Is Nicotine Really Addictive? The Answer May Surprise You

If you are like most people you have probably heard that nicotine is one of the most additive drugs there is. You may have even heard some misinformed person say that it’s easier to give up heroin than cigarettes. That belief will not serve you very well if you are now ready to stop smoking cigarettes.

So what is the truth about cigarettes and nicotine addiction? Why do so many people seem to have such a hard time quitting? First let’s think a bit about nicotine addiction. You have probably heard that many people die of second hand cigarette smoke. They receive enough nicotine, tar and other toxic chemicals to kill them even though they never smoked themselves. Now you need to ask yourself this question, if they were getting enough nicotine to kill them, why didn’t they get addicted to cigarettes and want to start smoking?

Another thing you might wonder about is the fact that if you are like most smokers, you can sleep through the night without a cigarette. That means that you can go around 8 hours without taking in any nicotine. A true addict would wake up in the night to get a fix just so he or she can go back to sleep.

People who stop smoking are sometimes irritable or uncomfortable, but they don’t get the tremors, hallucinations, terrible headaches, sweats and delirium that addicts get when they quit their drug of choice.

80% of the reason people keep smoking is psychological. It is just a habit. If you smoke a pack of 20 cigarettes a day; that is 200 puffs a day. Think about that! If you do anything 200 times a day it will become a deeply ingrained habit. What else do you do 200 times a day?

This is why nicotine replacement therapies are so ineffective at helping people stop smoking. Of those who use nicotine gum to quit only 7% to 10% are successful. Those who choose the nicotine patch do only slightly better with up to a 15% success rate. And the startling truth is that in one day a nicotine patch delivers an amount of nicotine to the bloodstream equivalent to smoking six packs of cigarettes in one day. Think about that, if you are wearing a nicotine patch you are receiving more nicotine that you have ever had in your life and yet people will still want to smoke a cigarette. This shows that the desire to smoke is not really about nicotine.

Most people keep smoking because it is a habit. Now you may be thinking, “That is all well and good, but I have this habit and it is deeply ingrained so how can I ever hope to stop it?” The answer lies in the fact that all habits are controlled by your subconscious mind. We are creatures of habit. We do things automatically, on autopilot so to speak. Have you ever noticed a lit cigarette in your hand and not remembered lighting it up? That is because you did it without thinking about it. Your conscious mind was never really engaged. Your subconscious recognized one of your, “it’s time to smoke”, triggers and automatically initiated your smoking routine.

If this sounds a bit like a computer running a program that’s because it works in exactly the same way. Your subconscious mind has been programmed to do certain things in response to your triggers. If you want to change your behavior you must change the program.

The good news is that there is a quick and easy way to change your programming. Hypnosis is a way of communicating directly with your subconscious mind and giving it new instructions about the way you want to respond to various conditions. This is just like rewriting your program. Hypnosis makes it possible for most people to stop smoking in one 90 minute session and never smoke another cigarette for the rest of their lives. Not only that, they can do so with no cravings and no side effects like irritability or weight gain.

How effective is hypnosis? According to the University of Iowa, Journal of Applied Psychology, hypnosis is the most effective way of giving up smoking, according to the largest ever scientific comparison of ways of breaking the habit. A meta-analysis, statistically combining results of more than 600 studies of 72,000 people from America and Europe to compare various methods of quitting. On average, hypnosis was over three times as effective as nicotine replacement methods and 15 times as effective as trying to quit alone.