Tag: Nicotine

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.

On a Lighter Note…

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

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

New Poison For Old!

Now that Harvard University has confirmed Truth Will Out’s claim that Nicotine Replacement products don’t work at all, the race is on to find a new use for the drug giants’ poison factories. So look out for dodgy press tales of things nicotine “might” be useful for, released by the pharmaceutical industry!

Spurious New ‘Uses’ for Nicotine by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes 

Not so long ago this site was blasted in a blog written by one of the passionate converts to the new Electronic Cigarette. He took exception to my statement that nicotine is “just a poison”, and that it has no therapeutic use or any recreational use (there is no high), so it cannot qualify as a drug.

As a hypnotherapist specialising in smoking cessation – which is usually achieved in one session and without any withdrawal symptoms whatsoever – I already know that tobacco smoking is not a drug addiction but a compulsive habit, and that smokers’ cravings have nothing to do with nicotine at all. The reason I wrote the book is to explain this to the world and in doing so, rid the world of the nicotine myth which does a great deal to keep people smoking.

Naturally I did not expect to be congratulated by the drug companies which manufacture nicotine products, because what I am revealing is that their products are entirely based on a myth, which is why they don’t work. Nor was I surprised by the stony silence from the medical profession, many of whom already know that I’m quite right about that, but they cannot admit to being wrong about anything, in case that undermines their imaginary god-like status.

I don’t suppose I expected the tobacco industry to be too chuffed either, since these facts becoming common knowledge would end the vicious circle of smoking, trying the gum, smoking, trying the patches, smoking, trying the lozenges, smoking, trying the little inhalator-thingy… a money-go-round which has propped up many a smoking habit since NRT was invented back in 1984.

I didn’t really expect to be attacked by anyone from the Electronic Cigarette brigade though!

NRT Goes Electric!

You see, I have nothing against the Electronic Cigarette. According to the marketing, it looks like a cigarette, and it handles like a cigarette, but there’s no smoke. This means no nuisance or danger to other people, and as it doesn’t burn anything there is no fire risk. It delivers a little puff of vaporised nicotine when the ‘smoker’ draws on it, and that’s all it does.

Now, since governments all over the world officially endorse nicotine replacement products that do exactly the same thing, you might expect that they’d be all in favour of the Electronic Cigarette. It qualifies as harm reduction compared to smoking tobacco, just like NRT. Just like NRT, it eliminates the considerable fire risk of tobacco smoking. In fact, it simply IS a form of NRT. So Health Departments should be all in favour of it, yes?

Actually NO! And here we can see the corrupting influence of drug companies like Pfizer and GSK at its most blatant and blindingly obvious, because the Electronic Cigarette is not made by them, so there are political moves in the U.S., Canada, Australia and the U.K. to BAN it.
There is no logical reason for that that would not apply equally to all forms of NRT, which are heavily promoted and funded by the same governments. This has nothing to do with medical matters or health concerns, it is entirely an attempt by the makers of NRT products to pull every political string they can to protect their market against fair competition. It is a corrupt abuse of the political systems of all the countries where it is going on – so although the Electronic Cigarette is every bit as useless as any other form of NRT when it comes to long-term cessation success, I am all in favour of it remaining legal.

Nicotine Has No Use

What my attacker was actually objecting to was the fact that I challenged the notion that nicotine was a drug of any sort, and my assertion that it was actually only a poison. He didn’t bother to read my argument in full, he just picked up on that point and ridiculed it, so I took him to task about this. He then listed a whole bunch of spurious notions about supposed ‘benefits’ related to nicotine, some of which were just wrong but also quite a few which referred to recent scientific studies which ‘suggest’ that nicotine might have all manner of future ‘medical’ applications!

I pointed out to the chap that my observation that nicotine HAS no medical application is in no way undermined by the possibility that one day it MIGHT have, so reference to such speculative, inconclusive studies certainly doesn’t prove me wrong, as he suggested it did. But it did alert me to the curious fact that quite a lot of research has been done over the last few years to see if the poison nicotine might possibly have some other application, as well as fraudulently posing as a medication (NRT) and leading poor, unsuspecting smokers a merry dance.

