Stop Smoking With Hypnosis Before It’s Too Late
Cigarettes are one of the most addictive substances known to man — but unlike heroin, cocaine, and alcohol, it's still legal. Smoking will kill you by damaging your lungs and enchancing your risk for cancer and respiratory illnesses. But with hypnosis you can quit smoking before it's too late!
This article will show you how hypnosis can relieve the cravings and withdrawal symptoms that make quitting so hard in a way no other form of intervention can. I'll also show you how hypnosis can help you quit for good and how long it takes most smokers to succeed.
Does Hypnosis Really Help You Quit Smoking?
Many smokers are not convinced that hypnosis can be helpful. After all, the tobacco industry has spent billions of dollars on advertising that makes smoking look cool, fun, and sexy — but quitting looks painful and difficult (and boring — because all you do is sit around after you quit smoking!). And if the only thing hypnosis does is make people think they're more relaxed or peaceful than they really are, then it's not doing anything that isn't being accomplished by some other relaxation technique — like taking a hot bath or going for a run.
Well, can hypnosis really help you quit smoking? Yes, it can. Hypnosis has been used to assist people with a wide range of addictions, including alcohol and drugs. It's been shown that hypnosis can be as effective as nicotine replacement therapy in helping people quit smoking (1). In fact, a meta-analysis of eleven controlled clinical trials found that smokers who were hypnotized achieved almost twice the success rate (36.7%) compared to those who participated in a counseling session alone (19.9%) (2).
The first major study of its kind was published by Richard Wills in 1986 in the journal International Clinical Psychopharmacology . The study focused on twenty-seven patients who were smokers and looked at two groups: a control group that received no treatment, and an experimental group that was given "an opportunity to smoke an interval cigarette during their session" (3). The hypnosis sessions were conducted by two hypnotherapists using the same induction and posthypnotic suggestions. A comparison of the brief, 20-minute sessions with complete cessation revealed that in ten weeks time, 31% of the hypnotized smokers had quit compared with 0% for the control group.
Even more interesting is a study from 1995 (4) that compares hypnosis to nicotine gum. Fifty-one participants were divided into four groups; three of the treatments included a placebo or nicotine patch (Nicorette), and one group received hypnosis. In the end, five out of twelve who received medication successfully quit smoking, while eleven out of eighteen who received hypnosis did so, even though they started with similar smoking habits.
Hypnosis is not a cure-all for smoking addiction — in fact, some people do attend counseling sessions or use medications and still fail to quit. However, the large majority of people who are hypnotized to give up cigarettes achieve far more success than those who don't use hypnosis.
How Hypnosis Makes You Quit Smoking
Hypnosis can help you quit smoking by creating lasting changes in your brain — changes that make smoking less and less attractive to you. Hypnosis has been shown to be highly effective for helping people change habits, and the way it's used here is no different. It targets a range of mental processes that play a role in your addiction. These include:
Dealing with cravings and handling withdrawal symptoms Relaxing your body and relieving anxiety Altering self-image (5) Reducing stress levels Improving your concentration
A study from 1990 (6) compared the effects of hypnosis, relaxation training, and placebo on cessation of smoking. Both hypnosis and relaxation training were found to be effective in reducing smoking, but the hypnotized participants maintained that level of success for two years.
One review (7) looked at the impact of self-hypnosis on smokers using an at-home recording. The study compared self-hypnosis to various other treatments, including placebo recordings. After four weeks, those in the self-hypnosis group had a 42% success rate compared to 29% for those who used a placebo device.
Getting Started
It's not your imagination. smoking really is "cool": you know someone who smokes and they always seem to have a cigarette with them, or they'll be talking about how great cigarettes taste. And you can't tell if he's been smoking or not — he simply looks like a guy who goes to a lot of parties and barbecues but is not a regular smoker.
But what you don't know is that he hasn't quit. He's been smoking for a few years and at least once a day, he'll find himself with a cigarette in his hand. This is how it works for most smokers — no matter how many times you try and quit, you always seem to find yourself in the same situation again and again. This creates an inner resistance that's very difficult to overcome — since your brain has learned to associate smoking with comfort and pleasure.
How Do You Stop Smoking?
To overcome these cravings, hypnosis can help by creating lasting changes in your brain that make it more difficult for you to become addicted to cigarettes. Deep within your brain is a reward system that is heavily involved in addictive behaviors. The nucleus accumbens is a small structure that actually releases dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward. Some of the cells in this area start to send out signals when you do something that it feels good to do, like drinking alcohol or smoking. These signals are what tell you, "Hey! This feels good!"
But over time, as you keep doing something over and over again, the system changes. Instead of just releasing dopamines every once in a while, these cells get more sensitive so they will release more than one dopamine receptor when you engage in an addictive behavior — like having that cigarette at the same time every day (8). Your brain then gets used to this feeling and starts craving it so badly that you can't even imagine life without it.
With hypnosis, you are able to reprogram the way your brain thinks and feels about smoking. You become comfortable with the idea of never having a cigarette again — or at least not as much of one. By using your imagination and making up images in your head, you can start to see how nice and healthy you'll feel without tobacco taking up so much of your life.
So how does hypnosis actually work? The way hypnosis works is amazing — triggering huge changes in the brain when it is used correctly.
Conclusion
If smoking is something you regret doing, hypnosis can help you quit. Sure, you might be able to quit without hypnosis, but I think you'll have a lot more success with this method. Once your brain gets used to not having an addiction and begins to actually crave cigarettes less and less, then it may be time to try nicotine patches.
Check out this video that discusses how hypnosis can help with smoking cessation:
Sources:
1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2102240/ 2) http://www.scientificamerican.