If you want to stop smoking, focusing on physical addiction is a recipe for failure.
Most people who want to stop smoking wrongly believe that their desire for a cigarette is a physical addiction. And yet, most smokers find that nicotine replacements (like the patch, gum, or e-cigarettes) or nicotine blockers (like Chantix, Wellbutrin, or Zyban) fail to help them stop smoking. In clinical trials, many of these therapies have lower success rates than quitting cold turkey. (According to a 2000 report by the US Department of Health and Human Services: 11.53% six-month success rate when you stop smoking cold turkey vs. 7% six-month success rate for patch or gum users.)
If smoking was truly a physical addiction, then replacing or blocking the nicotine should work almost universally. And yet, smokers will often sneak a cigarette while wearing a nicotine patch. They’re already getting the nicotine through the patch, so why would they crave a cigarette?
“She forgot she was a smoker.”
Not too long ago, I met with a smoker who already knew that smoking was mental and not physical. Knowing that, he was certain that hypnosis was what he needed to stop smoking. (Spoiler alert: he was right, it worked, and he quit). How did he know? He watched his grandmother, who had smoked 3 packs a day for 70+ years, spontaneously stop smoking with no cravings, no withdrawal, and no irritability. Sadly, she had dementia and one day she just stopped smoking. He said that “She forgot she was a smoker.” In fact, if anyone tried to remind her that she had smoked 3 packs a day for most of her life, she denied that she had ever smoked.
He told me that was a light bulb moment for him. He realized that if smoking was truly physical, then her body would still want those 3 packs a day even if her mind couldn’t remember smoking. And so he decided that hypnosis was the obvious solution for him to stop smoking just as easily as his grandmother had.
Over the years, I’ve occasionally heard similar anecdotes about elderly smokers who forgot about their habit and easily quit. Online resources like alzheimers.org and wikiversity.org confirm that Alzheimers and dementia patients do sometimes spontaneously stop smoking. Each time that happens, it only proves that smoking is a mental habit, not a physical one.
You have to stop smoking in the mind first.
Hypnosis helps you break the metal habit of smoking. And breaking the mental habit is the secret to quitting easily. So if you really want to stop smoking, call Nashua Hypnosis to schedule your free hypnosis screening and discover if you’re a candidate for hypnosis: (603) 321-1779.