Is Smoking A Habit Or Addiction?

Smoking is a psychological habit

Contrary to popular belief, smoking is not just about nicotine, but is a very powerful psychological addiction that drugs and NRT (nicotine replacement treatments, such as gums and patches) cannot address effectively.

It is true that pharmaceutical treatments do have some success, but when you look at their success rates a year later, the chances are if you go down that route you’ll be smoking again.

• Nicotine patches have a 10% success rate after a year, which rises to 20% when you combine them with counselling.
• Willpower alone has a 6% chance of success.
• You’re nearly four times more likely to quit with drugs such as Champix, but with a 22% success rate, what about the other 78% that are still struggling to quit smoking?

The problem with drug and nicotine replacement treatments is that they don’t tackle the psychological addiction, which for many is the biggest part of the problem. Plus they can have some very unpleasant side effects including weight gain and irritability. Nausea, constipation, diarrhoea, headaches, insomnia, headaches, dizziness and depression have been also associated with drug treatments. There have even been reported suicide cases with Champix, not just in the US but in the UK too.

Nicotine leaves the body within 48 hours of being a non-smoker, yet why do so many go back to smoking well past that time? Some studies indicate that smoking is a nicotine addiction and others show that it’s psychological. In practice if nicotine really is a physical condition, it has not been a problem for the thousands of people hypnotherapists around the world have successfully helped quit smoking without experiencing side effects.,

The argument against addiction rests on the fact that smokers do not all experience the same side effect when going ‘cold turkey’ and some don’t experience withdrawal symptoms at all.

Smoking is a habit – a habit learned by practice. When you first start to smoke, it was very unpleasant. Even smokers who believe they’ve enjoyed smoking from day one will find that not to be true. Research using regression therapy showed that smokers actually had a negative reaction to smoking until they became accustomed to it. Therefore it is both an acquired taste and an unconscious habit, and to break it permanently you need to fix it at a subconscious level.

Stop smoking hypnosis works because it changes your behaviour and attitude towards cigarettes by accessing the subconscious, where the smoking habit is stored. Hypnosis can help you change your mind about smoking, and make smoking a habit you no longer need to think about or do.