Nicotine: The Weird (Non) Addiction

by Chris Holmes

Now Meet Doug Wilson

What have I been saying all this time?  That tobacco smoking has been MISTAKEN for an addiction but is really just a compulsive habit.  How did I discover this?  By finding that a single hypnotherapy session can shut it down easily, cravings and all, with no weight gain and no side effects.  This I have done with thousands of smokers over the last ten years.  I am also trying to explain to the world that cravings are not withdrawal symptoms and that they are unconnected to nicotine levels in the system, which is why a smoker can get an impulse to reach for a cigarette when they have recently put one out (eg. when bored or whilst socialising) or whilst wearing a nicotine patch.

Another factor that helped me to understand the differences between a Compulsive Habit and a real drug addiction was my own personal experiences with real addictions and other compulsive habits – various drug habits, a drink habit and other, non-substance habits.  Here is another chap who has had similar life experiences which have caused him to notice the curious differences between drug addiction and a tobacco habit.  As you read this, note particularly how Doug has realised that the “I want a cigarette” impulse (craving) is not the same as withdrawal, and once he has actually lit it he often finds that he doesn’t “want” it much at all, and often doesn’t finish it.  He can’t explain that, but I can: cravings feel like a need or a desire, but they are really only mimicking bodily needs.  The Subconscious is sending a ‘prompting’ signal to repeat the habitual behaviour, but it sends it via the body, using the body as a signalling system to convey an impression to the conscious awareness that something is ‘desired’ or ‘needed’, when in fact only the signal makes it seem so.  It is VERY effective, but because the signal is only prompting the smoker to pick up the cigarette and light it, as soon as that is done the signal disappears.  The rest of it is smoked out of a mixture of habit and expectation, but already the compulsive urge (sense of need) is gone.  That’s why some smokers put it out halfway through or even put it down in an ashtray and forget all about it.

We get lots of cravings, they’re not all about tobacco.  They are compulsive urges, not withdrawal symptoms.  Read what Doug says about withdrawal.

Not a Bodily Need

Don’t get me wrong, cravings can certainly FEEL like a physical need – and that can be utterly, utterly convincing but if it were true, it would still be there after the hypnotherapy session but it’s not.  Now read this bit from Doug again:

“The part I don’t like about “I’m quitting” is the “I want a cigarette voice”. It seems inconsequential. But what are the symptoms of schizophrenia? The voice can drive you nuts. The voice – is awful. You’d think, with the amount of work I do on my brain and the amount of writing I do on the subject I’d have a plan. Nope. I have people call me and write me for help with addictions. They ask for help understanding the brain and I offer them what I’ve come to understand. I know it’s just a voice. I know it’s just my brain. I know I won’t go clinically insane when I quit. I know that if have to listen to the voice say, “I want a cigarette”, a thousand times a day, I’ll be in better shape than I am now. You’d think I’d be anxious to get started. Nope. The voice sucks. It takes over. It hounds. Pesters. Grates. I get mad. I wanna smash it. I get annoyed, antsy, edgy and restless. But I don’t have a single physical withdrawal symptom. Weird.”

The Factual Explanation

The key is, the part of the brain sending the “I want” message is the Subconscious, and the decision to quit smoking was made by the conscious mind.  The Subconscious knows nothing about it.  All it knows is, you’re not responding to the prompting message so it sends another, and another… driving you up the wall until you want to smash something.  But along comes the Expert Hypnotherapist and explains the conscious decision to the Subconscious – and all the reasons for it (very important) – and the fact that tobacco companies were LYING when they told us all that tobacco was useful or pleasant in some way (even more important) and guess what?  The message STOPS.  And as long as the Expert Hypnotherapist makes it very clear that we don’t want that habit replaced with anything else (like food or chocolate), then that won’t happen either.  Nicotine has nothing to do with it.  The nicotine tale is a lie, and if it wasn’t for the loony GP I introduce in the next post, no-one would be regarding this particular habit as if it were a drug addiction anyway.

practice website

The Drug That Never Was

Chantix Champix 6

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

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

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

**Update 2, 4th November 2011:

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

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

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

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

– Danielle, USA,
3/11/2011 6:08″**

 

Chantix Champix 6

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

*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.*

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

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

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

Now look at this:

Review Centre

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

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

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

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

Sheanin wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not Worth The Risk

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

To save money?

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

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

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

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

safer alternative

Related posts:

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

Two weeks on Champix

Champix Chantix murders and suicide

Champix Chantix suicide

Champix Chantix seizures and epilepsy

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

More smokers’ comments follow this post

More smokers’ reviews of Champix Chantix

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

Article: Why willpower is irrelevant!

The Truth Will Out, Pfizer!

Inconsistencies in the ‘Addiction’ Story

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

The Addiction Myth

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

All true.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Advertising Standards Slam Bogus NHS Claim

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

by Chris Holmes

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

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

Here’s the link to the ASA story:

The Argus

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

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

more info about hypnotherapy for smoking cessation