Truth Will Out – A Worldwide Campaign

Smokers’ cravings are not withdrawal symptoms, but brain signals that can be shut down immediately with hypnotherapy. New Studies back hypnotherapist Chris Holmes on nicotine, the nature of withdrawal symptoms, and the uselessness of Nicotine Replacement Poisoning.

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

In every country, there are millions of tobacco smokers. The majority probably still believe that the reason they feel compelled to smoke is because they are addicted to a drug called nicotine. Yet if they had never been told this, they would have no concept of nicotine at all. Not one of them could tell you what nicotine does, and that is because they are not smoking for the effects of nicotine, and never were.  They are prompted to smoke by the compulsive urge to pick up a cigarette, which is ‘compulsive’ because it feels like a need or a desire, when in truth it is neither. In hypnotherapy, we shut it down. (For a full explanation of this, read from the book here on the site, or download the entire book – It’s much cheaper than the paperback version!)

The essential message of this campaign is to tell the world that the impulse to light a cigarette has nothing to do with nicotine, and the book proves that for the first time, simply by logical explanation. All this suggestion about the role of “nicotine receptors” in the brain is bogus science. How do I know? Because in one hypnotherapy session, the impulse to light a cigarette can be shut down for good, without any reference to nicotine receptors whatsoever. This is the usual outcome of my Stop Smoking sessions, and many of my previous clients have been sending new people along to me for years, so it is obviously not temporary. If the brain truly “needed nicotine”, otherwise the nicotine receptors would “go crazy”, as the TV advert for nicotine products suggests, then such an outcome would be literally impossible. Yet that is the outcome of the majority of my Stop Smoking sessions, much to the amazement of the clients! But the only reason they are amazed is because they had been led to believe they were addicts, which none of them are.

This proves that medical authorities all around the world have got this horribly wrong, and all treatment options that are in any way related to the nicotine theory are also wrong, which explains their dire performance detailed elsewhere on this site.

Read it For Yourself

This site is all about evidence, so look at the evidence! The truth is that all nicotine replacement products – and Champix – are based on a myth, and the millions of people all over the world who are struggling to give up smoking are only struggling because they are being encouraged to use methods that don’t work, precisely because they are based on a myth!

This creates the understandable impression that it is really difficult to stop smoking. The truth is that it is really difficult to stop with conscious efforts alone (willpower), or methods that do not involve talking to the Subconscious mind about it, because all habitual behaviour is directed by the Subconscious. I’m afraid your Doctor probably knows nothing about this, because it is not part of their training. They were told it is a nicotine addiction, so that’s what they are telling you – although to be fair to doctors, most of them don’t actually believe that any more.

Ask anyone who quit with hypnotherapy and they will tell you, it is really easy to quit that way, because the cravings are shut down completely and no willpower is required.

The Message is Spreading!

Oh, Nicotine Replacement Poisoning, your days are numbered! I denounce you and all your apologists, for spreading disinformation and despair. That is not medicine, it is poison-peddling. I call upon the British Department of Health to stop wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on this useless poison, you know damn well it doesn’t work! Doctors, rebel! Refuse to prescribe the poison products, or you are going to end up looking very stupid by the time it eventually becomes common knowledge that this is only a compulsive habit, not a drug addiction.

Still, to date, not one visitor to this site has challenged my statements about nicotine replacement therapy. Why not, Doc? Not a word from any of the Poison Factories, either. If I made a product I was proud of, and really believed in, and someone denounced it as a fraud, as a bogus product that was dangerous and didn’t work anyway because it was based on a myth, and should never have been licensed in the first place because they only looked at very short-term results… I think I’d have something to say about that, wouldn’t you? If it wasn’t true I mean. But no – absolute silence!

