Spanish Nicotine Costa Packet!

I was interested to hear from a British ex-pat who has resided in Spain for most of the last ten years that the cost of Nicotine Replacement Poisoning in Spain has shot up during the time they were living out there. Apparently a packet of 105 pieces of delicious poison gum had gone from 16.35 Euros in the late 1990s to 27.70 Euros roundabout now.

by Chris Holmes

I was interested to hear from a British ex-pat who has resided in Spain for most of the last ten years that the cost of Nicotine Replacement Poisoning in Spain has shot up during the time they were living out there. Apparently a packet of 105 pieces of delicious poison gum had gone from 16.35 Euros in the late 1990s to 27.70 Euros roundabout now.

She also told me that you cannot buy NRT just anywhere in Spain, like you can here. As I said in an earlier post on this blog, I’ve seen NRT on sale in the UK in Pound shops (where everything on sale only costs one pound), which suggests that it is not in great demand! The wasteful U.K. government ‘initiative’ of providing free patches for a week (courtesy of the UK taxpayer) that ran at the start of 2011 also suggests that the sale of NRT is seriously flagging here, and I sincerely hope that the Truth Will Out Campaign has played a part in that over the last 3 years!

In Spain, however, you can only buy NRT from the Pharmacies, which pretty much makes it a racket. Don’t bother, people, it doesn’t work anyway! 94% failure (see home page). Hypnotherapy, acupuncture, Allen Carr method – all far more successful if you want to quit smoking.

the book that blew the whistle on the nicotine scam 

more about hypnotherapy option

Volume II of Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was

Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was (Volume II) A Change of Mind has just become available today.

Read what the critics thought of Volume I:

“The author’s case is simple: nicotine is not addictive, and he makes a
strong case in support of his argument… Numerous asides to various issues
undoubtedly made for a more entertaining read… It’s not often that parts
of a book on a very serious subject have me by turns howling in laughter and
clapping in appreciation of the author’s attention to detail – this one did
both. This has the potential to be a landmark book, and as such deserves a
wide audience.”
Michael O’Sullivan, Hypnotherapy Articles

“Holmes provides “Case Mysteries” as interludes between his chapters and
these are highly entertaining and illuminating. One such interlude
de-constructs the work of Allen Carr, a British smoking cessation guru. By
the time Holmes is done with Carr, there is not much left; it’s a great read
that made me laugh out loud… in the end, the arguments make sense. Just as importantly, they are presented in an entertaining and insightful way,
making this book useful to hypnotists and those who would like to stop
smoking. I’d like to check out Volume II when I get a chance.”
James Hazlerig, RealHypnosisReviews.blogspot.com

Well here it is, James – and only two years late! Enjoy.

If you just want to quit smoking in two hours, read this.

Rachel’s Hypnotherapy Success!

Last night we had a Xmas party for my husbands sports group and it was good to be able to sit inside the whole time but boy did I smell it when the smokers all came back in, I was so happy that wasn’t me anymore… I have been spreading the word on champix usage to my kiwi friends and encouraging them to check out your website. Now that I have had the hypnotherapy I am even a better example to them.

Keep up the brilliant work, have passed Book One on to my Dad and eagerly await Book Two.

by Chris Holmes

Now THIS is what I’m talking about! This is why no-one needs to take a risk with Champix The Suicide Pill:

Hi Chris,

Well I am happy to inform you that I am a non smoker. I had my hypnotherapy session last week and have not picked up a cigarette since nor do I want to.  I knew what to expect due to reading your book  and doing my own research. I enjoyed the session and was so excited on the day.

While I was waiting to go in for my appointment (I was early) I was chatting to this older man who was outside having a cigarette and waiting for someone else (nothing to do with where I was going). He asked me who I was waiting for and I told him what I was doing. He said he had hypnotherapy in the UK for smoking and then about 10 years later he immigrated to Australia and took up smoking again so in his opinion hypnotherapy didn’t work!, I had a little chuckle and told him it looked to me as if it did work. Anyway he was all excited about starting champix and I told him to make sure he researches it fully, in fact I know a website ……….

He wished me luck as I him, luck that he will not take champix and place himself in danger.

