Smoking Cessation: Hypnosis or Drugs?

[Don]

Here is yet another reason to prefer hypnotherapy over drug therapy, in this case for smoking cessation:

"NEW YORK — The Food and Drug Administration will require two smoking-cessation drugs, Chantix and Zyban, to carry the agency's strongest safety warning over side effects including depression and suicidal thoughts...

"Pfizer had already updated its labeling following the beginning of an FDA investigation into the potential side effects in 2007. That investigation was sparked by reports of about 37 suicides and more than 400 of suicidal behavior [i.e., probably attempted suicide that failed] in connection with the drug.

"In February 2008, the FDA said the connection between Chantix and serious psychiatric problems was increasingly likely, though the company had already updated the label to reflect the potential side effects."

For the full article see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/01/chantix-zyban-issued-suic_n_224217.html

Print out and post in your office.

[Poodle]

is that Chantix is an OLD drug that just has trotted out a new name. Didn't work then so why in heavens name would it work now unless one really wants to have psychiatric problems that is.

I've heard there is a shortage of psychiatrists in the USA. Maybe this is the drug company's way of helping out by creating an overloaded patient load so more Docs specialize in psychiatry.

Speaking of drugs, the news where I live is that meth is now about dead or at least on it's very last leg here. We have not gained anything tho as it has been replaced by coc which seems to be doing a lot of very severe damage as in deaths of innocents and of those that take it OD'ing and also using it with tons of alcohol which results in death.

Some words of an old Kingston Trio song come to mind: When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Pood~drinking a "coke" as "in the real thing baby :)

[master_debator]

Pood, what is coc?
is that Chantix is an OLD drug that just has trotted out a new name. Didn't work then so why in heavens name would it work now unless one really wants to have psychiatric problems that is.

I've heard there is a shortage of psychiatrists in the USA. Maybe this is the drug company's way of helping out by creating an overloaded patient load so more Docs specialize in psychiatry.

Speaking of drugs, the news where I live is that meth is now about dead or at least on it's very last leg here. We have not gained anything tho as it has been replaced by coc which seems to be doing a lot of very severe damage as in deaths of innocents and of those that take it OD'ing and also using it with tons of alcohol which results in death.

Some words of an old Kingston Trio song come to mind: When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Pood~drinking a "coke" as "in the real thing baby :)

[Five]

I have it from a lady who does "stop smoking" counciling that Nicotine is not addicting.
The habit is the addicting part, therefore fully a psychological problem.

[master_debator]

Personally I feel that it is a mixture of both. I smoke, so I feel that I can say that it is a mixture of both. I'm curious to know if this lady you speak of has ever smoked? - if not, this is akin to a lady who tries to tell people how to parent their kids when she in turn has none.

Just my thoughts

I have it from a lady who does "stop smoking" counciling that Nicotine is not addicting.
The habit is the addicting part, therefore fully a psychological problem.

[Poodle]

Tobacco products are full of sugars and juices. This in and of itself can make them very difficult to stop as some people can actually go hypoglycemic from the cessation. I believe the government in the USA is having all of this removed which in itself will cause many people to stop on their own.

The most the nicotine does is to give a very short endorphin in the brain. They feel GOOD. There are other ways to get them that are healthy.

Yes, tobacco products become a habit and as we all know habits are in the realm of the innermind.

In essence we are dealing with more than one single thing and if our client believes that patches or gum work, fine -- go along with their beliefs. We need to realize our clients know much more about what they are doing than we ever will. THE CLIENT IS NEVER WRONG EVEN WHEN TOTALLY WRONG!!

[master_debator]

Also I believe smoking may help to release vasopressin in the brain. I have heard somewhere that the release of vasopressin via nicotine can lead to the addictive qualities of smoking.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1307821
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/51/1/170?ck=nck

Tobacco products are full of sugars and juices. This in and of itself can make them very difficult to stop as some people can actually go hypoglycemic from the cessation. I believe the government in the USA is having all of this removed which in itself will cause many people to stop on their own.

The most the nicotine does is to give a very short endorphin in the brain. They feel GOOD. There are other ways to get them that are healthy.

Yes, tobacco products become a habit and as we all know habits are in the realm of the innermind.