Maybe they haven’t heard about Truth Will Out yet. They will.  I am going to prove to the world that there is no such thing as “therapeutic nicotine”, and that smokers are not drug addicts, and that the real solution is hypnotherapy… if it takes me the rest of my life.  **Update, Jan. 2012:  The way it’s looking so far though, it probably won’t take that long.  Check this for progress! **

*If you would like to know more about hypnotherapy to stop smoking the really easy way, without being poisoned, visit the Central Hypnotherapy website. Please comment if you have a view, or if you support the aims of Truth Will Out, spread the word! And on behalf of smokers everywhere in the world who have been lied to incessantly, thank you.

Progress Report, Day 119

This being the 119th day of the Truth Will Out Campaign, I thought an update was in order! Interest is certainly growing fast, although I have had virtually no spare time to promote the Campaign (over the last six weeks, anyway) apart from writing the posts. The fact is, I don’t need to! Already, the Campaign is growing organically without any further promotion from me, because other people are promoting it. All over the world, people I have never met find themselves in agreement with the aims of the Campaign, and as a result, word is spreading – as indeed it will, because truth will out, as the bard said.

The website has a wonderful Statistics Package built into it, from which we can tell all sorts of things. Right from the beginning, the majority of visitors have been from the United States. However, more and more people from the following countries are now repeatedly visiting the site: Canada, Australia, The Philippines, Spain, Taiwan and France all showing particular interest, as well as the UK of course. There are visitors from many other countries as well, but still only small numbers so far.

Since the launch date 6th March 2008, we know that there have been 1820 unique visitors to the site, clocking up a total of 2447 visits so far – an average of 144 visits for every week of the Campaign already. A total of 9,209 pages of the site have been viewed, an average of 5 per visitor, or 3.7 per visit, which shows that people are showing a real interest in the Truth Will Out site.

Not only that, more and more people are actively supporting the Campaign by directing other people to the site.  Soon we will create a links page on Truth Will Out, linking back to those sites, and any others that wish to add their support – although we will of course vet them all, to make sure they have some genuine association with the main concerns of the Campaign. It’s still early days, but thisshould end up being a very large association of like-minded people, all sharing information and helping one another. Together, we will get rid of Nicotine Replacement Poisoning, by destroying the Nicotine Myth. Enlightenment brings change, inevitably.

69,700 clicks on this website so far, in only 17 weeks. That’s 4,100 for every week of the campaign so far, and this is going to snowball. Feel free to link to the site any time, if you have an interest in these matters! We will return the compliment soon, providing that is appropriate. We’ve made a great start – now just imagine how much active support there will 119 days after this postdate.  Together we are destroying the Nicotine Myth, right here, right now. We are changing medical history – just like I predicted in the book. So spread the word: Truth Will Out! You know it makes sense!

*ALSO: Please feel free to post comments on the site regarding any of these posts, the site or the aims of the Campaign! We know you’re reading it – add your voice! Already we have some interesting comments about Champix (Chantix), feel free to register agreement or disagreement regarding anything on the site. For more information about hypnotherapy, visit the Central Hypnotherapy website.

A Direct Challenge

Nicotine Replacement doesn’t work at all in the long run (Harvard University) yet smokers are still being encouraged to waste their precious time with them, to no avail, when hypnotherapy would save many of them immediately.

by Chris Holmes, Senior Registered Hypnotherapist (GHR) and Smoking Cessation Specialist

More and more people are telling me privately that lots of people who work within the National Health Services know perfectly well that Nicotine Replacement Therapy does not work for more than 90% of smokers in the long run, and do not believe precious resources should be wasted on it. The only reason they are not speaking up, I’m told, is fear. They are afraid to voice an opinion because they might then be regarded by management as a troublemaker or whistle-blower.

If that is true, then thousands of smokers are dying needlessly and many more are at risk of serious illness, having their time and taxpayers’ millions wasted on bogus therapies. Lies are being told about success rates to persuade more smokers to use these products (see the Evidence section on this site), and the real failure rate covered up. This is not healthcare, it is fraud, and it is costing many lives.