There has been a strange outcome of my quitting smoking that I never saw coming. The reaction of my husband!. While my 23 year old son has been very supportive and is encouraged by my success, my husband is being difficult. He will deliberately annoy me until I am angry and then say things like ” oo getting a bit tetchy I understand” or throwing his Cigarette out the window when I get in the car and saying ” oops, better get rid of that stinky smoke”. I have not been bothered by his smoking at all as I am a non smoker so it has no effect on me. It is as if he is wanting me to fail and has mentioned that he is closely watching how this ‘works’ for me cause he might try it. I just get an uneasy feeling that he is bating me or testing me to see if I will smoke again. I love my husband dearly and can’t quite understand why he is acting like this, although he is easing off a bit now. Chris, have you seen this response from other ex smokers smoking partners before?

Last night we had a Xmas party for my husbands sports group and it was good to be able to sit inside the whole time but boy did I smell it when the smokers all came back in, I was so Happy that wasn’t me anymore

I have been spreading the word on champix usage to my kiwi friends and encouraging them to check out your website. Now that I have had the hypnotherapy I am even a better example to them.

Keep up the brilliant work, have passed book one on to my dad and eagerly await book two.

Kindest regards
Rachel

So I emailed back:

Hi Rachel, well done you! And well done to your hypnotherapist for a sound professional job there! Ask if she would like a namecheck on my blog, I’d be happy to oblige!

I cannot understand the attitude of people like the smoker (or ex-non-smoker!) you met who interpreted starting smoking again years later as a “failure of hypnotherapy”! You would think anyone with any intelligence would return to the therapy that worked for them before, as indeed most people will if they relapse at some stage. It is the logical choice. However, some behaviour and some decisions are not based on logic. There is an urban myth that if you have had hypnotherapy to stop smoking before, it won’t work a second time – which is RUBBISH! But there might be another explanation. Blaming the relapse on hypnotherapy can be a way of avoiding blaming himself. (Actually there’s no need to blame anyone, we can fix it easily. It’s really not a big deal.) Or he may have adopted the notion that the hypnotherapy “wore off” – although that attitude is more common if the relapse happens within the first 12 months, it’s a bit weird to look at it like that after a ten-year interval! Hypnotherapy isn’t a treatment, it’s a communication process, so it cannot “wear off”, but it is always possible for anyone to smoke again. I could start smoking again if I wanted to. Would that be a somewhat late ‘failure’ in my decision to stop thirteen years ago? I think not!

But to start again, one needs a reason. And if you move to another country, like that chap did in moving to Australia, you need friends. And if the new people you meet are smokers, and they offer you a cigarette… even if you don’t want one, it might seem a bit unfriendly to refuse, like you’re rejecting their attempts at hospitality, maybe even seems disapproving? And as former smokers ourselves, we don’t really disapprove of smokers, do we? Most of us don’t anyway. So what harm could one little cigarette do? When circumstances change, and human individuals need new friends and allies – need to feel accepted – they may adopt a behaviour that they would have passed up under different circumstances. It’s a common enough scenario, and it doesn’t matter because it’s easily fixed with another hypnotherapy session!

Why did he not return to hypnotherapy then? Well the therapist he saw before was in another country, so that would mean starting all over again seeking out a different therapist, and… most likely he didn’t really want to believe in hypnotherapy in the first place, was astonished when it worked because that was contrary to his normal world-view – which is probably more inclined to believe in “tablets from the doctor” than anything ‘alternative’ – so when he started again, he just slipped back into his conventional comfort-zone and dismissed hypnotherapy as if it were a failure. What allowed him to succeed with it in the first place was his genuine underlying desire to quit smoking anyway, which we can be sure of because he didn’t relapse for a decade and he is attempting quitting again with the Champix. (All of this is speculation, of course, but these things are common enough.)

This all boils down to the general ignorance and misunderstanding about hypnotherapy which my book aims to dispel, and replace with a general and widespread UNDERSTANDING of it, not just recognition and acceptance. What really holds hypnotherapy back is general ignorance and prejudice. I’ve always thought that the kind of success we would be seeing if everyone already understood hypnotherapy and it enjoyed universal approval and recognition would be nothing short of spectacular. It’s pretty exciting already, as you’ve just been discovering for yourself!

