Tag: Hypnotherapy | Page 3

On a Lighter Note…

This development, I am certain, has nothing whatever to do with the Truth Will Out Campaign, but it is a bit ironic: I’ve just been invited to become an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Medicine!

This is because I am involved – to quote the letter – “in one of the many medical and related professions”. There are several advantages to attaining this status, which the letter goes on to list, including: “The comfort and exclusivity of a ‘Members-only’ Society” – which sounds a bit snobbish to me – “Private fine dining” – which I’m not really into – and “access to one of the most modern medical libraries in Europe”.

Question: Has it got my book in it yet? it’s called:

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

Volume I: The Biggest Medical Mistake of the Twentieth Century

No? Thought not. In that case I’ll say: Thanks, but no thanks. Ask me again when it does, because that will indicate that medical science is finally beginning to catch up with the world of Hypnotherapy.

My name’s Chris Holmes by the way. And if you’ve never heard of my book yet, Doc, don’t worry. You will. It is the first book ever to prove, by clear, logical argument alone – in other words, scientifically – that the nicotine tale is a lie, and that Nicotine Replacement products are entirely based upon a myth.

Cravings are behavioural impulses controlled by the Subconscious mind which we can easily shut down in hypnotherapy on request, usually in a single session. Tobacco smoking is entirely a compulsive habit, not a drug addiction and the whole ‘nicotine’ angle is bogus and incorrect, which is the main reason NRT has no long term success outside of the normal willpower range of about 6%.

So you can ignore it if you like, Doc, but smokers aren’t ignoring it! They are reading it in ever-increasing numbers and the reviews are terrific. In fact I challenge anyone – anyone at all, it doesn’t have to be a smoker because the book is about compulsive habits generally, not just smoking – to read that book cover to cover, and then tell me they still believe in a thing called nicotine addiction. And that’s why doctors are going to have to address this sooner or later whether they like it or not, because the plain fact is they are wrong. They are wasting smokers’ time with NRT, and vast sums of money that actually belongs to the taxpayer, and they have the temerity to blame the failure of all that on the smoker. But the Truth Will Out.

hypnotherapy info

A Simple Test to Prove that Nicotine Isn’t Addictive

How to run a clinical trial using nicotine patches to prove that nicotine cannot possibly be an addictive drug.

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

I’ve noticed that on all the Champix blogs, where people are describing the suffering they are going through on that horrible ‘medication’, some bright spark will always pop up explaining that you should expect it to be difficult and traumatic, for after all, as we all know – don’t we? – nicotine is ‘the most addictive substance known to science’! The most addictive drug in the world, so of course this is withdrawal!

What rubbish. The tension and stress is real enough, but it has nothing to do with nicotine at all. If it did – if that were the inevitable physical result of nicotine being abruptly withdrawn – then a). it would happen to every smoker who ever quit by preference – which it doesn’t, as the U.S. Surgeon-General has already pointed out. Most ex-smokers in the world actually quit by themselves, and if there was any link with suicide attempts it would be obvious by now. It would be a routine observation, resulting in conversations like this:

“Did you hear? Ernie’s quit smoking!”

“Rather him than me! That’ll be another funeral then.”

“You reckon?”

“Oh, aye – just cast your mind back over the years, all those people you know who quit smoking one week, then they’re found hanging from the rafters the next…”

[That would be a laughable suggestion, Pfizer, if that cynical attempt to muddy the waters were not such cruel and self-serving dishonesty which will certainly lead to more suicides.]

…and b). smokers who quit with hypnotherapy would still feel like that too, since that is immediate cessation. In reality they feel perfectly normal: no withdrawal symptoms, no cravings, no mood swings, no over-eating and no weight-gain either.

A Serious Challenge for the Scientists

There is a simple way to test this, but you can bet your life that GlaxoSmithKline are never going to run this clinical trial! Here is the experiment to prove nicotine is not an addictive substance:

Take any number of non-smokers (with full consent of course). Apply nicotine patches daily to those people, for as long as you would expect any smoker to develop a habit if you were giving them cigarettes. Get them to keep a diary of how they feel from one day to the next, and see if they can perceive any benefit from nicotine at all. Then one day, tell them the trial is over. Watch for any signs of suffering.