Nicotine Replacement doesn’t work because the whole theory of nicotine addiction is bogus anyway. It’s a compulsive habit. It is not “both an addiction and a habit”, as the latest NRT promotion spin would have you believe. I know that for sure, because if it was, hypnotherapy would not eliminate the problem.

Just about every working day, for years now, I have eliminated smoking habits (including tobacco and cannabis habits) with hypnotherapy – wiping out cravings, and preventing weight gain, and without the need for willpower. A complete return to normal, usually in a single session. It’s not a trick – the book explains exactly how it all works. Even if some of those people return to smoking later – as some do – we can stop it again, no problem. It’s a complete cure, and that is precisely because it never was a drug addiction but a compulsive habit, just like gambling. No drug involved, and we eliminate these behaviours without reference to dopamine, seretonin or ‘nicotine receptors’ in the brain too, which kind of makes you wonder what relevance those theories have in reality, especially since that was the ‘science’ that gave us Prozac. **Update, Jan. 2012: Psychiatrists admit the seratonin tale is bullshit! **

I am issuing a direct challenge to the NHS and the Department of Health, calling for them to scrap NRT and Zyban, because their real long-term success rates are so low that they function very poorly even within the normal placebo range, and it is beginning to look as if everybody knows it but they are just wishing it wasn’t so, and hoping I’ll get all disillusioned and go away.  **Update Jan.2012:  Scientists at Harvard University finally prove me right!**

Every day I get more determined to stop this scandalous waste of life and resources. Do you agree? Do you not agree? Can we have more comments posted on the site please, so visitors can hear other voices too? I am particularly interested in comments from those working in medical roles, but all comments are welcome.

My satisfied clients are always asking me: “Why can’t we get hypnotherapy on the National Health?” A very good question! It is time for doctors and nurses who also think that’s a fair question to start making their feelings known perhaps. If everyone speaks up, then there’ll be more whistle-blowers than non-whistle-blowers!

Far too many chemicals and hardly any therapists – that’s a drug service, not a HEALTH service. But nicotine is a poison, and no-one should be prescribed poisons, it’s insane!

By the way, if you are simply afraid to speak out because of the potential repercussions, don’t forget you can do so here anonymously – and in any case, you can help out covertly by spreading the word: Truth Will Out!

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

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Ask any Smoker

Ask any smoker what nicotine does, and you will find that they have no idea – I’ve asked thousands! Why not? Aren’t they supposedly smoking for the effects of nicotine? In truth, it’s all about cravings – and cravings have nothing to do with nicotine, as the latest research from Tel Aviv University confirms.

by Chris Holmes, Senior Registered Hypnotherapist (GHR) and Smoking Cessation Specialist

Smokers are told that they smoke tobacco for the effects of nicotine, and that smoking is an addiction. Yet if you ask any smoker what nicotine does, you will find that they haven’t got a clue. The most common guess is: “I think it relaxes me, or something.”

I have asked thousands of smokers what nicotine does, over the last nine years of practising hypnotherapy, and I’ve yet to find one who can give me a correct answer. This includes all the medical people who have come to me over the years to get rid of their own smoking habit, even the GPs who will have prescribed nicotine products to some of their patients.

This proves that smokers are not smoking for the effects of nicotine – they don’t even know what those effects are!

The Actual Effects of Nicotine

If you take nicotine into the body in tiny amounts, like through smoking tobacco or sticking a nicotine patch on, it only does four things. It makes your heart beat too fast, and your blood pressure rise. It also raises fat levels in the blood, which is useless and may clog the arteries eventually. Nicotine also inhibits the body’s production of a chemical which normally breaks up blood clots in the bloodstream, so it raises the risk of thrombosis.

If you take it in any more than tiny amounts, it will kill you outright, for it is a very deadly poison. So smokers are not smoking for the effects of nicotine and never were. They smoke because of cravings, which are nothing but an impulse to repeat the usually habitual behaviour. They have nothing to do with nicotine, or anything else in the smoke. In hypnotherapy we shut these signals down.

