Ways To Quit Smoking - Separate The BS From The Truth

by Alan B. Densky, CH

States throughout the country have curtailed smoking in public areas. Hospitals have declared their work environments to be smoke-free, and are punishing workers who smoke at work. Persons who smoke brave bad weather and rain, sleet or snow, and smoke away as hurriedly as they are able so that they can return to work.    In some cities, smoking has become as controversial as drug addiction. Since the public has become so educated about stop smoking benefits, a significant number are doing their best to identify ways to quit smoking.   Smoking habits consist of three elements:

1. Smoking for relaxation and pleasure is about 45 percent of the reason that people continue to smoke.

2. People also smoke because they unconsciously associate agreeable environments or behaviors with cigarettes. Then, when people find themselves in these situations, they desire a cigarette. One example of this is when a person strongly associates drinking coffee with smoking a cigarette. Every time they get another cup of coffee, they strongly crave a cigarette. This makes up about 45% of the habit.

3. People smoke because they develop a physical addiction to Nicotine. This element is approximately 10 percent of the smoking habit. When people quit smoking, all of the Nicotine is gone from their bodies after about three days!

A variety of methods are available to assist people learn ways to quit smoking. One particularly inexpensive way to quit smoking, which is reimbursed through the majority of insurance agencies, is the nicotine patch. Easy to apply, each patch is worn for one day and can be easily hidden beneath a person's clothing. The drawback to these patches, however, is that patches are not very beneficial. Because patches only deal with the physiological addiction, which accounts for just 10% of the habit, only about seven percent of the people who use this method will succeed.

The same level of success applied to nicotine gum or lozenges. Fewer than one-tenth of the clients who trial these methods will be able to successfully use these techniques to quit smoking for six months or more. Additionally, these products have adverse effects. They, can be bothersome to the users' gums and lips, while a significant percentage of people suffer skin discomfort beneath the patch. Remember, nicotine replacement therapies treat only the physical addiction, which only comprises approximately one-tenth of the habit.

Still another strategy is the use of counseling and smoking cessation sessions. Such courses include cognitive therapy together with extensive information regarding the adverse outcomes of smoking. These strategies are three times as successful as nicotine replacement methods; approximately 22 percent of these people will succeed in quitting for at least six months.

Several smokers have utilized laser treatment programs to help quit smoking. This treatment is in some cases covered by insurance, although it is new. Clinical studies held by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), however, have found that these treatments are no more effective than placebo. (Placebo is the effect that occurs when individuals believe they are receiving therapy, but actually are not.)

One of the ways to quit smoking appears to be a little more successful than formerly used approaches. During one research study, smokers were given shots to help them quit smoking by eliminating the 'buzz' of the nicotine rush. This strategy, in the preliminary stages of testing for effectiveness, thus far seems to be effective for 15% of the clients who used it.

Hypnotherapy is a different approach to coaching persons to quit smoking. Hypnotherapy concentrates on programming the unconscious mind to automatically employ alternative actions to create comfort and peace, in place of the smoking addiction. It is also utilized to eradicate or "extinguish" behavioral conditioning such as the association noted between cigarettes and actions in the above example, so the person who smokes is relieved of the need to smoke when in the locations that formerly trigger it.

Male patients appear to be more amenable to stop smoking hypnosis than female patients do. One benefit resulting from self hypnosis stop smoking, however, is that, as opposed to people use nicotine replacement as methods to quit smoking, there are no problematic side effects.

Another benefit of hypnosis is that it focuses on the nine-tenths facet of the addiction that is psychological, instead of the other approaches that only work against the 10% component of the addiction that is physical. Therefore, hypnosis results in a noticeably greater treatment success than the aforementioned methods of stop smoking treatments. Customary hypnotherapy strategies can provide a 35 percent likelihood of success, while Ericksonian hypnosis can offer a fifty percent or greater treatment success.

A newer, revolutionary, and certainly more useful approach that coaches clients to conquer a cigarette habit is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. This method is much more helpful than conventional styles of quit smoking hypnosis because it avoids reliance on post-hypnotic suggestions at all. The majority of clients, such as people whose thoughts are critical thinkers, do not respond well to post-hypnotic suggestions. With NLP, the unconscious is trained to use the identical thought patterns that result in the mental addiction to cigarette use, to treat it!

A well thought out NLP stop smoking program developed by a trained NLP professional can offer a success rate of as much as 70% and higher.

Summary: The majority of smoking cessation methods attempt to employ nicotine replacement therapies as ways to quit smoking. Other strategies, such as smoking cessation and cognitive or behavioral treatment courses, work to help the mind discover ways to quit smoking.

Despite the fact that hypnotherapy is more effective than alternative approaches, primarily with men, experts do not consider it to be the most successful way to quit smoking. Neuro-Linguistic Programming, which addresses the mental elements of nicotine dependency, actually assists clients to alter their mindset to help them quit most successfully.

Because nine-tenths of an individual's struggle with addiction to cigarettes is psychological in nature, these approaches are significantly more effective than just replacing the nicotine and addressing the 10% component of the problem that is physical.

Conclusion: Numerous smoking cessation courses, such as nicotine replacement methods and counseling can be found. These methods frequently are often less than 20 percent successful. In contrast, hypnosis offers a much greater likelihood of success. Neuro-Linguistic Programming is even more beneficial in aiding clients to effectively overcome the psychological nature of their dependency and find immeasurably more success in their goal of becoming smoke-free.

Alan B. Densky, CH is the developer of the quick way to quit tobacco use with hypnotherapy. He now offers a potent Stop Chewing Tobacco program based on the same methods. See more at his self hypnosis MP3 downloads site where you can watch Free NLP videos and articles.

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