In order to get the most accurate impression of what nicotine itself actually does, without any pre-conceived notions in their minds (expectation), it is important that the volunteers are not told this is nicotine, and are not ex-smokers who might recognise the presence of nicotine. It is also important that they do not have to apply the patch themselves, nor do they know how long the trial will be. They should not be told what to expect, just asked for their genuine observations, if any.

N.B.: It is vital that the N.R.T. mode is PATCHES, not gum or lozenges. This is because smoking, sucking and chewing can all develop a compulsive-habitual element because they are physical activities that can become habitual through repetition, whereas patch-wearing is not an activity. So there is no behaviour, there is only the nicotine itself. Even the application of the patch in the morning cannot become habitual behaviour (like the impulse to put the kettle on in the morning, because that is what you do every morning), because someone else is doing it for them.

So we are down to nicotine itself. I predict the following outcomes: a). the subject will not enjoy the effect of nicotine in any way, although they may become accustomed to it. Conversely, they may react against it with something like an allergic reaction, b). they will be unable to describe any useful benefit from nicotine, and c). they will be quite happy to stop, and it will prove literally impossible to create a “nicotine addict” that way. This will prove once and for all that nicotine is not an addictive drug – nor is it medicinal, therapeutic or even a recreational drug. It is just a poison – one of many poisons in the smoke – and the wrong explanation for the compulsive smoking habit.

The key point here is that smokers’ cravings are not withdrawal symptoms, and are not connected to nicotine in any way. We get lots of cravings, they are not all about tobacco. They are impulses produced by the brain but routed through the body, so they are experienced as if they were a bodily need, or a desire. In reality it is a prompt, and what the impulse from the Subconscious mind is prompting the smoker to do is pick up a cigarette and light it.

If the smoker does that, the feeling disappears. Instantly. Notice that the smoker does not have to smoke the cigarette and get all the nicotine out of it for that impulse to go away, it vanishes the moment they light up. If they do not respond by lighting up, the Subconscious sends another, more insistent signal – assuming the first one went unnoticed – and these prompts will become more frequent and more insistent until the smoker finally responds. This can result in real, physical agitation and mental distress, with the smoker often convinced by the feelings that the ‘need’ has become desperate. Add to that the commonly-held belief that this agitation is the result of a drug addiction, and you have the seemingly helpless predicament of the modern habitual smoker.

In hypnotherapy we shut the craving signals down easily, and get rid of the false ‘addiction’ belief. Hey presto, one non-smoker. Yes, I know it sounds too easy: everything we do in hypnotherapy sounds too easy because hypnotherapy doesn’t involve any effort. Everything the Subconscious mind does is without apparent effort – which is interesting, because we are certainly aware of making conscious efforts. Like the conscious effort (willpower) to ignore craving signals sent by the Subconscious via the body. Guess which has the most clout, conscious or Subconscious? That’s right – hence the capital S.

Wouldn’t this Test make a great T.V. Documentary?

Anyone out there an independent documentary-maker? Want to make a fascinating programme that would be easy and cheap to make, which would interest millions of smokers in every country of the world, proving to all those smokers once and for all that they are not drug addicts at all? Not making wild claims – proving it! I’ve already been on TV with this, but that was just a live breakfast show where you get three minutes to talk about it before they move to the weather – you can’t prove much with that kind of slot. Although I did succeed easily with the challenge they set me to eliminate a smoking habit in a member of their staff. That wasn’t a stage trick by the way, it was a proper two-hour hypnotherapy session (see my blogpost from 28th March 2008 entitled Channel M Television). All craving signals wiped out in two hours. No urge to smoke, no extra eating, no weight gain. No ‘addictive drug’ involved.

want to quit the habit the easy way?

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

More about hypnotherapy

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.

