What is the Easiest Way to Quit Smoking?

What is the Easiest Way to Quit Smoking?

Written by - Hannah Simmons

What does Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Ben Affleck, Charlize Theron, and Ellen DeGeneras all have in common? They quit smoking using hypnotherapy. Celebrities have discovered the effective results of hypnotherapy and have used it to conquer their own smoking habits.

Researchers at the University of Iowa combined more than 600 studies of smoking cessation programs involving 72,000 people from North America and Europe. Hypnosis was found to be over 3 times more effective than nicotine replacement therapy and 15 times more effective than quitting cold turkey.

A comparison study of smoking cessation treatments was conducted by North Shore Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital. 26 weeks after discharge, 50% of patients who received hypnotherapy exclusively were non-smokers compared to the 25% of patients who didn’t and only 16% of patients who used nicotine replacement therapy alone.

Types of Addiction
Smoking addiction if a combination of two types of addiction. There’s the physical addiction, then there is the mental, or psychological addiction. Although nicotine addiction is considered one of the strongest addictions, even more addictive than cocaine, the good news is that the physical side of things doesn’t last very long. In fact, some believe that you will lose the physical cravings for nicotine in as little as 3 days.

The real struggle for smokers is overcoming the mental addiction. The smoker has essentially trained their subconscious mind to make smoking an “automatic” behavior. These are the habits and rituals that a smoker has developed over the years such as smoking when they wake up, just before they go to sleep, after they eat, when they drive, when they drink coffee or alcohol, and so on.

How Hypnotherapy Helps You Quit
So what will hypnotherapy do? Rather than just treating the physical urges that are part of your smoking habit, hypnotherapy targets the subconscious drive behind the addiction, and breaks the positive associations with cigarettes that the mind has formed. This is replaced by an empowering, smoke-free perspective the hypnotist offers through verbal suggestions that deem smoking as something undesirable – or unnecessary – to do. Gradually, these suggestions take hold and diminish the smoker’s impulse to smoke. Furthermore, hypnotherapy is considered to be a far more safe and natural method to quit smoking with and is non-habit forming. This cannot be said about most of the stop smoking aids we currently have on the market.


But going to a hypnotist can be expensive. As much as $200 per one hour session, and requiring as many as 5 sessions for the entire treatment. If you’re a celebrity like the ones mentioned earlier, then this isn’t a problem. But can the average smoker afford to go to a hypnotherapist? Well, that question is left to the individual, but consider that a pack a day smoker will spend in excess of $2000 a year on cigarettes, not even including the increased cost of life and health insurance, and doesn’t include the drastic cut in your ability to earn.