Stop Smoking with Hypnosis & CBT
Successfully getting people to stop smoking is given the highest priority in the health services of most countries - yet success rates for interventions are typically very low. You regularly see adverts saying “Double your chances with this Nicotine Gum” - yet when your chances without the gum are just 6% - doubling them to 12% isn’t too exciting. Even the latest drugs like Champix (Varenicline) only show success of 22% at 12 months (yes it was hyped in the media as 44% success…. But that was at 12 weeks!) - and frankly there are a bunch of safety concerns about Champix. Also I predict that within a couple of years, with more studies, that success rate will be about 15%. The fact is that most of the studies - while highly controlled in one way, often have poor design faults - and because they don’t deal with the psychological aspects of the smoking habit - their long term success rate isn’t so good. Indeed a recent study showed that a 4 year follow-up only showed 7.2% success for Nicotine gum & patches. That’s just 1.2% above using will power alone! Stop smoking hypnosis and hypnotherapy treatments have shown consistently strong success rates in the range of 30% to 60% - and some as high as 88%. (Of course we have some therapists claiming 95% success rates - and Mark Twain told us that giving up smoking was easy - he’d done it lots of times!) However in lab controlled tests hypnotherapy often doesn’t do so well… and that’s simply because the sort of controlled tests used for drugs don’t work for something like stop smoking hypnotherapy sessions - where the actual methods may vary dramatically from client to client. Simply put hypnosis for smoking is a complex and advanced application of hypnosis therapy. Therapists need to be skilled and experienced in a whole toolbox of methods. Standard cookie cutter approaches (as often used in a well controlled and designed research experiment) won’t work across a range of clients. Some clients need just one two hour session, some need three sessions. If you are thinking of stopping smoking with hypnotherapy then make sure the therapist uses a wide range of approaches and formats - and isn’t just taking your money, putting you under and reading a script.