Tag: Chris Holmes | TruthWillOut

Success with nicotine products

I hate to break this to you, smokers, but your government doesn’t want you to realise that NRT doesn’t work because they don’t really want you to stop smoking.

by Chris Holmes

A full eighteen months after Harvard University proved that nicotine replacement therapy “is no more effective in helping people stop smoking cigarettes in the long term than trying to quit on one’s own”, we might wonder why smokers are still being prescribed these useless products at the taxpayers’ expense. This is no longer an “evidence-based” medicine – in fact it is not a medicine at all and never has been. There is no such thing as “therapeutic nicotine”.

“Therapeutic” means it does you GOOD!

Nicotine is a poison. All the effects of nicotine are toxic, but the drug companies that produce nicotine replacement products have been funding research for years now, trying to find another application for the products because they know it won’t be long before all smokers know it doesn’t work at all. Every now and then stories pop up in the press reporting that “research suggests” that nicotine patches “might be useful” for this, or “could be helpful” for that.

The problem with “research”

Let us not forget that it was “research” which suggested in the first place that nicotine replacement poisoning “might be” helpful to smokers. The trouble is, they only looked at the short-term effects. This is what passes for “science” nowadays because research like this is organised and funded by the companies that make the products, and all they’re after is a licence. So those short-term effects don’t have to be impressive, they only have to be slightly better than a control group using a placebo. This is easy to organise: you just run several groups at the same time, some with placebos and some with the product, using only small numbers of people within each group.

Cherry picking

Why small numbers? Because when you convert that number into a percentage later, you magnify it. Then you cherry pick both ways: you take the placebo group with the lowest number of successes, and the product group with the highest. The difference in real numbers of successes may be no more than a random anomaly really, but as soon as you convert both figures into percentages it looks like a very clear and positive result. Sometimes they even stop clinical trials early because they have achieved that already and they don’t want to blunder on long enough to run into nasty side effects or relapses that may occur in the long term. It is okay for the end-user to blunder into that sort of thing, but we don’t want it mussing up the trial data.

Exclusions

Did I mention that we exclude anyone from the trials who might be fragile in any way mentally or physically? Just in case they don’t respond very well or have a bad reaction that might mess up the trial and make the drug look dangerous. Of course the end-user isn’t protected by being excluded. Doctors will prescribe it with confidence to anyone, because they fondly imagine that it has been proven in the trials to be effective and safe. It hasn’t.

The truth about NRT

The cruel truth is that nicotine replacement products are still being fraudulently funded by public money and recommended to smokers because it creates the impression that the government is doing something about smoking but in reality it does not reduce the tobacco tax revenue by being effective in stopping people smoking. In fact that official endorsement legitimises a bogus product which can also be bought over the counter, and the government collect Value Added Tax (meaningless phrase that, isn’t it?) from the sale of those products. Also, promoting methods that actually work – such as hypnotherapy, for example – would save lives, meaning that more people would live to retirement age and start claiming a pension when there are frankly too many people doing that already…

The truth about the Department of Health

So that is why, when the science proved that every penny of public money spent on nicotine products is completely wasted, the government pretended not to notice, just as they did when their own research came to the same conclusions in 2005 (the Borland Report). I hate to break this to you, smokers, but your government doesn’t want you to realise that NRT doesn’t work because they don’t really want you to stop smoking. They want you to smoke, then try the nicotine gum, then smoke, then try the patches, then smoke, then try the lozenges, then smoke, then try the microtab, then smoke, then try the nicotine spray, then relapse into smoking again and hopefully this will have taken so many years that you ALMOST get to retirement age but not quite.

And then they want you to die. That is what “success with nicotine products” means to them.

NHS: Scrap NRT NOW!!

Since 2001 the UK government has spent hundreds of millions of pounds every year on the free or subsidised provision of NRT through the NHS. Many scientific studies have shown that willpower alone produces a long-term stop smoking success rate of anywhere between 2% and 8%. In 2005 the government learned from the Borland Report that NHS Smoking Cessation Services had a long-term success rate of just 6.5%. It doesn’t work at all.

by Chris Holmes

Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) was originally passed as if it were an effective medication on the basis of its performance at just six weeks.

Since 2001 the UK government has spent hundreds of millions of pounds every year on the free or subsidised provision of NRT through the NHS.

Many scientific studies have shown that willpower alone produces a long-term stop smoking success rate of anywhere between 2% and 8%.

In 2005 the government learned from the Borland Report that NHS Smoking Cessation Services had a long-term success rate of just 6.5%. This is well within the normal placebo range, proving that those methods don’t work.

Promoters of NRT then adopted the fraudulent tactic of selecting only trial studies with a particularly low success rate for willpower – such as 2% – for comparison with NHS Services, to make it look as if the 6.5% figure boosts smokers’ chances of success.

The Borland Report did the same thing: slyly comparing the success rate of smokers trying to quit with their doctor’s help (2.6%) with those going to the hugely expensive NHS Smoking Cessation Services (6.5%) and concluding: “Where suitable services exist, we recommend that referral [to NHS S.C.S.] become the normal strategy for management of smoking cessation in general practice.”

The Royal College of Physicians have actually argued that 6.5% is “cost effective” if you treat million of smokers, because then, even that puny percentage would clock up a few hundred thousand successes! Barmy, eh? Never mind the fact that we needn’t spend a dime on NRT because willpower clocks up the same result anyway.

In 2007 I published Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was (Volume I) – a book that blew the whistle on the NRT scam.

In 2009 I published the second volume, and meanwhile the cost of NHS Smoking Cessation Services rose to £84,000,000. Just for that one year.