And so to your husband, and his ‘unexpected’ reaction to your success! Yes, I’ve seen it before – in fact I included a case of it in the Case Mysteries in the second volume, a passage under the title of THE DISSUADERS. Sounds like your husband only has a mild case of this though – the case I wrote about was unusually bad because it was systematic and relentless, and unfortunately succeeded in undoing all the good work hypnotherapy did in that case, and I have to admit it did make me angry – but there was nothing I could do about it.

Now, you mustn’t be angry with your husband, because these are Subconscious reactions which some smokers have when someone close to them successfully quits. Usually they are short-term reactions, and the best thing to do is let your natural good humour deal with them because like most grouchy behaviour it shouldn’t be taken too seriously. It is not really malicious in most cases, it is based on fear. You see, back in the day, when ‘everyone’ smoked (as smokers often claim!), the fact that smoking could kill you wasn’t such a worry because we had a feeling that there was safety in numbers and surely it wouldn’t happen to US. And no-one disapproved too much in those days, so we could be fairly comfortable with our smoking habit. You could smoke anywhere, no-one cared, it was regarded as a fairly normal – even fairly respectable – lifestyle thing.

My God how that has changed! Smokers are very much on the back foot now, numbers are dwindling, every year someone else quits, there’s pictures of tumours on the carton, you can’t smoke anywhere in public without being arrested, the latest TV ads in the UK tell you to not only smoke outside, but now you’ve got to take seven steps away from your house before you light up, like you’re fucking radioactive or something… pretty soon you’ll be told you have to take a bus to a remote abandoned quarry before it’s permissible to light up, and be decontaminated and all your clothes burned before you’re allowed to return to your children, dressed in sackcloth and ashes. God knows how my family have survived with my old Dad smoking his pipe in the car with the windows rolled up all through my childhood… I’d like to see someone try to tell him he has to get out of his armchair and take seven steps away from his house before he lights the filthy thing up again. I wouldn’t, I don’t mind him smoking at all. I felt like puking in the car when I was a kid sometimes, but that’s just normal. I’m glad I don’t live in the same house as him, but there are lots of reasons for that. He’s there by himself nowadays, he can smoke if he wants to. He’s 82. He still plays tennis every week. No kidding. The man has virtually no medical records, he never worries about his health.

Not everyone is that health-confident. Smokers get worried these days – not just about illness, but about not being ‘able’, personally, to stop smoking. Each time someone they know quits, it makes them a bit nervous because it starts to seem increasingly ‘wrong’ to be a smoker, increasingly likely that they WILL be the one that gets the smoking-related disease, and that’s why – if the quitting attempt fails, other smokers often feel a private sense of relief, so that the commiserations are also partly a “welcome back” into the fold.

When you decided to quit, it was your decision, not your husband’s decision – but your success throws his own smoking habit into sharp relief, and that brings discomfort. It may well feel threatening, in two ways: now he may feel ‘obliged’ to try to quit himself – but without the freedom to decide that for himself, and with the fear of failing, which haunts a lot of smokers. He may not WANT to quit at this stage, and be fearful that now you’re going to use his smoking habit as a stick to beat him with – even if you were never going to do any such thing! He may be afraid of hypnosis, as a lot of people are even though there is no risk in it whatsoever. And – don’t forget – there is a certain element of competition in all close human relationships, especially male/female partnerships… the old battle of the sexes… which men like to feel that they would always win, only now you’re one up on him… the pressure’s on…

Not much of this goes through a person’s conscious mind. No, it all bubbles away underneath, and just pops up in little snidey comments and unworthy needling behaviour which is actually aimed at tipping you back into smoking so that he doesn’t have to change or be affected by any of these shifts in the usual state of affairs… but he may not realise that these are the typical causes of this moody phase. And it doesn’t matter, as long as you just smile at the insecurity of men and don’t taunt him about it or indeed take it seriously at all. Just ignore it, forgive him for being normal and it will peter out soon enough, especially if you are tolerant about his habit and don’t beat him up about it (always a mistake). Remember, his smoking habit should have no bearing on your own preference to be a non-smoker – don’t decide that he’s got to quit too now, and don’t hit back. Just enjoy your freedom and leave him to deal with his own issues himself in his own good time. Don’t let the smoking issue drive a wedge between you, because I think we all had the right idea in the old days – smoking is no big deal. But it IS rubbish, which should always be the reason any smoker quits, and it should always be of their own accord.