In essence we are dealing with more than one single thing and if our client believes that patches or gum work, fine -- go along with their beliefs. We need to realize our clients know much more about what they are doing than we ever will. THE CLIENT IS NEVER WRONG EVEN WHEN TOTALLY WRONG!!

[Don]

Respectfully, did you even read the two reports you gave URLs for?

The first is about cats tortured...I mean injected with nicotine. The second says that smoking may cause a release of Vasopressin while injected does not which suggests "the presence of an airway-specific mechanism for vasopressin release."

So if I could inject you with 50 pounds of nicotine and it doesn't release vasopressin, but just inhaling a tiny amount seems to have an effect, doesn't that imply to you that something else is going on?

[skip]

OK guys lets get real here.

Smoking isnt addictive. Neither is alcohol. Nor is Opium.

Got your attention yet?

It isnt the substance, it is your response, or the 'effect' you experience that is addictive.

We smoke or drink or do 'crack' because we want to feel the way we feel when we do these things.

And that effect can be the one when you have the substance, (high) or the one when you dont, (withdrawal) or both.

When you percieve it this way, the substance is pretty much irrelevent, at least in theory, because it is the effect that is at issue. And in practice if you can duplicate the effect without the substance, the substance itsself does in fact become irrelevent.

That is mostly why patches, and the nicotine thingies you suck on, dont work for most people. They dont trigger the effect, (the whole enchelada) they only trigger the response to nicotine!

And that is because the nicotine isnt the issue for your body, it plays only a small part in the 'effect'.

So find out what they experience when they smoke. forget what the 'scientific web site' says about endorphines and such. (It doesnt matter unless you want to know the science behind some of the effect)

See each persons 'effect' is going to be different, and different at different times. And that is what you must supply if you want them to quit easily.

Now if you elicit and then supply the 'effect' your clients will quit buying and lighting up cigaretts easily and happily. They havent exactly quit smoking. Well technically they have, but they are still enjoying the reponses. And who knows they might still contract lung cancer.


OR

Conversely you could offer them something they value more instead.

And their 'quitting' wont be quite as easy, beacuse they will miss the 'effect'. But it will be satisfying, so much so, that they will happily make the continuing choice, time after time, to abstain. and will likely gain weight, because they will seek other avenues to re-create the 'effect' or some simblance of it.

Nothing is addictive and everything is addictive.

There is a bunch out in California who claim that oxygen is unnecesary, we are just addicted. I carry a plastic trash bag around with me, just in case I run into one of them, so we can test that theory.

Hope the withdrawal isnt too serious.

skip

[Don]

I actually new a guy named Wiley Brooks. He owned the studio in which I was recording an album. He was very slender and said he was a "breatharian."

His basic idea was that we could get by and thrive by eating less and less until we needed no food at all. The idea behind this was that food provides energy and we could get all the energy we needed from the sun and through the breath.

I thought this was rather silly at the time. It's true that recent studies show that we can live longer by consuming fewer calories, but food provides much more than energy.

Still, his ideas were fascinating and I wanted to learn more until I saw one of his followers eating some Hostess Suzi-Qs.

BTW, during my NLP training one person did some work with me changing submodalities so that I wouldn't want one of my personal vices, Hostess cream-filled cupcakes.

I haven't eaten or even desired one since.

Oh, and BTW, that cream stuff in Hostess products is made from
* Shortening (in the form of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and/or beef fat) is the main ingredient.
* Polysorbate 60 is a gooey substance that helps replace cream and eggs at a fraction of the cost. It's derived from corn, palm oil and petroleum.
* Cellulose gum gives the crème filling a smooth, slippery feel.
* Artificial vanillin is synthesized in petrochemical plants. The real thing comes from finicky tropical orchids that are pollinated by hand on the one day they bloom.

[Connie]

NLP is good stuff! I had a trigger (the smell of cinnabons in the mall--these intensely gooey, sugary, cinnamony cinnamon rolls--huge, probably 1200 calories each) which made me want cinnabons. Desperately! Led me to eat cinnabons.

Anyway, hubby ran a mind-bending language technique on me one day and I haven't eaten a cinnamon roll of any variety since. That same day, (we were in the mall when he did the intervention) I went up to the case of pastries and they did NOT even look appetizing. I didn't want them. And I still don't!