In 2010 my original claim that smokers’ cravings have nothing to do with nicotine was confirmed by research at the University of Tel Aviv.

In January 2012 my original claim that NRT has NO benefit was confirmed by research at the University of Harvard.

The Truth Will Out Campaign has been calling for the NHS to drop NRT since March 2008 because it doesn’t work at all. The science backs this campaign but the BMA, the Department of Health, the MHRA, A.S.H. and N.I.C.E. all continue to recommend nicotine replacement products and public funding for them. They are wilfully ignoring the facts.

My books made three controversial claims. The first two claims have now been independently verified. The third – that nicotine is not a drug at all, and that smoking is not drug taking – will inevitably be verified as well because it is all true. But how many smokers have died since 2007? More than half a million in the UK alone. How many of them tried NRT on the advice of government and medical authorities, unknowingly wasting their precious time?

How much NHS cash has been wasted already on these bogus products since 2001? Anybody’s guess, but since the Borland Report first gave the Blair government the bad news in 2005, it will certainly have topped £500,000,000 just in the UK.

IF YOU BELIEVE THAT THE CASH SHOULD BE DIVERTED NOW TO OPERATIONS AND EQUIPMENT THAT ACTUALLY WORK, PLEASE SHARE THIS PAGE ON TWITTER, FACEBOOK, ANYWHERE… NRT is a massive global con and YOU are paying for it.

Champix reviews: Australia bites back

“If there was a drug on the market that caused some users to lose their right leg it would be withdrawn immediately. Because Champix affects your inner core and for that reason its effects are invisible, the symptoms are explained away as a mental issue. In terms of the pharmaceutical industry it is the perfect cover for a drug that is subsidized and earning its maker billions of dollars in revenue.”

By Chris Holmes

*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.*

Just before I get onto this post, here’s the latest Champix review from Kara: “I have been on champix for only 6 days now, and in my opinion that is 6 days too long. I have had, in this time alone a ridiculous change in my mental state. Never had problems besides some depression in my early 20′s, and I feel like I’ve changed in just one week! I am constantly agitated, irritable and angry ALL of the time. Something happened the other day that made me question this drug; something so out of character it scared me! I got in to an argument with my sister’s husband, and literally snapped! I struck him with a leather strap 3 times, so hard it left bruises! He just stood there stunned, and all I could think was that I wanted to kill him! He was stunned because it was like a TOTALLY different person! I was shocked at myself, and scared; I totally lost control, and I attribute it FULLY to this drug! I’m a very happy person normally.
The other thing is I can’t stop eating! I go to the gym 5 times a week, and am generally very healthy (besides the smoking), but I haven’t been able to stop eating the past 5 days!!!
Today was my last day on this evil drug. NO MORE!”

The phrase “totally out of character” just keeps cropping up again and again with this drug, doesn’t it? And what if there had been a knife to hand – or a firearm? “…all I could think was that I wanted to kill him!” Ladies and gentlefolk, that is NOT caused by just needing a ciggie. And that’s after just six days on the drug. Whew! That’s scary.

Back in 2008, I was contributing information about The Evil Champix and to a website called Australian Women Online and Tim Wilkinson posted several times about his own horrible experience with the drug. This week he posted this message on Truth Will Out:

“Hi.
I left a post on the Womens site on Champix in 2008, I have done extensive research into the drug and also how it was tested, how it was given the ‘all clear’ in Australia and the rules and regulations that govern its perscription.
I have received a number of emails that detail the horror stories of people who have taken Champix with adverse results.
I have also extensively researched the possible legal action that could be taken against Pfizer.
Pfizer will tie up any legal action against them in the courts for years, this will also be dependent on individuals’ medical records, if they can tie up a country (Nigeria) in the international courts for more than a decade…
I have found a legal recourse against them that is foolproof and will scare them to death! If you or anyone close to you has been badly affected by Champix (Chantix in the U.S.) please contact me at [email protected]

If you are not from Australia please put your country of origin in the subject line of your message.”

So I sent Tim the following reply:

“Hi Tim, thanks for your latest message! At first I reproduced it on all the Champix posts on Truth Will Out, but then took out the email address immediately as I thought I had better check with you before publicising that quite so broadly. I wasn’t sure if you meant that I should contact you, or anyone who thought they’d been injured by Champix.

Call me paranoid, but I think it would be a good idea to keep the details of the legal recourse you have discovered out of this email exchange, at least for the time being. So, is it okay for me to provide a link on the various Champix pages of the site so that other sufferers can contact you directly? I really hope you’ve found a way to hit Pfizer where it hurts, they certainly deserve it.

best regards,
Chris”

This was Tim’s response, and it rather looks as though he means business:

Hi Chris.
Please post my address as many times as you wish, from my original post to now I have been sent and heard dozens of horror stories that has surprised me as to not only the commonness of adverse reactions to Champix but also the overwhelmingly similar symptoms that people have had.

I now think that the time has come to take action!

Getting recourse from Pfizer will not take away the pain that people have endured but it will go a very long way to helping people know/understand that they are not alone, and what they went through has nothing to do with strength of character nor more importantly the state of their mental health.

If there was a drug on the market that caused some users to lose their right leg it would be withdrawn immediately. Because Champix affects your inner core and for that reason its effects are invisible, the symptoms are explained away as a mental issue. In terms of the pharmaceutical industry it is the perfect cover for a drug that is subsidized and earning its maker billions of dollars in revenue.

I invite all those who have an adverse experience with Champix (including loved ones and friends of victims) to contact me via email so that I can collate information with the view to setting up meetings in Australia. I ask that any outside of Aus keep themselves posted or contact me with the subject line being their location.

I can make no promises as to the outcome, ‘but better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all’!