Is it okay if I put some of this up on the website? Also, let me know the name of your hypnotherapist and her location, so I can promote her services for her! And once again: Well Done Rachel!!!! Enjoy your freedom, and your health.

best regards,
Chris

To which our new non-smoker replied:

Hi Chris, thank you again for your most informative email. My husband seems to be backing off a bit now, in fact this morning he even mentioned how ‘nice’ I have been lately lol. He is the one who first mentioned quitting smoking it’s just that I was the one who did something about it. I know he wants to quit but it has to be when he is ready, not just because I did. I certainly never say anything about it to him, he’s a big boy now.

That man I met who said hypnotherapy didn’t work for him, after ten years of complete success really made me chuckle, some people never fail to amaze me, the frightening thing is, he is happy to be going on Champix. I liked your explanation of his behavior, it makes sense.

I am always happy for you to use my emails on your site if you feel they are appropriate.

The hypnotherapist I saw was:

Barbara Hennessy
www.hypnotherapycentre.com.au
email: [email protected]

PO Box 748
Wynnum. Qld. 4178
Australia.

Chris, I will contact her and ask her permission as requested. [It was granted.]

Have a very Merry Christmas and a safe New Year. Keep up all the good work, you changed my life, if your website hadn’t have been available I probably would never even thought of using hypnotherapy for quitting smoking. If your book wasn’t written, I would have only had my suspicions that NRT doesn’t work instead of the proof and knowledge I now have. If you had just ignored my emails I may have been put off by the whole thing as if you were just someone who wants to makes money… instead you have always promptly answered my enquiries in a thorough and humorous manner, supporting me through this turning point in my life. Thanks Chris!!! As is my way now I will continue to support your campaign in any way I am able.

Kindest regards
Rachel

Rachel told me that she had contacted two hypnotherapists at first, and decided on Barbera because the other therapist was charging too much:

Hi Chris,
I am seeing the hypnotherapist on the 17th of December and can’t wait to finally be free from this behaviour. She has 40 years of experience and the cost is $AU130, I contacted an ad from the local paper and the guy was charging $AU600 for the initial session and $AU400 for the follow up session (which I really shouldn’t need).

This confirms what I always say to smokers: Don’t pay top dollar. Do not assume that if you pay high prices you will get the best therapy, it isn’t true at all. I’m pretty good at what I do, but I don’t overcharge. My stop smoking sessions are £120. There are a few therapists in the UK charging as much as £450, but that just means that they are more interested in your money than your well-being, so don’t go to them! Do what Rachel did, go for experience and reasonable rates, that’s where you’ll find the magic.

For any smokers in the North West of the UK: Central Hypnotherapy

Cravings Are Not Withdrawal Symptoms

by Chris Holmes

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

Anyway enjoy the article!

Cravings Are Not Withdrawal Symptoms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nicotine: The Weird (Non) Addiction

by Chris Holmes

Now Meet Doug Wilson

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

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

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

Not a Bodily Need

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

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

The Factual Explanation

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

practice website

The Drug That Never Was

Remember When You First Started Smoking?

No smoker started smoking for the effects of nicotine, and no smoker can tell me what nicotine DOES! So they are not smoking for the effects of nicotine, because they don’t even know what those effects ARE. It is a habit, not “drug use”.

by hypnotherapist Chris Holmes

This month, the readership of this site has absolutely gone through the roof – and no, it doesn’t have anything to do with Edzard Ernst!  Or at least, not much to do with him.  “Inconsistencies in the Addiction Story” is the page everyone is reading, and despite recent fuss over other pages this remains the most viewed page on the site after the homepage.

Smokers, I hope, are reading this.  Ordinary smokers and particularly those who would really prefer to be non-smokers but they don’t seem to be getting anywhere with willpower (though some do!) or any of the pharmaceutical aids.

Readership of this site has been steadily climbing every month since it was launched in March 2008, but it has suddenly doubled during March 2010, and that’s the post that did it.  The fact is, smokers have been told a load of misleading rubbish about the tobacco habit and far too many of them end up suffering and dying as a result. So a very warm welcome to all the new readers around the globe – read on, you don’t have to buy anything.

