey apparently took twenty-five minutes, for no reason she could remember or explain, and she was deeply concerned. A report published in The Telegraph (24.10.07) warned that people taking Champix had been told by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) not to drive when taking the medication, following two accidents blamed on the drug. Dizziness and sleepiness are two side-effects of Champix, made by Pfizer.

Okay, so how is that going to work? Smokers are put on this for twelve weeks, or even twenty-four weeks if they are still smoking after the first twelve. Does the GP say: “By the way, don’t drive for the next six months”? No, they are much more likely to just say: “Don’t drive if you don’t feel well”, but the trouble is, most people on Champix feel unwell daily. Still got to get to work, haven’t they? So the MHRA have issued a warning few working smokers can possibly heed in practice. How many people are driving about under the effects of a drug that is known to cause dizziness and/or sleepiness - and even memory loss - for anything up to six months? Given to them by their doctor.

Recent Updated Warnings by Pfizer

At the beginning of 2008 Pfizer added more warnings to the medication suggesting that users should be monitored for erratic behaviour, suicidal thoughts or personality changes whilst on the drug. Ok - by whom? Since the only people likely to see that warning at all are the user and their GP, how is that supposed to work in practice? The people most likely to notice those changes are family and work colleagues - all of whom will be unaware of Pfizer’s warning and some of whom may be subordinate to the user in some crucial way which makes swift and effective response unlikely or impossible.

What if the user is a police officer, or in the armed forces? What if they are an air-traffic controller, a crane driver, a rail signalman or a pilot? Memory lapses, sudden personality changes or suicidal thoughts take on a whole new angle in such cases, and even the driving issue makes Champix a potential threat to anyone even trying to cross a road. The mass-prescribing of Champix to smokers is actually a gigantic experiment, and what that updated warning from Pfizer really means is this: “We’re covered now, you’ll just have to chance it in practice unless you can afford to quit work for a few months… and if anything terrible happens and you try to blame the medication, our well-paid legal team will create just enough uncertainty to make sure you get the blame for the disaster, sucker!”

If you have a story to tell about Champix, let us know. If you would like to know more about how hypnotherapy can help with smoking, or any other issue, visit the Central Hypnotherapy website.

If you wish to comment on this, or any other post on this blog please use the Leave a Reply facility at the end of the list of comments below.

Filed under: Champix/Chantix, Drugs on Trial, Smoking, The Book by Chris
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After the article appeared in the Stockport Express in early January 2008, I got an email from Vanessa Williams, Editor of the live Breakfast Show on Channel M (TV for Manchester!), asking if I would like to come on the show and talk about the book. I accepted, and the item was scheduled for Monday 14th January.

Items on breakfast telly are always short and sweet - the producers know you’re only watching this while you get ready for work, and they don’t want to hold you up with lengthy items that put the world to rights. So I knew I would probably only get the chance to get one good point across on this occasion, which was to point out that if smokers’ cravings were really withdrawal symptoms, they would get them at their worst when the level of nicotine was lowest - which is first thing in the morning when they open their eyes. In truth, most smokers do not keep cigarettes in the bedroom and don’t smoke straight away: there is a gap between opening their eyes, and lighting the first cigarette. For some it might be five minutes, for others, over an hour - but the point is, during that time they feel perfectly normal.

So why are they not climbing the walls, desperate for nicotine? They haven’t had any for hours! Where are the terrible ‘withdrawal symptoms’? I got that point across successfully within the four minutes we were allotted, and explained that we shut down the impulse to reach for tobacco in hypnotherapy, but that was about all we had time for really.

As that went well enough, later I was invited back onto the show and presented with a challenge in the form of the lovely Samantha Jordan, whom I had never met before, but who wanted to quit smoking. She worked for Channel M, but wasn’t present at my first visit. The idea was that we would do ‘before’ and ‘after’ appearances on the show, first with Sam talking about her current smoking habit, then (hopefully) about how she was a happy non-smoker after we had done the Stop Smoking session.

Now ask yourself this question: if hypnotherapy didn’t work, or only works if you are lucky - if it were no better than a placebo, or was pretty hit and miss - would I have accepted that challenge? I knew I was going back on that show a few weeks later to talk about the results - and even if I chose not to, they would be talking about the results anyway! Was I mad? What if it didn’t work?

So that second item was aired on the 29th of January, but it was 9th of February before we got around to doing the session at my offices here in Stockport. It all went fine, and we eventually scheduled the TV follow up for 12th March, which happened to be National No Smoking Day. Sam reported that the session had been immediately and totally successful, and just as I had said, there were no mood swings, no over-eating and no weight-gain. She had no desire to smoke under any circumstances and suffered no cravings.

Well, why not, Doc? What happened to the terrible ‘withdrawal symptoms’ listed in the medical textbooks? Why were Sam’s ‘nicotine receptors’ not “going crazy” like it says on the nicotine replacement poisoning ads these days? I’ll tell you: because suffering and struggle are only experienced if you don’t have hypnotherapy to shut down the craving signals. The impulse to reach for tobacco has nothing to do with nicotine. Whatever ‘nicotine receptors’ might actually be, they play no role in prompting smoking behaviour, and in hypnotherapy we routinely shut down smoking habits with no reference to nicotine receptors whatsoever.

The reason I was happy to accept that challenge - just one smoker, just one session - is because I knew from my personal experience of working with thousand of smokers that this is what usually happens when the job is done properly, so I was confident that I had a 70-30 chance in my favour of success, even with only one session. I reckoned it was worth the small risk to my personal credibility to demonstrate the truth to any smokers who might be watching.