[email protected]

We’re not going to fail, Tim. Already the French Health Minister has stopped using public money to fund Champix on safety grounds, and that’s just the start. I only wish we could get Champix (Chantix in the U.S.) banned today, so that no-one else has to die, or suffer like you did, but unfortunately – thanks to Pfizer’s lies and deception about the true extent of the dangers that have already occurred – there will be more, because Pfizer will not withdraw this killer drug until they are FORCED to do so. So let’s get on with it, eh? More and more influencial voices are calling for Champix/Chantix to be banned, we are certainly not on our own in this.

***Update, 31st August 2011: Since this email exchange I have tried on several occasions to contact Tim, and have been unable to do so. Since all these attempts were in the latter half of August, this may mean nothing at all – he may be on holiday, or similarly indisposed. If anyone has tried to contact Tim during the past six weeks and has had similar difficulties, please let me know via the Truth Will Out Contact Page. I’ll keep trying and keep you posted here.

the book that blew the whistle on the nicotine scam

Want to quit smoking? Here’s a safer alternative.

Champix Chantix 9: Varenicline, murders and suicide

I first heard of Champix (Chantix in the U.S.), otherwise known as varenicline, in May 2007. By July 2008 I had already learned enough about it to arrive at the conclusion that it should never have been passed as if it were safe for use in the UK, Canada or Australia because it was already clear it was causing serious harm in the United States. Before another year had gone by I had made it an express aim of the Truth Will Out Campaign to call for the withdrawal of this extremely unpredictable killer drug. (See Homepage for the original aims of The T.W.O. Campaign.)

Why Champix Should Be Withdrawn Immediately by Chris Holmes

Finally – and this has taken far too long – the call has begun for Champix to be withdrawn from sale because of the dreadful damage it has done to so many smokers and their families. Dr Michael Siegel, a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health has explained why the Black Box Warning on the medication – the strongest type of safety warning there is – is still not sufficient to protect the public. His voice should not be ignored: Dr Siegel has 25 years experience in the field of tobacco control and has published nearly 70 papers on tobacco. This is what he says about Pfizer’s dangerous brain-boiling tablet:

http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/04/rest-of-story-calls-for-removal-of.html

http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/04/chantix-why-black-box-warning-is-not.html

I’ve Been Saying This For Years Now

That was two years ago. The foot-dragging of medical authorities all over the world with regard to this evil medication has become truly obscene. Most recently, New Zealand’s medicines approval body Pharmac – which had hesitated over Champix because of serious concerns regarding its safety – finally did a special ‘package deal’ with Pfizer involving the licensing of a number of drugs, including Champix, making it shockingly clear that their former concerns about the safety of New Zealand smokers could be negotiated away if the price was right. Never mind that the link with suicides was already well established. Never mind the fact that by this time, it was apparent that the true success rate of the drug (at the one-year follow-up stage) was only about 14%. The press in New Zealand churned out the familiar marketing hype about the 55% ‘success rate’ once achieved at the 12 week stage in clinical trials, and a Pfizer spokesperson added the platitude that the “benefits outweighed the risks”. What they really meant was, the benefits to THEM outweighed any risks to smokers lives, jobs, health, relationships, liberty etc. as far as THEY were concerned… risks which Pfizer continue to deny can be conclusively linked to the drug anyway.

*Would you like to reply to that denial? 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. If you live elsewhere, Google “How do I report a bad reaction to a medication in…” (wherever)*

Smokers’ Testimony Doesn’t Count

… as far as Pfizer are concerned, that is. This is why I encourage all those smokers who have suffered a bad reaction to report it, and make sure their doctor uses the official channels to make that report count. And although a recent report found that Champix/Chantix was 18 times more likely to be associated with violent behaviour than any of the other 484 drugs in the study – making it the worst offender of all in terms of aggressive reactions – that is STILL only using the data from the limited number of cases where an official complaint was made against the medication.

Smokers’ testimony counts here, though, on Truth Will Out. Already we know, from such testimony, that:

– many smokers are STILL not being warned about ANY risks associated with the medication

– many doctors and other medical personnel don’t know much about risks anyway, or dismiss it as ‘media hype’

– many smokers are okay on the drug at first. THEN it gets nasty

– early results seem much more promising than long-term outcomes actually are

– the last two points have generated massive amounts of PREMATURE praise for the drug

– many sufferers of bad reactions did not know that the drug was to blame

– very bad side effects continue in some people long after coming off the drug.

It seems inevitable that suicidal or violent behaviour in individual cases over the last four years may well have been blamed on the individual rather than the drug. In court cases or inquests all over the world it seems likely that the connection would probably have been missed, or perhaps dismissed as an attempted excuse. Certainly the actor Nicolas Williams was thought by some commentators at the time to be using that connection as a way of getting off an assault charge, when he was cleared by a court last June. But how many have been convicted?

In July last year, Andrew Case killed his two young daughters and his wife, then hanged himself. He had been taking Champix, but at the inquest it was stated that none of the drug was found in his blood. Did the people conducting that inquest fully understand that the horror continues for many Champix victims, sometimes long after the drug is discontinued? PRETTY IMPORTANT FACT TO BE AWARE OF, DON’T YOU THINK?

A Sure-Fire Way To Get At The Truth About Champix

When people die by their own hand – or as a result of violence, there is always a post-mortem examination. In this country, and I’m sure in many others, if that person is on any medication from their doctor, a note of this is made as part of the post-mortem and inquest proceedings. However, if they blew their brains out with a shotgun – or someone else’s brains – then the cause of death is recorded as Death By Shooting. If they were taking Champix at the time, the cause of death is listed as… Death By Shooting. This means if Champix really caused that death, Pfizer got away with it.