Early Smoking Experiences

There is an interesting difference in the way some of the smokers who have no intention of quitting anytime soon describe their early smoking experiences and the way my clients nearly always descibe them.  This shouldn’t surprise us because very few people are thinking positively about tobacco by the time they reach the hypnotherapy stage.

“What made you think of using hypnotherapy to quit?” I ask each new client, which is a way of assessing how many are direct referrals from previous clients, which is most of them.  If not, the usual response is: “Because I’ve tried everything else!”

Naturally, the first time a smoker attempts to quit the habit they are likely to try to do it all by themselves using willpower.  If that doesn’t work they are probably going to have a go with the thing that is most extensively advertised, namely nicotine replacement poisoning (NRT).  If they knew that it had pretty much the same long-term outcome as willpower they probably wouldn’t bother – but most of them do not, because that is a fact the Department of Health were trying to keep to themselves.

Then – once it became obvious NRT had no lasting effect – the smoker might try some of the pills, willpower again, a self-help book with a CD, NRT again in a different form, then eventually find their way to hypnotherapy.  “You’re my last hope!” is an expression hypnotherapists hear every other day.

Sometimes these smokers are beating themselves up about having ‘failed’ so many times.  Not so: they have been given the wrong information, and with the best will in the world thay have been trying to use that information to quit smoking.  It is the method that has failed, not the smoker.  In explaining this point to them, I often compare it to trying to open a combination lock.  If you have been given the wrong information you are going to struggle, and no amount of willpower is going to change that.  If someone suggests that the problem is that you’re just not trying hard enough, or you don’t really want to open the lock, they would be quite wrong.  Equally it might appear to either party as if it were “really difficult” to open a combination lock.  Which it is, if you have the wrong information.

But if you have the right combination, it’s a snap.

Then I explain to these smokers that they are, in fact, typical of the kind of people who successfully quit smoking.  “The ones who do not succeed either keep putting off the attempt – which you never did – only try once or twice and don’t have the heart to go for it again – you evidently don’t lack that – or decide in advance that there’s “no point” trying other methods because the first method didn’t work.  The fact that you’re here proves that you are not that poorly motivated or unimaginative.  In fact,” I conclude, rather to their surprise because they hadn’t really thought of it that way lately, “you are EXACTLY the sort of person who is going to succeed because you clearly won’t settle for anything less!”

That usually perks them up a bit, because right up until that moment they’d been giving themselves a hard time over it.

At some point in the conversation I will ask them to cast their mind back to their earliest smoking experiences, and put the question: “Do you remember why you were doing that, at the time?”  Never once in the ten years I’ve been helping smokers ditch the habit – and we’re talking about thousands of individual smokers here – never once has anyone said: “For the effects of nicotine.”

Next question: “Do you remember how it made you feel when you first learned how to inhale the smoke?”

Now it is not that unusual, if in conversation with a person who isn’t aiming to quit anytime soon, or has an axe to grind about alternative therapy, or is just cheerfully pro-smoking, to hear them declare: “Actually, I really liked it!  Yes, I took to smoking like a duck to water and I didn’t even cough! In fact I love nicotine so much that even during the night I have a couple of patches stuck to my forehead so I can dream that I’m smoking all night long!”

I’m sure you’ve met someone like that, but it is almost unheard of for that person to book a hypnotherapy session.  Nor should they, they’re obviously quite happy the way they are, being all ‘nicotine friendly’. And why not.

No, I only work with people who have already decided that they want to get rid of the habit, and they only give one of two responses to the question: “I don’t remember” or “It made me feel dizzy and sick”.  There are hardly any exceptions to this apart from the relatively few smokers who first tried tobacco when they already had alcohol in their system.  Some of those people will have experienced the effects of inhaling tobacco smoke much more like a ‘high’ than the rest, who just found it a sickening experience they don’t particularly enjoy recalling, so of course some of them don’t recall it.  This is normal – many people who didn’t have a very nice childhood will report that they don’t remember much about their childhood at all.

The Actual Effects of Nicotine

I ask all smoking clients: “Do you know what nicotine actually does?”  I have yet to encounter a smoker who does know.  The most common guess is: “I think it relaxes me, or something…”  Can we find a parallel in real drug use? A heroin user who doesn’t know what heroin does?  A coke-head that doesn’t know what cocaine does?  No, of course not!