We get lots of cravings, they are not all about tobacco.

Full explanation here.

If you just want to stop smoking, click here for more info.

Support is growing!

Four hypnotherapy associations have already confirmed that they are actively supporting the Truth Will Out Campaign – informing their members, linking to the site and promoting the Campaign through newsletters and similar publications.

N.B. The only support we have ever requested is for professional associations to inform their members about the campaign so that they are fully aware of the details. Any group or individual may participate more actively if they wish to, but our only request is that members are made aware of the campaign’s existence, so they can form their own opinion.

Individual messages of support continue to pour in, and more and more people are linking to the Truth Will Out site. Anyone involved in, or even interested in the field of complementary medicine may link to the Truth Will Out site, without making a formal request. We are grateful for their support. If you agree that nicotine is a poison posing as a medication, the best way to assist the case is to spread the word – to anyone and everyone, and in whatever way you can without contravening any laws.

Of all the organisations that we have approached within the professional field of hypnotherapy, none have yet refused support – most are still considering and consulting on how they prefer to respond to our request in due course. We can still confirm that since the site was launched on March 8th 2008, this Campaign has not generated one single hostile comment or criticism in respect of either its aims, or any of the evidence published on the site or in the book. Not one – despite 48,000 hits on the site (to date) from all over the world. No-one has stood up in defence of Nicotine Replacement Poisoning. Not one doctor, nurse, pharmacist or even the people who make the poison nicotine for sale to the general public. That’s a bit odd, don’t you think, for something that’s supposed to be an “evidence-based medicine”?

Three newspaper articles so far. Three television appearances with the book. Not one objection or disagreement received yet, and I first published the book in October 2007.

This is just the beginning.

the hypnotherapy alternative

Nicotine Contradictions

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

Haven’t we seen an extraordinary shift in the way nicotine is regarded over the last couple of decades? When Nicotine Replacement products first appeared, they were only available on prescription. A doctor had to review each case, to see if it was safe enough or appropriate for the patient to use that. After all, nicotine is a highly poisonous substance which, in the wrong dose, could trigger a heart-attack or a stroke. It is often referred to as “the most addictive drug in the world”. Newspapers, renowned for their technical accuracy, have frequently observed that it is “more addictive than heroin”.

OK – so if all that’s true, how did we reach the current situation in which any adult can pick it up at Tesco, no questions asked? If it is a highly addictive drug, who decided it was okay to sell it at the filling station? Of course they sell cigarettes, but allowing that was not a recent decision! And I know you can buy strong painkillers like hydrocodone from an internet pharmacy, but that is because no government can stop it (apparently), it wasn’t the government’s idea to make that possible!

Whilst various bodies argue the toss about whether cannabis should be graded B class or C class in the scale of illegal drugs, the substance alleged to be more addictive than a class A drug is now on open sale in any supermarket, thanks to a series of increasingly liberal decisions which seem to take no account of its legendary ‘addictiveness’.

Seems a bit reckless, doesn’t it? I mean what is to stop people who didn’t even smoke in the first place becoming hooked on it too? Where are the usual safeguards that protect society from such dangerous substances? In pharmacies, diamorphine (heroin) is always kept locked away in the Dangerous Drugs Cabinet, which is bolted to the floor – but the nicotine products are out there on the supermarket shelves for any adult to pick up!  So – why not just do that with everything?

“Excuse me! Do you have any Setlers Tums?”

“Sure! They’re just down there on the right, next to the most addictive drug in the world, the methodone and the smokable crack substitute.  By the way, don’t miss our new special offer on high explosives, Aisle 9!  Have a nice day!”

Doesn’t add up, does it? Especially when you consider that every single day, millions of people walk right past “the most addictive drug in the world” without any inclination to even try it – and that includes millions that are allegedly addicted to it already!

Try doing that with heroin, and by lunchtime it will be blindingly obvious why that cabinet needs bolting to the floor.

