Great American Smokeout

I've been meaning to write about clinical hypnosis for a number of months now. My intention was to write this to correspond with the The Great American Smokeout. That was on November 17th. So while I'm a bit belated, I wanted to recognize the day. Since the first Smokeout on November 16th 1977, the American Cancer Society has worked toward helping American's quit smoking for good.

I'll do my part to help. Will you do your's? 

Why am I interested in helping people stop smoking? 

• Inhaled cigarette smoke is made up of 4,000 chemicals, including cyanide, benzene, ammonia and carbon monoxide.
• Second-hand smoke causes almost 50,000 deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year, including approximately 3,400 from lung cancer and as many as 69,000 from heart disease.
• 44.3 percent of all cigarettes in American are consumed by individuals who live with mental illness and/or substance abuse disorders.
• Smoking skills about 200,000 people who live with mental illness.

Here are the facts:

Tobacco use remains the single largest preventable cause of disease and premature death in the US, yet more than 45 million Americans still smoke cigarettes. However, more than half of these smokers have attempted to quit for at least one day in the past year. As of 2010, there were also 5.2 million cigar smokers in the US, and 2.2 million who smoke tobacco in pipes.

So for those of you who fall into the 22,500,000 Americans who have tried quitting for at least one day in the past year, I'd like to offer you a little help. Clinical hypnosis is a psychotherapeutic tool that can be used to activate under used resources, aptitudes, and skills in the service of accomplishing a particular goal. Hypnosis elicits the relaxation response. Additionally, this practice assists in turning the mind away from habitual patterns of response toward new and creative ways of problem solving. It is a state associated with selective wakefulness, controlled dissociation, diminished capacity for self-criticism, and increased suggestibility. Hypnosis ins not associated with giving up control, being controlled, or giving away control.

Can hypnosis help you stop smoking? It's important to understand that as with all types of therapies, hypnosis is a highly effective tool for some patients with some problems. However, like all types of therapies, it also fails some patients with some problems.

Here are some facts.

• A study published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research showed hypnotherapy to be as effective as standard behavioral counseling when combined with nicotine patches in helping smokers to quit and stay off cigarettes for one year.
• Hypnosis, health education, and behaior modification are each effective programs for changing cigarette smoking and each is equally effective in this regard.
• The single-session hypnosis group smoked significantly less cigarettes and were significantly more abstinent than a placebo control group.

Interested in using clinical hypnosis to stop smoking? Reach out to me. We can schedule an appointment (I meet with people three times over approximately six weeks for smoking cessation). If you'd like to schedule an appointment with someone else, I can help you with that, too.