I had my first cigarette when I was 18. Heartbroken after being dumped, and on a night out in Lincolnshire, my friend encouraged me to cut loose by ‘just having a fag’.
With my heart in tatters, and my mind groggy from the sugary cocktails served at the nightclub, I agreed against my better judgement.
But it was far from love at first taste. I found it disgusting. The lingering tang of ash, the smell of smoke in my fingers and hair, the latter of which had to be fervently scrubbed away to avoid my mum catching a whiff the next day.
‘How can anyone possibly do this for fun?’ I scoffed, naively convinced it would be the first and the last time I ever smoked. But it was the first in what would become thousands. Fast forward eight years, and I can safely say that I’m addicted to nicotine.
Don’t misconstrue that as a boast. It’s not a habit I enjoy, far from it. I’ve tried vapes, singed my gums with nicotine pouches and easily demolished two dozen packets of nicotine gum all in a bid to break the addiction.
Chuffing through a pack of cigarettes a week, mostly on nights out, before topping up the addiction with nicotine pouches during the day, I finally thought enough was enough – and that I needed to take firm action to kick the bad habit.
As luck would have it, soon after this epiphany an email dropped into my inbox inviting people to try hypnotherapy, which dates back to the late 18th century, to overcome cravings.
For £415, psychotherapist and hypnotherapist Dr Krissie Ivings of Aspire Lifestyle, in Buxton, promises to help people kick their smoking habits thanks to an hour and a half assessment followed by a two-hour quitting session. A further two follow-up sessions, aimed at helping prevent relapse, cost £95 each.
But could I really be hypnotised out of a dependency I’d had for nearly a decade? It was worth a try.
Within a few days, two meetings had been organised. The first would involve being hypnotised to form positive beliefs about the decision to quit smoking, and the second would be the day I quit.
Meeting over Zoom, as per Dr Krissie’s preference, we had our first session, where she explained the reasons that most people fail to quit smoking.
Many will take a ‘white knuckle approach,’ she said, which relies on willpower to push through cravings and simply try to overcome them – yet there’s little evidence to show this works, according to the expert, simply because it’s very difficult.
‘Most people give up on giving up,’ said Dr Krissie. ‘Successful quitting isn’t just about putting down cigarettes. It’s about changing the way you think about smoking.
‘Instead of thinking like a smoker deprived of a reward, you learn to think like a non-smoker – someone free from the control of nicotine.’
Using the image of a cartoon she called ‘Nitch’, she put into perspective what my addiction was. ‘Nitch stands for nicotine, irritating, time-consuming, controlling, and horrible,’ she said, calling it a ‘pesky toddler-type creature’ that lives in the minds of addicts.
‘Nitch will make you go out and get cigarettes in the pouring rain just to make him happy,’ she said – and she was right. I had done exactly that on countless occasions. I was smoking come rain or shine.
She spent more than half of the first session outlining the horrors of smoking, much of which I knew only too well after years of anti-smoking lessons at school, not to mention the horrific images plastered over the front of cigarette packets.
Dr Krissie then peppered me with questions about my habits, trying to better understand why exactly it was that I kept turning to nicotine.
My belief – that puffing on a cigarette on a night out, or slyly slipping in a nicotine pouch to calm me down – was challenged as part of that.
‘If you want a change of scenery, there’s nothing to stop you doing it, you don’t actually have to have a cigarette,’ she said after I’d explained why I like smoking, which is sometimes simply to get a change of scenery from a sweaty club or bar.
‘You’re allowed to break up your day and have interesting conversations with new people without nicotine,’ she added.
After this, she then directed me to the hypnotherapy part of the session, at which point, having never been hypnotised, I was nervous.
Would I forget where I was? Be indoctrinated, or leave the room barking like a dog? I wondered what would happen while ‘under the spell’.
Over Zoom, I listened from my phone as Dr Krissie instructed me to focus my eyes on the top of my head.
Besides feeling somewhat foolish, I struggled to hold my focus, and so she told me to imagine a bright white light in my eyes to better induce the hypnosis.
Counting down from five, and encouraging me to imagine I was walking down a staircase, Dr Krissie then informed me that I was ‘in a state of hypnosis’.
‘Am I?’ I thought. It felt more like I was sitting in a room by myself with my eyes closed. Perhaps a people pleaser, I obligingly kept my eyes closed and tried to focus on Dr Krissie’s words, which were mostly softly spoken affirmations about my desire to quit smoking.
While very relaxing, it was far from what I imagined from Hollywood scenes of spinning saucer eyes and total zombification. I left the first session feeling confused and not especially hopeful.
In preparation for my ‘quit date’ in two days time, she told me to prepare by removing smoking paraphernalia from my spaces, but said I could keep smoking, as long as it wasn’t done so alongside a nice activity.
Rather than sharing a cigarette over a natter with a friend, I was told to walk away from social smokes and treat it only as a practical way to satisfy the addiction.
So I did that. I made sure all my nicotine consumption was made as bland as possible in the run up to the ‘quit date’.
When the day arrived, I was nervous and apprehensive again. Dr Krissie put me in two states of hypnosis over the hour-long session, the first time offering me positive affirmations that would encourage me to quit.
Then, during the second, she told me to imagine a fork in the road. One path led to ‘freedom’, and the other led to ‘dependency’. She invited me to imagine what my life would look like in either scenario, either continuing to feed the habit or permanently severing my ties with nicotine.
I had to make a decision. Of course, in the circumstances, there was only one right answer. ‘I choose the path of freedom,’ I had to say, aloud, while tucked away in a pod, acutely aware that my colleagues could be walking past, assuming I’d gone mad.
Again, though, my experience of hypnosis was far from what I had imagined. Although relaxed, I’m not convinced I was any more impressionable than if I had just closed my eyes and listened to a podcast.
‘You’re now a non-smoker,’ she said, further cementing the pledge I’d just made and assuring me that my ‘path to freedom’ was definite.
At the end of the session, she asked when my next ‘temptation’ was likely to be, and offered to call me beforehand to help me practice techniques to avoid relapsing.
I told her it would be a night out with friends, when the typical whiff of booze and a flick of the lighter had previously led me to smoke.
I passed up the offer, but made sure to read through her note outlining methods for ‘saying no’.
Overall, my impressions of the treatment were mixed. Though an encouraging voice, I’m not convinced I experienced any hypnotic benefits, despite Dr Krissie’s soothing voice of reason.
A lesson in why smoking is bad, yes, but a solution promising minimal effort and the mystical powers of hypnosis? I’m not so sure.
Much to my disappointment, it only took a few days and a series of pints to see my habit ricocheting back.
Hearing Dr Krissie’s voice in my head as I lit the end of my cigarette, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt after all her incredible efforts to rewire my hankering for nicotine.
Sadly, the voice urging me to light up, both in my head and from friends, was too hard to ignore and I ended up making my way through several that night alone.
Three weeks later, and things are not much better. I still smoke after a drink, and if the day’s been hard, I won’t put up much of a fight to resist indulging in the craving.
While my consumption has arguably reduced, it’s hard to tell whether this is the mesmerising effects of hypnosis or merely the circumstances.
I always knew smoking was ‘bad for you’ and something I should try to quit, and though motivating, the experience certainly didn’t alter my brain chemistry or, sadly, make the habit less appealing.
For a hard smoker willing to invest time, willpower, and some serious effort, it might be the right call. But if you’re hoping for a quick fix or a magic wand, hypnosis alone probably won’t make you quit.