I suggest that the obvious thing to do is to look back over ALL the violent deaths and suicides which have happened over the last four years, and find out how many of those people were taking Chantix or Champix at the time. Then compare this information with the same types of cases in the previous four years before that, to see if the Great Global Champix Experiment threw up a spike in the incidence of violent assault, murder and suicide. Might also be a good idea for anyone accused or convicted of violent behaviour during that time to check for a Champix connection if that was not the way they usually behave. I’m sure this kind of information could be demanded by anyone under the Freedom of Information Act here in the UK, or obtained by lawyers involved in cases against Pfizer over Chantix/Champix. Even though this would still be missing the cases where the drug was bought, not prescribed, it would be a very good indicator of the drug’s actual role in all these horror stories and – even if not conclusive in any individual case – enough to get the monstrous concoction banned.

That inevitable event cannot come soon enough. How many more have to die, Doc?

the book that blew the whistle on the nicotine scam

safer, more effective alternative

The British Broadcasting Corporation

Forget The Journalists

I was contacted by the BBC back in December, they were doing a radio programme about current smoking policy and questioning the validity of Nicotine Replacement Poisoning and all that, and wanted me to take part. The Producer had read my book, and really liked it. So I went and did an interview, which they assured me afterwards went very well. (I know: they say that to everybody!) Then it went very quiet, and I sent a couple of emails that didn’t get answered. The radio show is being broadcast today. And today I finally got a reply.

Guess what? I’m not in it!

This is the fourth time that I have been approached, and then before anything is actually broadcast, ditched – by media organisations. And it’s the last. Of course I got a detailed ‘explanation’ as to why, but the fact is I don’t care. I’m wasting my time with these people.

I’m not even disappointed, it’s pretty much what I expected at this point. As this is the fourth time journalists have approached me, then backed right off because I’m actually calling the Department of Health, A.S.H. and the drug companies a bunch of fraudsters who are knowingly wasting huge amounts of public money and carefully lying about it – and I can prove it – well, journalists are not in a position to deal in terminology like that. So I’ve had enough of talking to them.

I’m not a campaigner by nature. I’ve never done anything like this before, so it’s a learning process. And what I’ve learned is: don’t waste your time with journalists. They’re not interested in the real issue, they’re just constructing “items” for the shows (or rags) they knock together, and it’s pretty formulaic. I know how it works, I spent six years teaching a course on television production at Manchester Metropolitan University. I’ve been on TV numerous times (not in connection with this Campaign), and it’s all good fun. But that’s all it is.

The Producer of The Radio Show I Was Never On asked me if I wanted an audio copy of the show anyway, because she would “value my feedback on it”.

That made me feel very special. So I said: “Thank you very much”, and “no”. I already knew who else they had on the show, and I already know what all those people would say, because I’ve heard it all before. In fact the only bit that the listeners wouldn’t have heard before was the bit I contributed, which was why it didn’t really fit in.

Fact is, the internet is where all the real, edgy debate is now. The BBC is like the NHS: no-one who values their job can speak out, they’ve got to cover their own arses and let’s face it, the BBC is totally reliant on the government of the day to keep on approving the licence fee, so…

So: bye bye BBC. It’s been… well, pretty much what I expected, really!

the book that blew the whistle on the nicotine scam

Central Hypnotherapy

Cravings Are Not Withdrawal Symptoms

by Chris Holmes

** Update 16/07.10: There is a link in the third comment at the end of this article to the website of Action on Smoking and Health (A.S.H.) which refers to a study on cravings that confirms exactly what I’m talking about here. God knows I never expected ASH to confirm or agree with anything I say, because they have staunchly defended and promoted Nicotine Replacement products until now, but maybe everyone involved in that is getting ready to admit that NRT is a complete waste of money because it’s based on a myth, just as I’ve been saying all along. Now watch them immediately start promoting some other pharmaceutical instead, instead of admitting openly how WRONG they were all this time about hypnotherapy, the Allen Carr approach, acupuncture… no, it’s chemicals, chemicals chemicals all the way!

Anyway enjoy the article!

Cravings Are Not Withdrawal Symptoms

Whether you are a smoker or not, you know what a craving is because we all get lots of cravings, they are not all about tobacco. In hypnotherapy we shut down cravings for all sorts of things routinely: smoking is just one example of that. If anyone reading this doesn’t believe that it is simply because they haven’t experienced it themselves, but it’s an everyday occurence for hypnotherapists – I’ve been doing this for the last ten years. Easily demonstrated too.

For several decades now, smokers have had it drilled into them that smoking is “nicotine addiction, nicotine addiction, nicotine addiction”. Yet for most of the time people have been smoking tobacco in Europe it has simply been regarded as a filthy habit. Odd references to “addiction” have occured down the ages but that is partly due to the unclear meaning of the term, which has often been confused with Compulsive Habit anyway. But I can easily explain why smokers’ cravings cannot possibly be withdrawal symptoms and are not related to nicotine levels in the blood anyway.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I know from my own experience as a smoker in the past that trying to quit smoking with willpower alone – or with nicotine replacement products, Zyban or Champix – CAN be a real struggle, or even seem impossible. According to the U.K. Government’s own commissioned studies into the long-term outcomes of those methods (which the National Health Service recommend) the chances are very much that your success – if any – will be temporary. What smokers don’t realise is, that is NOT because it is really hard to stop smoking, it is because those methods are all based on a myth: “addiction” to nicotine.