Now, do you suppose the drug companies – who plan and fund all of these ‘scientific’ investigations, of course – might be doing the same thing with cyanide, mercury, arsenic and a clutch of other poisons… just to see, you understand, if they might actually have some sort of medical application, despite the stark unlikelihood of it?

Probably not, eh? But they do have rather a lot of patch-making equipment and they already have the nicotine production-lines rolling, so just in case the smokers of the world suddenly realise that this mad hypnotist (that’s me, by the way) might be quite right about smoking not being a nicotine addiction after all, perhaps it would be a good idea to see if they can line up some other dubious ‘medical’ application for that worldwide poison factory.

So watch out for any stories popping up in the press reporting that “New studies SUGGEST that nicotine COULD help to prevent eyebrow hair from growing out of control, or gallstones from growing quite as fast as they otherwise would, or improve post-operative joint mobility…”

Anything, really. Absolutely any old use will do. Surely it must do something useful… what about memory, might it improve memory? Concentration? Appetite control? Tremor-reduction? Come on, THINK! We’ve got tons of the stuff, and all this machinery… those smokers aren’t going to be fooled by our misinformation forever! NICOTINE NEEDS A MEDICO-MAKEOVER, NOW! FOR GOD’S SAKE, THERE MUST BE SOMETHING USEFUL IT CAN DO!

Nope. Just a poison, mate. Just the same old useless poison. Give it up.

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

The easiest, safest and most successful way to quit smoking tobacco

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?

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.

Posting Comments 2

Internet “pharmacies” are unregulated drug shops that make a mockery of the role of the medical doctor and the whole concept of prescription drugs. As an outlet it is a dream come true for the pharmaceutical industry and the biggest threat to the very existence of the medical profession it has ever faced in its history, and they don’t even know it.

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

Out of the 13 comments awaiting moderation today, only 1 turned out to be real. The other 12 were mainly long lists of porn video titles, the strange variety of which makes me feel really normal, as I scroll down to the Spam button which prevents these things from getting on the site. One has to be impressed to some degree, though, by the determination of porn producers to cater for every taste, as evidenced by one example today, entitled “Grandmother Incest Stories”. I mean, whoever made that film cannot have been expecting to sell a lot of copies. Most inexplicable title so far has to be “Cold Hands and Feet”. What the hell is that? A fetish? Or is it a euphemism for necrophilia? Either way, I don’t think I really need to know.

The other unwanted contributions were from internet sites pushing pharmaceuticals. One was peddling Zoloft, a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) originally approved by the FDA in 1991 as an anti-depressant along with Prozac, and other drugs in the same class. As it is now public knowledge that SSRI drug trials actually showed virtually no useful success and did indicate some dangers, but the drug companies were selective about what they told the FDA so they got approved anyway, why anyone should choose to buy it now might seem to be a mystery. Especially after they read the warning attached by the people selling the stuff:

“Care should be exercised if this drug is prescribed as prolonged use to treat depression through antidepressants carry the risk of suicidal behaviour especially in the younger generations”.

So, who wants to buy some of this chemical compound that sometimes makes sad young people feel like killing themselves? Form an orderly queue now, no pushing and shoving, I’m sure Pfizer made enough for everyone. If you’re over sixty five though, the suicide risk is described as “significantly lower”, probably because once you are approaching ‘three score years and ten’ as the Biblical term has it, there hardly seems any point in hastening your demise anyway. The patient might as well just be… well, patient.

Perhaps still more mysterious is the fact that Zoloft received approval in 2003 “for use in paediatric patients although it carries a warning about suicidal tendencies in younger patients.” What kind of stupid approval system did that then?

Most astonishing of all is the phrase: “Care should be exercised if this drug is prescribed…” Clearly this phrase has been lifted from another place – another time, in fact. A time when drugs like this had to be prescribed. Care should be exercised? By whom? You are selling it over the internet, you stupid, stupid bastards! And somebody, somewhere is going to end up killing themselves as a result, it’s inevitable! Is no-one going to stop this madness? Is no-one even going to try?