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was 

the hypnotherapy alternative

Early Responses

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 visited the Truth Will Out Campaign website 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?

by Chris Holmes

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 this 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?

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Champix/Chantix

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 seemed to have taken twenty-five minutes, for no reason she could remember or explain, and she was deeply concerned.

 

*Update 1: If you or a loved one has suffered a bad reaction to Champix and you are based in the U.K., you can report it to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) here. The more people do that the clearer the true picture will become. Protect others! Report it.*

**Update 2, 4th November 2011:

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

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

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

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

– Danielle, USA,
3/11/2011 6:08″**

 

Champix/Chantix

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.*

 

At the very end of the book Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was, 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 I was writing that last section was that the number of smoking clients I was used to getting every week was about to drop by around 50% as thousands of would-be quitters raced off to try the new medication instead.

People want magic pills. They want to believe the doctor can 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!” – hypnotherapists like myself who specialise in smoking cessation encountered an unexpected drought that went on from June 2007 right through to the end of the year. Now we’re pretty much back to normal, as everyone has learned that the latest magic pill isn’t magic after all – surprise, surprise – in fact it has turned out to be a horrible nightmare for some.

Champix is supposed to work by ‘blocking the nicotine receptors so that smokers no longer enjoy smoking’, which is actually nonsense because habitual smokers don’t smoke for enjoyment anyway. Some may believe they do, but if you ask any smoker to focus on the pleasure of smoking, and then describe it to you, they will find themselves unable to do that.  Then ask them what their first cigarette was like – most smokers remember that it was disgusting.  So, if there is a pleasure in smoking, how come none of us noticed it straight away?

The truth is that the pleasure is all in the moment, none of it is coming from the cigarette.  Only smoke is coming from the cigarette, which we all found nauseating to begin with, but it’s amazing what you can become accustomed to.  Simply because habitual smokers tend to smoke at moments of repose – which are usually pleasant moments because they are no longer stressed or exerting themselves – many smokers adopt the idea that they enjoy smoking.  Even so, there will be moments when that illusion falters, and the original nausea and disgust becomes noticeable again. 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.

Only a few weeks after Champix became available on prescription in the U.K. I began hearing reports from the only people I really trust these days when it comes to quit products: smokers themselves.  The most common remark about the drug was that it caused quite severe nausea, but there have also been much more severe reactions too.  If you have taken Champix yourself, or someone close to you has, feel free to add comments at the end of this post.

Some reports I have heard suggest that although the urge to smoke seems to disappear whilst taking Champix, it returns once the drug is out of your system.

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 apparently, 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 medicine 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 seemed to have taken 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 in reality? 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 that 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. Okay – 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 probably 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 if indeed any sudden erratic behaviour occurs.

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? **Update: Pilots and air-traffic controllers have now been banned from taking Champix** 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’ve covered our asses 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 to you or your loved one, 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.

Channel M Television

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’?

by Chris Holmes

After the article appeared in the Stockport Express about the publication of Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was 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, 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!

Chris Holmes has been Director of Central Hypnotherapy, Stockport, England UK since August 2000
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Site Launch!

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.

by Chris Holmes

Well now, this should be interesting. It’s not every day a humble therapist takes on the pharmaceutical industry, the Department of Health, the B.M.A. and the Royal College of Physicians… but it has got to be done.

The book was the first step: that had to be written and published initially so that anyone in the world could get hold of 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 abject failure!” …because nobody would have listened. Everyone would assume that it must have been properly tested, surely, in well-designed scientific trials?

Then again, you could just ask yourself: “Who has any faith in nicotine gum these days, really?” And 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 hijacked by the drug companies, who now run all the clinical trials themselves and tend to be very selective about the ‘evidence’ they present to approval bodies.

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 there 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 allow their doctor to precribe them any new “wonder drug”.

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, challenging 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!

the book that blew the whistle on the nicotine scam

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