If cravings were withdrawal symptoms you would experience them at their worst when the nicotine level was lowest, which would be first thing in the morning if you are a typical smoker. No nicotine has been taken into the body for hours, so those “nicotine receptors” should be “going crazy” the moment you’re awake. Yet most smokers do not even keep tobacco by the bed. So there is a gap – an elapse of time – between the moment they open their eyes, and the moment when they first light up a cigarette.

Of course, there are a few smokers who light up before they get out of bed but I think everyone is aware that this is not the norm. The majority of habitual smokers will normally get up, go to the bathroom, maybe have a shower, go downstairs, put the kettle on, feed the cat… all the time feeling perfectly normal. They are not climbing the walls desperate for nicotine. But why not? They haven’t had any nicotine for hours! IF THE URGE TO SMOKE WAS REALLY A WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOM, THAT WOULD BE THEIR WORST MOMENT.

Also, many smokers feel an urge to pick up a cigarette when they have just put one out, such as when drinking, socialising or if bored. That urge is compelling, but it cannot be withdrawal because the nicotine level in the blood is still high from the previous cigarette. A “withdrawal symptom” is an experience caused by nicotine withdrawing from the system, which only happens later. Another clear indicator is the fact that the urge to smoke will vanish in particular circumstances regardless of falling nicotine levels: many smokers never smoke outside or in the street, so if they go out shopping they don’t want one. Gardening, playing sports… hours may go by, nicotine levels fall away – no symptoms, no “withdrawal”. This is because cravings are not linked to nicotine levels at all. They are compulsive urges prompting the usual habitual behaviour, but ONLY if it is a) possible, b) appropriate and c) convenient.

So if you get on a plane – as long as you’re okay with flying and don’t seriously object to the smoking restriction – you will find that nicotine levels can fall and keep on falling, and hey presto! No pesky withdrawal symptoms! Likewise if you board a bus, ride on a train, walk into Sainsburys or a cathedral, step into an operating theatre or meet the Queen… the brain knows this is NOT A SMOKING OPPORTUNITY so it doesn’t send the signals until you LEAVE that situation and a smoking opportunity presents itself.

Now, I need hardly point out that the social restrictions I’ve just described require INTELLIGENCE, SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE AND DISCERNMENT to distinguish between, and I doubt if any scientist is going to suggest that the nicotine receptors in the brain possess such complex abilities such as would be required to appreciate the shifting rules and mores of modern society. No, they were simply supposed to “go crazy” due to the falling level of nicotine specifically – NOT the fact that you’re chatting to the Queen, halfway to Cyprus or admiring a beautiful stained-glass window.

Real drug addictions are totally different. If a heroin addict gets on a plane and the level of heroin in the blood falls low THEN THEY ARE ILL, it doesn’t matter where they are or what they are doing. They couldn’t make out like they were fine even if they were talking to HRH.

Interested? Want to know more about what’s really going on with cravings? Click on the Read The Book section of the site, and when the Contents page appears, read a bit more. If you want to read all of it, click on Buy The Book. £16.95 for the paperback, or just £5 for the full download version. If you don’t like buying on-line, contact me directly for the other options.

I shut down smoking habits in a single session routinely. You can’t do that with a heroin addiction. I’ve tried. If you smoke tobacco you are NOT a drug addict, and that’s why the nicotine-based approaches rarely work except in the short-term. And that’s down to willpower mainly. The real solution is hypnotherapy, and there will come a time when that is simply common knowledge and everyone will understand that all this endless hype about “nicotine addiction” was just a simple mistake which turned into a gigantic moneyspinner for the drug companies at the taxpayers’ expense.

Lennox Johnston – Nicotine Man!

Lennox Johnston was largely responsible for tobacco smoking being wrongly classed as a drug addiction when it is, in fact, a complex compulsive habit. At first, the medical profession were sure he was wrong. They should have stuck to that position, because he WAS wrong. See Chris Holmes’ book ‘Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was’ for the full story.

An excerpt from Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was (Volume II: A Change Of Mind) by Chris Holmes

ii). The tobacco story has so many curious twists and turns that I am never really surprised when another one pops up. In Volume One I mentioned that I hadn’t quite managed to discover exactly when the “nicotine addiction” story started, as an interpretation of compulsive use and I suggested that if anyone was intrigued about that then they should keep digging and if they found anything enlightening to let me know. This inspired Chepstow-based hypnotherapist Marc Bishop to investigate further and he contacted me recently to tell me about Lennox Johnston, of whom I had never heard.

The fact that I had never heard of him is interesting in itself, because it turns out that Lennox Johnston – and be honest, you’ve never heard of him either, right? – was the first person to use nicotine in isolation to offset the impulse to reach for tobacco. In other words he invented Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) – the very thing my book denounces. Now, NRT is prescribed and sold all over the world, so if we all know about innovators like Alexander Fleming and Louis Pasteur, how come Lennox Johnston is never mentioned when people talk about NRT?

Actually it is probably because he was a bit like me: he made a bit of a nuisance of himself and everybody thought at first that he was wrong… which causes me to feel a certain, odd kinship with the chappie even though he is very much my adversary in this argument, for am I not in a very similar position here, trying to explain why smoking is not what most people presently think it is? Here is an extract from Johnston’s typical pronouncements to the editor of The Lancet circa 1953:

“I think it more sensible and scientifically satisfying to recognise tobacco-smoking as a drug addiction from start to finish. It varies in degree from slight to serious. The euphemism “habit” should be discarded completely… no smoker derives positive pleasure and benefit from tobacco. The bliss of headache or toothache relieved is analogous to that of craving for tobacco appeased.”

It is immediately clear that Allen Carr’s later observations in The Easy Way To Stop Smoking have their origins here in Lennox Johnston’s view, although I doubt Carr had ever heard of him either. He certainly never mentioned him in any of his own writings to my knowledge.