These ‘Internet Pharmacies’ are just unsupervised outlets for old, and sometimes discredited medications to be dumped on the public when their exclusive patents run out, which in the case of Zoloft was 2006. Just an unscrupulous way of squeezing a little bit more money out of them before they are abandoned utterly, to help pay for the next generation of unnatural and risky chemical concoctions. And if you are inclined to think I’m being too critical – an extremist, perhaps – and that these people are not just greedy, irresponsible drug-pushers posing as responsible professionals, just consider this: there’s a special offer attached to Zoloft on this site, which you would never have been offered by any doctor. If you buy 60 Zoloft pills, you get 2 free Viagra tablets! If you buy 90 or more, you get four. This is, quite obviously, an attempt to sell thirty more tablets by giving away a few tablets of a completely different medication!

Was Zoloft ever tested in clinical trials in combination with Viagra, to see if there’s any reaction or risk associated with taking them together? No, of course not! And should it not be illegal – because it is certainly unethical – to try to shift old stocks of one medication by offering other tablets – for a completely different condition – for free?

Surely you don’t have to be a radical thinker to recognise that what is happening here is insane. And don’t say: “There’s nothing anyone can do, it’s international, it’s the internet, there are no controls…” I notice they aren’t selling heroin or LSD, so someone is controlling it, aren’t they? Heroin happens to be a very effective painkiller, so it’s not because it doesn’t have a medical use. And no-one takes the attitude “There’s nothing anyone can do” when it comes to child pornography, do they? International laws may vary, but they still manage to bust people, don’t they? These drug peddlers should be hunted down and busted, because they are selling drugs without any restrictions that were only approved for supply on prescription. Can you imagine how alarmed you would be, if a shop opened up in your town centre called No Questions Asked, with hundreds of medications just sitting on shelves, self-service checkouts and people just milling about putting one medicine after another into their shopping basket? That shop is closer than you think. And it delivers packages that are discreetly wrapped.

Nobody should be able to buy prescription drugs over the internet. Nobody should be selling drugs that way, profiteering from the vulnerability of people whose doctor might not have prescribed those drugs for a very good reason. It is blatant drug-pushing, and anyone involved in selling prescription drugs without prescription is directly responsible for any harm that comes to people as a result. So are the manufacturers. If new laws are needed they are well overdue – too many people die from drugs that were prescribed by a doctor – remove that restriction and the fatalities and dependencies are bound to rocket.

The Truth Will Out Campaign is essentially about blowing the whistle on the Nicotine Replacement Poisoning Scam, but that raised questions about the system that approves such things as if they were a useful medication, which naturally leads to us noticing when other examples crop up, because it is yet more evidence proving the pressing need for change. And we never have to wait long: only the other day I was listening to a report on BBC Radio 4 about an ‘atypical anti-psychotic’ drug which is reckoned to have killed seven hundred people in the UK in the last five years (conservative estimate). And that’s just the fatalities, it does not include all the non-fatal strokes and pneumonia cases the drug causes, which led to a warning about that being attached by the National Institute for Chemical Excess (N.I.C.E.), as well as a specific guideline that this drug should not be prescribed to patients who just have dementia, because it is inappropriate, they are not psychotic. That was in 2004, but unfortunately some doctors thought it was worth the risk to go on doing that anyway, because it keeps dementia patients pretty quiet by knocking them senseless. The estimate of the experts is that of the 150,000 people in the UK currently being prescribed that drug, about 100,000 would not be if the guidelines were being followed.

I had barely finished shaking my head in disbelief over that one, and already there’s another story about N.I.C.E. all over the front page of today’s Daily Mail: SUICIDE FEAR ‘FAT PILL’ GETS GO AHEAD is the headline, and the story is that Acomplia, also known as rimonabant, has just been approved by N.I.C.E. for use by the NHS in the UK, despite being banned in the United States because of a risk of suicidal thoughts, low mood and depression, anxiety, irritability, nervousness and sleep disorders which apparently occur in 10% of cases. This risk is reckoned to be acceptable by N.I.C.E. because, according to the Daily Mail: “Trials have shown that it could help two out of five patients lose 10% of their weight”.

