New Empowered You

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve shared what’s inside the book I co-authored with Freddy H Jacquin: what ni****ne addiction actually is, why smoking doesn’t relieve stress, what the smoking bans did (and didn’t) fix, and the 6-step protocol behind more than 25,000 successful quits.

“Mindset and Actions of a Quit Smoking Master Hypnotherapist: Changing Lives by Changing Minds” is available now on Amazon.

If you’re a hypnotherapist, it’s also the starting point for the full Training Manual and Masterclass.

Link in comments. And if you know a hypnotherapist who should read this, tag them below.

The smoking bans of 2004–2007 are a genuine public health success story and also a case study in why legislation alone doesn’t end dependence.

The wins were real: second-hand smoke exposure fell 80%+ almost overnight. Heart-attack admissions in Scotland dropped 17% in year one (Pell et al., NEJM 2008). Ireland saw acute coronary admissions fall 12%, then another 13% the following year. Childhood asthma admissions in England fell nearly 9% (Millett et al., Pediatrics 2013).

But cigarette smoking and ni****ne use aren’t the same thing. As smoking rates fell, va**ng rose to fill the gap. UK adult ni****ne use today is roughly 15–16%.

Freddy Jacquin watched this unfold directly: his group sessions, which used to draw up to 200 smokers, dropped to 17 attendees almost overnight when the ban took effect.

The line from the book stays with me: “The smoking ban cleared the air. The deeper work remains clearing the mind.”

Full analysis and citations in the new book available on Amazon.

***coControl

Ni****ne is a stimulant. It raises heart rate and blood pressure and triggers the release of adrenaline. Its half-life is roughly two hours, so withdrawal symptoms begin within hours of the last cigarette. The next one doesn’t create calm, but it switches off the withdrawal the previous one caused.

Pew Research data bear this out: half of smokers report frequent stress, versus 35% of former smokers and 31% of people who’ve never smoked. And a BMJ/Cochrane meta-analysis found that quitting improves depression, anxiety, and stress.

There’s a nuance worth knowing, too: studies show even ni****ne-free ci******es ease withdrawal symptoms. The ritual itself (the hand-to-mouth motion, the pause) is doing real psychological work. Useful to know when you’re building replacement behaviors with a client.

More in the new book, co-authored with Freddy H Jacquin and available on Amazon.

****neWithdrawal

Is ni****ne an addiction? Yes — but probably not for the reason you think.

Under DSM-5-TR and ICD-11, To***co Use Disorder meets the same diagnostic criteria as opioid or alcohol dependence: craving, tolerance, withdrawal, continued use despite harm. Clinically, it’s real.

But here’s what the research also shows: most of smoking’s harm comes from combustion: tar, carbon monoxide, nitrosamines — not ni****ne itself. And ni****ne withdrawal is mild-to-moderate: uncomfortable, but nowhere near as dangerous as opioid or severe alcohol withdrawal.

Lifetime transition-to-dependence rates for ni****ne run 32–67% (Anthony et al., 1994; Lopez-Quintero et al., 2011) — high, but ni****ne has also been legal and socially normalized for a century, which inflates that number relative to restricted substances.

The conclusion I keep coming back to: ni****ne dependence is pharmacologically real, but it’s sustained by learned associations and identity, the “smoker” or “vaper” self-image, as much as by chemistry. That’s exactly the terrain hypnotherapy works in.

Full references in the new book, co-authored with Freddy H Jacquin.
The book is available on Amazon.

****neDependence ***coUseDisorder

I’ve just co-authored a book with Freddy Jacquin, a renowned hypnotherapist who has personally helped more than 25,000 people quit smoking.

Freddy H Jacquin has spent 30 years refining a smoking-cessation protocol, helping roughly 5,000 people in 2006 alone. “Mindset and Actions of a Quit Smoking Master Hypnotherapist: Changing Lives by Changing Minds” is what helped his clients succeed, and I contributed three research annexes that ground his clinical experience in the pharmacology and psychology literature:
Is ni****ne really addictive,
Does smoking relieve stress, and
What actually happened after the smoking bans?

Over the next few posts, I’ll share what’s in those annexes because the answers surprised even me.

The book is available now on Amazon.

***coDependence

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