So what did the medical profession think of Johnston’s insistence that tobacco smoking was a drug addiction in the 1950’s? Well, we have managed to find this frank repudiation by none other than the Honorary Secretary of the Society for the Study of Addiction, one H. Pullar-Strecker, in response to Johnston’s assertions:

“Much as one may ‘crave’ for one’s smoke, tobacco is no drug of addiction. Proper addicts… will stop at nothing to obtain the drug that their system demands imperatively.”

Smokers often tell me that they are puzzled by the fact that although they wouldn’t normally go for nine hours without a cigarette during the day, when they are on a plane it doesn’t seem to bother them until they land, or very shortly before they land. The only exceptions seem to be smokers who resent the restriction, or have a problem with flying anyway. Likewise we hear of smokers seemingly untroubled by cravings during a spell in hospital, or more ordinarily whenever they go anywhere where smoking is commonly accepted as being out of the question, such as Mothercare or the Finsbury Park Mosque. It seems that as long as the smoker accepts that restriction, there will be no urge to smoke until they leave that situation. That is certainly not withdrawal, and falling nicotine levels in the body during the nine-hour flight (for example) are clearly irrelevant. The “nicotine receptors” in the brain are hardly in a position to appreciate the smoking ban on aircraft – or observe it – so this certainly begs the question “Why are they not ‘going crazy’ – as the NRT advert would have us believe is the cause of smokers’ cravings – in all of the situations mentioned above?” For of course Pullar-Strecker was right: the heroin addict cannot do that. If a heroin addict gets on a plane and the heroin level in the blood falls low then they are ill, it doesn’t matter what they are doing or where they are situated. That’s withdrawal.

Lennox Johnston was a Glaswegian GP who had been a smoker himself and according to his obituary in the British Medical Journal (Volume 292, dated 29/03/86) he quit smoking twice. It relates how he pondered his compulsion to continue smoking and “wondered what would be the effect of stopping” – only to find that it proved easier than he expected. A year or so later, he started smoking again and after that it took him “two agonising years” to give up.

Later he became an anti-smoking campaigner and began to experiment with pure solutions of nicotine which he often administered to himself, once with near-fatal consequences. He also wrote to The Lancet describing an experiment he devised himself which involved about thirty smokers who apparently allowed him to inject them with nicotine whenever they felt the urge to reach for tobacco, which Johnston claimed then subsided. Although this certainly does not qualify as a bona fide clinical trial, it can be regarded as the first ever attempt to trial nicotine replacement as a concept. The Lancet published Johnston’s letter, and so began the biggest medical mistake of the 20th Century – though of course, everyone thought he was wrong at the time.

Well – not quite everyone. Throughout the history of tobacco-smoking in Europe there have been occasional voices calling it an “addiction”, though quite what those individuals thought that term really meant is not easy to determine now. Yet for most of that history nearly everybody simply regarded it as a filthy habit – which is pretty accurate. A complex compulsive habit to be exact – for a full definition of that see Chapter Ten in Volume One, where I spell out the key differences between that and true drug addiction.

It is only very recently, in fact, that the “nicotine addiction” interpretation has become the general impression, and not everyone believes it even now. There have always been voices in the scientific community who have pointed out the inconsistencies, but they couldn’t explain the compulsive element because they didn’t have the key knowledge of the normal operations of the human Subconscious mind and how it organises and activates compulsive habitual behaviour. So they got shouted down – as did the tobacco companies who tried to point out that other habitual behaviours that did not involve any substances – such as shopaholics and compulsive gamblers – seemed to be of a similar order, but eventually they too accepted the new doctrine and dropped the argument. Not because it was invalid, but because they were pretty much on their own at that point, the anti-smokers were on a roll and have been ever since.

Factually, the tobacco companies were right… but because smoking is damaging to health they didn’t have a chance of getting their point heard as the scientific proof of real harm emerged during the 1960s and has continued to be the justification for everything that has changed since. Every anti-smoking policy or restriction that has been introduced since then has been justified with a reminder of the enormous harm tobacco smoking does to human health.

It’s a pity it never occurred to Lennox Johnston to wonder why he found it surprisingly easy to quit the first time, but it took “two agonising years” the second time. Surely the role of nicotine was the same in both cases and what that gives us straight away is the clue that nicotine isn’t the difficulty: the perception of ‘ease’ or ‘difficulty’ – even ‘agony’ – results from other variables, and that’s why expert hypnotherapy can usually resolve the matter on a single occasion but NRT does not.

The medical establishment thought Johnston was wrong, in fact they ignored him for years and don’t even talk about him now. The tobacco companies thought it was just a habit, as did virtually all smokers at the time. Some still do, despite all this mad nicotine propaganda that is really just marketing for NRT dressed up as medical orthodoxy.

The irony is, the medical establishment were in fact quite correct in the first place. So now it seems as if I’m the mad eccentric, when all I’m pointing out is exactly what everyone knew anyway before Lennox Johnston came along. If they had only stuck to their initial assessment that he was the mad eccentric, then they could have remained quite correct all along and we could have avoided this crazy detour around and around and around the poison nicotine, which is not the real reason people struggle to quit through their own efforts, as I explained in Volume One.

Lennox Johnston lived until he was 86, surviving long enough to see his initially-scorned pronouncements adopted as the standard medical view. By mistake.

Doubt if I will live long enough to see it corrected. Probably won’t get the credit either – but then, neither did Johnston -which is why none of us had ever heard of him!

more info about hypnotherapy for smoking

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

Poor Little Conscious Mind

by Chris Holmes

If you were ever under the impression that the Subconscious mind was just a robotic ‘lizard brain’ that blindly obeys instructions from a hypnotist, you couldn’t be more wrong! Many people get that idea from seeing stage hypnotists, who are deliberately misleading their audience but only getting away with creating the impression that they have influence over other people’s minds because the people in the audience know virtually nothing about the true nature of their own Subconscious!