That’s a pretty poor show. And anyway, for how long? I work with weight issues all the time, and I know that diets and drugs only cause temporary weight loss, which usually goes straight back on again because no-one is addressing the real causes of the behaviour that put the weight there in the first place. By the end of the drug trial, they managed to demonstrate up to 10% reduction, although three out of five patients did not even achieve that. That’s all they have to do to get the damn stuff approved! No-one is looking at the long-term outcome, so this is not really evidence of efficacy. All it really indicates is that a minority of those taking it lose a bit of weight whilst they are taking the drug, but tells you nothing about what happens when they stop taking it.

This is how the drug companies are getting a lot of drugs passed now, as if they are genuinely effective when actually they only looked at the short-term effect. Same thing happened with Nicotine Replacement products, didn’t it? Once it gets rubber-stamped by approval bodies like N.I.C.E., it looks for all the world as if it was an “evidence-based medicine”, when it is really nothing of the kind. After that, it will not lose its ‘acceptable’ status even if it kills hundreds of people!

And that’s how the cynical bastards can still manage to sell Zoloft to some poor, unsuspecting fool who doesn’t realise just how much of a sleazy scam all this really is. That, and the free Viagra. All of which is almost enough to give anyone the odd suicidal thought occasionally, even if they do have more sense than to take any of these unnatural and dangerous concoctions themselves.

Hypnotherapy is brilliant for weight loss. No risk. And with results that last, too. Read more about it here. Now can I have some opinions about internet drug shops, free Viagra and whether those pharmacies should be allowed to sell LSD and heroin too, perhaps?  Don’t be shy, say what you like!  Perhaps you own an internet pharmacy, or maybe you’re a small-time street drug dealer who is worried about the competition…  We’re getting good contributions to the Champix (Chantix) debate, but so far no-one has said anything at all about Webdealing.

N.B. In order to post a comment, you need to use the “Leave a Reply” facility which should appear at the end of each of my posts here on the blog.  If it does not appear, click on the “No Comments” below the post.  Obviously some posts do have comments already, so if it says “35 Comments”, click on that and the Reply facility should appear.  If any of this does not appear top be working, please let me know through the “Contact Us” page.

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

Central Hypnotherapy

** Update 22.07.09

Any further comments should be uploaded to the site within 48 hours.  If you are seeking information about Champix/Chantix please read all the comments attached to the numerous posts in the Champix section.

This site is really about the Nicotine Replacement Poisoning scam, and we believe that the post entitled ‘The Great NHS Lie Exposed’ says all there is to say about that.  We have proved our claims entirely true with scientific reports eventually prised out of the clutches of the Department of Stealth.  NRT simply doesn’t work at all and not a penny more of public cash should be squandered on it. Q.E.D.

***2nd update 16/07/10: This week on UK television there was a documentary investigating mail order drugs, and that included the shocking news that even heart medications were being sold with free Viagra tablets, which is particularly dangerous as a combination or it would be if any of these tablets actually contained what they were supposed to contain. Some do, some don’t – but even some of the ones that do were found to vary alarmingly in strength according to this documentary.
What I found particularly ironic in this programme was that one of the experts they turned to for a scientific commentary on the dangerous aspects of these criminal practices was the head of Pfizer’s fake medicines department, if I heard it correctly. Pfizer make Champix, which they know damn well is currently killing people and destroying lives and relationships and damaging people’s health all over the world but they’re making so much money out of it that they won’t withdraw it, and they’re commenting on the reckless profiteering of the pharma-pirates? What’s the difference, really? It was like watching that old TV clip of Harold Shipman being interviewed by an unsuspecting reporter years before he was discovered to be a mass murderer. Of course I’m not comparing the woman concerned to Shipman, I’m sure she’s very professional in that post – but Pfizer as a company. They are killing people with that medication right now, and they fully intend to go on doing that until somebody else forces them to stop.

 

 

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.

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

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

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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