Why Hypnosis is Better Than Drugs, the Patch, and Willpower to Stop Smoking

The most difficult part of stopping smoking is not getting rid of the physical addiction to nicotine. Once you have read a little further, that will make perfectly good sense.

Anti-smoking drugs are designed to either reduce the anxiety or depression associated with stopping smoking or, as with the patch, to replace the nicotine with another source of nicotine. The antidepressant drugs make some sense because many people who stop smoking with willpower get irritable, or anxious. However, these drugs have a limited success because it is seldom if ever the physical withdrawal that causes the irritability or depression that occurs when people stop smoking.

Frequently people who use nicotine replacement devices like an inhaler or patch will still have strong urges to smoke. And, that gives us a clue about what makes smoking so hard to stop. It is not the nicotine itself that is most important. It is the mental associations and attachments to the activity of smoking itself.

A few of the reasons smokers have given me that they were unable to stop:

“I only take breaks at work to smoke. If I am not smoking I will not get any breaks.”

“Cigarettes are my friends.”

“I can only write music when I am smoking.” ( Professional song writer)

“Smoking makes me look cool.”

“It scares me to think I will never smoke again.”

Did you notice that none of those reasons have anything to do with effects of nicotine? And, if nicotine addiction is really the issue, how is it that some people have strong cravings to smoke while they are using the patch? Since the patch puts nicotine into their bodies, nicotine cannot be what they are craving.

As a hypnotherapist, I have found that once the issues like taking a break, or the fear of not smoking taken care of in hypnosis, that all the cravings, irritability, depression just go away. And, my clients do not gain weight, because they have not switched their habit from smoking to eating, they have gotten rid of it completely.

And, that is why hypnosis is better than drugs for stopping smoking. It takes care of all the issues that drugs cannot address.