It’s not a fluke. It’s not a miracle. It’s not some bizarre phenomenon. It is simply the easiest, quickest, safest and most intelligent way to eliminate nuisance habits - and it is high time that became common knowledge, and all this nonsense about nicotine was finally revealed for what it is: The Biggest Medical Mistake of the Twentieth Century.

Special thanks to Sam, Vanessa and all at Channel M in Manchester!

Filed under: Hypnotherapy, Publicity, The Campaign by Chris
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I first became fully aware that smoking was not a drug addiction six or seven years ago. My smoking clients would walk in to my office ‘unable’ to stop smoking, and walk out free. How could that be, if they really were addicted to, or dependent on, a drug called nicotine?

The answer was simple: they were not. Nor is it a ‘psychological addiction’ - a nonsense term, since the ‘logical’ part of the mind (the conscious mind) is not really involved. No, it is entirely a compulsive habit, and it can be easily eliminated by effective hypnotherapy - just like any other compulsive habit. The medical people who insist otherwise are either ignorant of the reality - which is bad, since they are handing out advice and products based on that ignorant notion - or they know that ‘nicotine addiction’ is bogus, but they don’t want the public to realise it, which is far worse.

I knew that before I could challenge the pharmaceutical giants, the medical authorities and the Department of Health here in the U.K., I would have to assemble some pretty damning evidence and get it out there where they cannot suppress it, so that is what I’ve done. The first stage was to write and publish the book: Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was.

Then I went to the newspapers. Initially I just sent them information, assuming one of them would sense a story and get back to me for more details. I sent detailed information to news and media organisations, and kept a record of all those I have alerted so far. In truth I saw this as the first wave, I wasn’t expecting much from it, because everybody’s immediate knee-jerk reaction is “Huh? Nicotine isn’t a drug? Who’s this idiot?”

The local paper (Stockport Express) did do an article though, and my email address was published with it. I fully expected a backlash from medical people - GPs, pharmacists, people who work for the NHS Stop Smoking Services. It was inconceivable they didn’t hear about it, it was in papers that were delivered to thousands of homes in the Stockport area. Here I was, calling for NRT to be scrapped by the NHS, declaring that it doesn’t work for 94% of smokers. You would think that someone would be standing up for NRT, saying: “How dare you, who do you think you are?” etc, but no. Not a word, the silence was deafening.

Recently I mentioned this to one of my clients, who is a nurse. She shook her head, and said: “They won’t. They know.”

This rather telling comment implies that the only reason the medical profession has not abandoned Nicotine Replacement Poisoning is because to do so now - after recommending and endorsing it for so long, and wasting vast sums of public money on it (though, to be fair, that was a government decision) - would be an embarrassing U-turn they would rather avoid.  So to avoid admitting that they were wrong, they are quite prepared to let thousands of smokers die by sticking to a failed policy, and waste vast sums of cash, that could actually be saving lives elsewhere, on the pointless production of a poison which has no genuine therapeutic application whatsoever, and performs very poorly even within the normal placebo range.

Filed under: Hypnotherapy, Publicity, The Book, The Campaign by Chris
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Well now, this should be interesting. It’s not every day a humble therapist takes on the pharmaceutical industry, the Department of Health, the BMA and the Royal College of Physicians, but it has got to be done.

The book was the first thing, obviously. I had to write that first, and get it published so that anyone in the world could get a copy and assess the evidence for themselves. I couldn’t just come out and say: “Actually, the whole basis for Nicotine Replacement is false, which explains its almost total failure!” because nobody would have listened. Everyone would assume that it must have been properly tested, surely, in proper scientific trials?

Of course, we now know that clinical trials ain’t what they used to be, and the whole process of getting products approved as medicines has been taken over by the big drug companies - don’t take my word for it, look at the evidence here on the site.

I challenge anyone - anyone with an open mind, that is - to read the evidence on this site and tell me they are quite happy to have their tax money squandered on the poison nicotine for a few more years. The Department of Health has got the NHS Stop Smoking Services proclaiming ’success rates’ that bear no relation to the real, long term outcomes, and they know it! They just don’t want the public to know it.

I am quite sure there will be many people working in the healthcare system who will be in full agreement that precious NHS resources should not be wasted on a poison posing as a medication just because the manufacturers managed to swing it in such a way that the very short-term results were passed off as the real results. That’s bogus, and if you turn a blind eye to things like that, you can hardly be surprised when you later see embarrassing headlines like the ones posted on this site (see Trust me, I’m a Doctor). And if you find yourself doubting that nicotine products could possibly have won approval in that way, you really should read the Daily Mail article by leading psychiatrist Professor David Healy from February 2007, which is reproduced in that section of the site. In fact everyone should read that, before they accept medication of any kind.

This campaign is not attacking the medical profession. It is attacking the cosy collusion between medical authorities, the pharmaceutical industry and also the Department of Health, because they are all actively promoting methods that fail the vast majority of smokers, misrepresenting the facts and telling lies about alternative methods like hypnotherapy and acupuncture - all of which is costing lives and wasting resources. And all because they don’t want to admit they were wrong, which is a pretty pathetic reason to carry on like that. Or to maintain the status quo because it suits all three parties, which is worse, since it maintains at enormous human cost.

So if you find yourself in agreement with the Truth Will Out Campaign, please help by spreading the word in any way you can! This Campaign is opposed to any kind of violence, intimidation or criminal damage in pursuit of its aims - this is an information war, against misinformation and the covering-up of failure on a massive scale. On behalf of smokers everywhere, we welcome all genuine assistance in spreading the word! The Truth Will Out!

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