The Missing Information

You know when you were growing up, and first making sense of the world around you, and being taught things… did anyone mention a Subconscious mind to you? No, me neither! We were all raised and educated as if the Subconscious mind does not exist. So by the time we reach an age when we start hearing that word mentioned from time to time, we don’t really know what to do with the idea of a Subconscious mind, because it does not immediately fit in to the way we regard our own mind. By that point in our development the conscious mind thinks IT IS the mind, so at first it doesn’t like the sound of this ‘Subconscious mind’ and tends to push the idea away.

This is particularly true of very analytical people who tend to cling to logic, rationality and scientific models of reality, some of whom (not all, obviously!) seem to feel a need to attack or pour scorn upon anything that looks as if it must be outside of their comfort zone. A few of these people also come to suppose that the only reason other people don’t think exactly the same way as they do themselves is because those folk aren’t as clever as the strictly rational sort. Here is a typical example, taken from a recent review of Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was by someone who seems (to me) to have only read the excerpts from the book published on this site:

“…according to Mr Holmes, quitting is as easy as a 2 hour session appealing to your mysterious subconscious, that (conveniently) only a hynotherapist can communicate with. You can believe in his miracle cure, and no doubt hand over a large sum of cash in the process, or you can use the method that actually works, and costs nothing – quit cold turkey, and promise yourself you will not smoke just for today. I did that 6 months ago, and my “subconcious” had F-all to do with it.”

This attitude is quite commonplace, which is why I mention several times in the book that “the conscious mind does not believe in the Subconscious, except perhaps in theory. And by extension, doesn’t believe in hypnotherapy either until encountering the results for real.” Notice how the writer here is suggesting that I charge large sums of money without bothering to ask about that, dismisses hypnotherapy by choosing the phrase “miracle cure” and refers to his own subconscious mind at the end in a way that suggests there is no such thing! Not his fault, no-one ever taught him anything about it, or he would know already that it is not ‘mysterious’ to me, nor did I ever suggest that only hypnotherapists can communicate with it – tell that to advertisers, they’ve been communicating with it very effectively for a long time now. Of course, once you understand the Subconscious mind’s view of the world, you are far less likely to be influenced by any of that.

Not Rational = Dangerous!

Sometimes ‘rationalists’ even suggest that mental processing (thinking) that is not within the strict bounds of logic is dangerous, and there is certainly evidence for that: for example when people first dreamed up the idea that we might be able to design a machine that could fly – and maybe even reach for the heavens, walk upon the moon, that sort of thing – well, many of the original pioneers of that sort of fanciful nonsense came unstuck! “Serves them right too”, the strictly logical people of the time would have probably been telling one another, “after all, if man had been meant to fly, he’d have been born with wings!”

My contention is that if man had been meant to always be strictly logical, he wouldn’t have been born with an imagination. And indeed some are not, or at least with such a shrivelled and weak imagination that they hardly ever use it. So maybe what really happens is that we all play to our strengths, and the people with feeble imaginations develop their analytical faculties more, whilst those with fertile imaginations may find logical analysis a bit dull compared to letting their imaginations run wild. And the human world needs plenty of both types – if they are types – because when you need someone to be the financial director of a business, you definitely want the conscious analytical faculties to be confidently brought to bear in that endeavour, but if you want someone to design a new Ferrari or stage the opening of the next Olympic Games, Mr. Logical would be utterly useless.

The Imagination and The Analyst (and the real issue behind the Snow/Leavis debate)

Ever since ‘le petit enlightenment’, as I like to call it, the marvellous role of the Subconscious Imaginary has been less appreciated, even dismissed. “Oh, that’s just your imagination!” is a common expression for demonstrating how little you care for the concerns of another person, but within that phrase there is also a suggestion that “imaginary” = “not real” = “not worthy of serious consideration”.

That notion is really a result of the Subconscious-shaped gap in our general education. And it needs fixing, because in reality the role of the imagination in human affairs has been every bit as vital as the role of the intellect.

(An aside for those familiar with the Snow/Leavis reference: “There is only one way out of all this,” Snow had argued. “It is, of course, by rethinking our education.” He was right, but probably didn’t realise that what we really need to include now is detailed information about the Subconscious mind so that it no longer seems “mysterious” to anyone!)

When Rene Descartes famously declared: “I think, therefore I am”, what he didn’t realise was that we are thinking more than we think we are. Humans have at least two modes of thinking: analytical thinking which our conscious faculties operate, and Subconscious thinking which we call “dreaming”. When we do that whilst awake, we call it “daydreaming”. Examples of a finer quality are also known as “inspiration” or even “genius”.

“Oh, he’s just a dreamer!” is another familiar dismissal of the kind of person who spends more time exercising their Subconscious intelligence than their conscious faculties. But where would we be without the dreamers? Every great invention, each quantum leap in technological development, any stunning performance or inspirational work of art, every great engineering project… they all began with a daydream.

Just look at the way many modern realities were the mere fantasies of yesteryear:

Five centuries ago Leonardo DiCaprio was producing detailed drawings of a Ford Capri that might actually have done 0-60 in 7.5 seconds if only they’d had petrol back then, but all they had was candle grease. They also had no Highway Code, which is why Leonardo wrote The DaVinci Code.

The only reason Britain has the Channel Tunnel today is because Margaret Thatcher loved taking magic mushrooms. That’s why she hardly slept, but during one particularly heavy trip she had visions of a tunnel under the sea that could bring closer together the two nations that love each other best in the world: the English and the French.

