Smoking

It's amazing to think that it wasn't until the report by the Tobacco Advisory Group of the Royal College of Physicians in 2000 that it was finally admitted by the medical profession that smoking was the single most important health problem in Britain. No other single avoidable factor accounted for such a high proportion of deaths, hospital admissions or GP consultations as smoking. It's estimated that smoking costs the NHS £2 billion per year and causes the death of one in every five in Britain. The greatest impact of smoking is death from lung cancer, ischaemic heart disease and chronic obstructive airways disease. Passive smoking also damages children before and after birth.

So why do people smoke? There is strong evidence of psychological dependence on cigarettes. The major psychological motivation to smoke is the avoidance of negative mood states caused by withdrawal of nicotine. Nicotine intake in smokers is stable and consistent over time. Smoking is widely believed by smokers to have a positive effect on mood, but objective evidence suggests that the only improvements in mood resulting from smoking are those arising from the relief of withdrawal symptoms.

Nicotine obtained from cigarettes meets all the standard criteria used to define a drug dependence or addiction, but historically addiction to nicotine had not been recognised as a medical or social problem in Britain until recently. But nicotine is highly addictive, to a degree similar or in some respects exceeding addiction to "hard" drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

Addiction to nicotine is established in most smokers during teenage years and within about one year of experimenting with cigarettes. Once addicted, most smokers are unable to give up even when they develop disease caused by smoking and made worse by continued smoking. Only about 2% of smokers succeed in giving up in any year.

Hypnotherapy can not be guaranteed to stop someone smoking, but it can help the determined person who wants to break their addiction to nicotine. It does this by placing an emphasis on all the benefits of being a non-smoker, by changing smoking habits and addressing any important issues that may be driving the addiction.