Internet Kills Doctor

by Chris Holmes

Personally I think the Internet is a wonderful thing in many respects, but I got emails today from internet pharmacies that are practically boasting that you can cut out the medical advice and just buy anything you want! Someone calling themselves Heinig put this in the Subject line:

“Prescriptions are a thing of the past”

and the message within was:

“Discover more pages of kamasutra with the help of magic blue pills”

Magic pills, eh? Isn’t this ironic? Anyone who has already read the “Trust me, I’m a Doctor” section of this site will see the irony of that. First you get people to accept the idea that there is a pill for every ill through the invocation of the “trustworthiness” of “medical science”, then you do away with the actual medics, who might be unnecessarily cautious about who to prescribe it to, and sell it direct by email worldwide.

Healthcare? This mass-medication has nothing to do with health, but western medical science has helped to create a monster – the pharmaceutical industry – which is now on the rampage around the globe. This was another message in the same batch this morning:

Subject: “Hundreds of doctors advise this”

Yeah? Well, what further recommendation or reassurance do you need, eh? Here was the message inside, word for word:

“You can purchase anything and everything that you always wanted to ask your doctor for.”

Everything? Even the stuff you know damn well he wouldn’t give you, which is why you didn’t ask him but “always wanted to”?

Well it could hardly be any clearer, could it? Forget Colombia, forget the poppy fields of Afghanistan. The producers of pharmaceuticals are supplying the customer direct, so now you don’t need the drug-dealer and you don’t need the doctor either, and these pseudo-medical profiteers are even bold enough to say so. We’ve reached the stage at which they are so cocky, they can take the piss out of the medical profession by claiming:

“Hundreds of doctors advise this”!

Now, here’s the really mad bit. Doctors most certainly do not “advise” that you buy drugs through the internet, because if everyone did that, they would be sitting in their consulting rooms all by themselves. But doctors certainly have been prescribing these very medications, which could be construed as a recommendation of sorts, which allows that cheeky phrase above to be at least partially true.

So doctors are being used, but left out! They are still being invoked as a reassuring selling-point, albeit in a very off-hand way, but without being involved any more, which means they are helping to facilitate the sale (in their absence), but earning nothing from that transaction at any stage. Pretty galling, eh?

It’s all there, in that wild expression: “Prescriptions are a thing of the past”. If that is the case, then so are doctors – they just haven’t quite realised it yet. They really haven’t, because the main point doctors have wanted the public to grasp so far, when it comes to internet drugs, is that some of the may be ‘fake’. Really? Like NRT is, you mean? Like Prozac? Sorry – are we talking real fake medications here, or bogus fake medications?

I’m confused. If you buy NRT from an internet source, and it doesn’t work, is that because it is real NRT or because it isn’t? The only way we could find out would be to do a big scientific study using internet NRT exclusively, to see if it only fails 94% of smokers by the end of the year – in which case it was the real thing, hooray! Or more than 94%, in which case it was a bad medicine, a bogus fake disreputable fraud, which doctors would not prescribe.

Because no doctor would prescribe NRT products that failed more than 94% of smokers in the long run. They draw the line at 94% failure. That’s the kind of medical standard which you just do not get with the internet, and that’s why we still need doctors.

Hope we’re all clear on that now. If you just want to be free of the smoking habit, though, click here to discover why you don’t need either of ’em.

Ignorant Assumptions

by Chris Holmes

Sometimes analytical people say to me: “You know, I don’t think I’d be a very good candidate for your hypnotherapy – I’m very strong-minded!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

more about hypnosis

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?

more about hypnotherapy

A Nice Surprise

NRT = Not Really Therapy, and it is doomed!

by Chris Holmes

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

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

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

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

NRT = Not Really Therapy, and it is doomed!

more about hypnotherapy

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
hypnotherapy info

The Truth About Smoking

I first became fully aware that smoking was not a drug addiction six or seven years ago. My smoking clients would walk in to my office ‘unable’ to stop smoking, and walk out free. How could that be, if they really were addicted to, or dependent on, a drug called nicotine?
The answer was simple: they were not. Nor is it a ‘psychological addiction’ – a nonsense term, since the ‘logical’ part of the mind (the conscious mind) is not really involved. No, it is entirely a compulsive habit, and it can be easily eliminated by effective hypnotherapy – just like any other compulsive habit.

by Chris Holmes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Holmes has been Director of Central Hypnotherapy, Stockport, England UK since August 2000
hypnotherapy info