If any future client were to confidently announce: “Why, yes!  Nicotine makes my heart beat faster than it should, reduces blood flow to my extremities which causes the poor circulation that can eventually result in amputation, and the combination of these two changes causes a rise in blood pressure.  It also raises blood fats levels, which is useless and possibly a contributory factor in heart disease, and finally it raises the risk of thrombosis!”

…then I would immediately ask them if they imagined for one moment that they were truly smoking for the effects of nicotine.

Smokers smoke because of cravings, that is true.  But cravings are nothing to do with nicotine or anything else in the smoke.  And we get lots of cravings, they’re not all about tobacco.  They are impulses from the Subconscious mind which prompt you to do what you would usually do at that moment or in that situation, and the factor that has confused everybody about cravings is that they are transmitted via the body and they are real physical experiences that can be mild or very unpleasant indeed, and they will always be interpreted as a ‘need’ or a ‘desire’.

If you respond, the signal will cease which is why it has been misinterpreted as a ‘withdrawal symptom’.  If you don’t respond you get another signal and they will often become more frequent and progressively more uncomfortable and distracting because the purpose of the signal is to distract you from what you are thinking about just long enough to recognise what the circumstances suggest (to the subconscious) you should do, and also to ‘prompt’ you to do something other than what you were already doing.  If you don’t respond the subconscious assumes you didn’t notice that signal so it sends another, more insistent one.

If you have made a conscious decision to stop smoking, the Subconscious doesn’t know, so it (quite innocently) keeps sending the reminders which the poor old conscious mind is now trying to ignore using willpower (conscious effort).  The problem with that is that willpower is an extra effort we don’t normally make, so you can’t keep that up.  You can do it for a while, but it is an effort!  And an effort that you cannot sustain so as soon as you run out of steam – or get distracted by something else – the smoking habit is simply reasserted by the Subconscious mind because those conscious efforts didn’t change anything about it, they were simply a temporary conscious effort to repress the behaviour by force.

If I were wrong about all of this, and it were all about drug dependence, addiction and withdrawal then all of my smoking clients would walk out of my office the same way they walked in.  As would the drinkers, the gamblers, the cocaine-users and the chocoholics… but they don’t.  Cravings and habitual behaviours can be shut down in a hypnotherapy session provided the therapist is a successful specialist in those matters and the client is quite happy to be rid of the problem and has chosen the hypnotherapy route willingly.  True withdrawal symptoms can not be shut down in that way.

In Chapter Ten of Nicotine: The Drug That Never Was I define the Compulsive Habit as distinct from addiction which is the big gap in the medical understanding of these matters, which has got all messed up with theories about dopamine etc. because an understanding of the Subconscious mind is not a part of their training, not is it part of our general education but it should be.  We were all raised and educated in the first place with no mention of a subconscious mind, which leads to the current generalised notion that the conscious mind is the mind and it doesn’t really like the idea that there is another one!  Which is why I repeat the observation in the book a number of times that “the conscious mind doesn’t really believe in the Subconscious mind, except perhaps in theory”.

And by extension, doesn’t really believe in hypnotherapy until the results are encountered for real.  It is not a magic trick.  It is not a parlour game. It is not mysterious in any way, it can all be explained and accounted for. It is not remotely dangerous or risky, but stage hypnosis unfortunately makes it look as if it might be which is why that always needs explaining before we start doing any therapy!

Hypnotherapy is often regarded as alternative medicine, which is wrong on two counts. Firstly, it is not alternative because it was officially recognised as a valid therapeutic approach by the BMA and also their American counterparts in the mid-1950s, so it is orthodox and it has been, and is, used in both medicine and dentistry, though nowhere near as often as it would be if it were not for all the misinformation, prejudice, unnecessary fear and ignorant scoffing that we have had to contend with for the last couple of centuries.  Secondly, although it has medical applications hypnotherapy is not medicine, it is 100% communication so it has more in common with educational procedures than medical ones, and the current, almost universal lack of understanding of the Subconscious mind is entirely down to the Subconscious-shaped hole in our traditional models of education.

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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.

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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

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. 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 bookNicotine: 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
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