Certain thrilling pastimes of the modern world would not exist at all if it hadn’t been for World War II fighter ace Douglas Bader. Hurtling towards the ground in his flaming Spitfire, he paused before ejecting just a little longer than he should have done, because he was enjoying the weightless sensation so much that he started dreaming of ways to re-create it just for sport. That hesitation cost him all his limbs and almost his head, yet he lived to fly again, and that inspirational moment gave us the luge, the bobsleigh and at least two of the rides at Alton Towers.

Bruce Springsteen was hiding in a cave one day, because he had chopped down his father’s cherry tree, when he noticed a spider building a web. Just for fun he destroyed the web, and was surprised to see that the spider was apparently not deterred by this and simply built the web back up again from scratch. What really impressed Springsteen – who was later to become world-famous as Robert The Boss – was that no matter how many times he meanly tore down the completed web, the spider would patiently build it back up again. After several days of this, Bruce emerged from the cave inspired to create something that no-one could ever get rid of, which is why the World Wide Web was born in the USA. Although Bruce wasn’t, actually, he was born in Cardiff. He only swam to America because he wanted to be a cowboy. And also to get away from his dad, who was absolutely fuming about the tree because it was the third time. But I reckon it was his own fault really, he should have just bought the kid that guitar and then maybe none of that axe unpleasantness would have happened. It was Lizzie Borden and the harpsichord all over again.

For most of the time humans have been on this planet, a sudden massive heart attack would have meant a long and quick death. (“Long” as in “dead for a long time”.) Then one day in 1820 a Tasmanian surgeon called Dr Lucian C. Gore was surprised by a mouse in his summerhouse, and began to wonder what would happen if he used industrial cutting gear to rip open the chest cavity of the heart-attack victim before the relatives had time to object and replace the damaged organ with the healthy, fast-beating heart of a fieldmouse. Gore never succeeded with this technique himself, and was soon arrested – which surprised no-one at the time – and yet his apparently crazy idea was adapted later and although Gore’s name is hardly known to the public, in medical circles he is often referred to as the psychotic father of modern organ transplant surgery.

When Martin Luther famously nailed that note to the door of 10 Downing Street in the Nineteen Seventeen Hundreds, which said: “I have a dream!” …of course no-one took any notice, but they certainly felt very silly later when that phrase became one of the most inspirational moments of public oratory since the Declaration of Independence was read out by Ho Chi Minh.

Finally – and I think most convincingly of all – who would have thought that when Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise flipped open his ‘communicator’ and said the immortal words: “Beam me up, Scotty!” in the 1960s that only 100 years later we would be beaming around all over the place in reality, eh? I mean I know we’re still only going to work or to the shopping mall… and we haven’t quite solved the problem of how to go more than four miles in under a minute without disintegrating yet, but we’re working on it baby. We’re working on it. Someone is bound to dream up a brilliant solution sooner or later. That’s why we dominate the Earth.

News from the archives: 1968 “Today in Memphis Dr Martin Luther King was shot dead by a lone assassin. But what of it? As we all know, he was just a dreamer, wasn’t he?”

But as Lennon sang, he’s not the only one.

Now, can you imagine King’s most famous speech being written – or even funnier, being delivered – by Richard Dawkins? Analytical thinking is all very useful, as far as it goes, but to achieve something like that it takes both vision and passion, and for that we need the wonderful Subconscious Imaginary, which has the power to stir the soul of thousands of people simultaneously and change the world in a single afternoon. For real. And at a moment like that, any contribution from the poor little conscious mind of any speaker would not have been noticed at all.

On A Lighter Note:

Just have a look at this review of Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was that someone posted on Amazon.co.uk:

This book was hard work. The author sounds very angry, I could feel the tension from the pages as I was reading – it made me want to smoke more. I made a very expensive mistake buying this book. Just wanted to warn others as I had been swayed by the previous comments which were so positive.

(Published 11 months ago by R. A. Mahoney)

Hmm! The Poor Little Conscious Mind post is fairly typical of the style of the book, so clearly whoever wrote that review has never read any book written by me! Aren’t people weird? There’s another couple of reviews that are similar, one of which suggests that all the good reviews have been written by my friends! No, they’re genuine reviews, and I don’t know any of those people except of course my wife, who edited the book and also commented on the ‘bad’ reviews on Amazon.co.uk. Anyway I pointed out to the idiot who suggested that I was organising my own reviews that so far there are no reviews at all on Amazon.com, although there are quite a few now on the publishing site (Lulu.com), the Truth Will Out site (see Testimonials) and on Amazon.co.uk. If I was organising that myself, you’d have thought I’d have got around to putting some on Amazon.com by now, two years after publication!

It seems that a few people would prefer it if no-one read my book! I know the book looks as if it is very serious – with the skull on the front and everything – but it certainly isn’t angry, in fact most people find it really funny in places. I like to make things pretty entertaining as well as informative. On the Read The Book option here on the Truth Will Out site I’ve largely left out the more entertaining bits because I’m trying to be serious here. This is a campaign website, goddammit! If you find this stuff interesting don’t forget that you can get a full download version of the book for only five pounds! (That’s less than eight US dollars.) Then you don’t have the paperback lying around the house and frightening the children. Only thing is, you can’t read the download version in the bath. Really wouldn’t advise it, anyway. If the monitor falls in the water you end up looking like the guy on the cover. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone who wanted to read my book. Just the few weirdos who post bogus ‘reviews’ of a book they’ve obviously never read, and tell you I’m a terrible writer! The cheek! Why, I oughta…

‘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