Here's an audio interview with a client of mine (Heather) who used my program to stop smoking with hypnosis. A lot of your questions may be answered herein... as Heather talks about her experiences not only with hypnotherapy, but also her attempts to quit by using the patch, nicotine gum, laser therapy and even cold turkey.
As of the recording of this interview, she'd been successful for about a week shy of eight months, and she's one of my biggest sources of referrals, having sent me friends and others for smoking cessation and other issues as well.
So take a listen, and find out what it's like to be hypnotized, how it feels immediately following your initial session, what it's like to be around smokers after you've quit (and after having a couple drinks), and much more.
Enjoy.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Milton Erickson: The Father of Modern Hypnotherapy
When I first began studying hypnosis, I quickly grabbed every book by Milton Erickson I could find. Reading these works was incredibly exciting. His methods and the results he achieved were nothing short of remarkable.
Anyone interested in hypnosis should take a little time and get to know who this man was. Without him, it's my opinion that hypnotherapy wouldn't be anywhere near as readily available (and it certainly wouldn't be as effective) as it is today.
Milton Henry Erickson, MD (1901 - 1980) was a psychiatrist and psychologist regarded by many as the foremost practitioner of medical hypnosis in his time.
He wrote "Hypnotic Realities
He was a scientist and deeply gifted hypnotist.
He was founding president of the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis, as well as a fellow of several APAs: The American Psychiatric Association, The American Psychological Association, and The American Psychopathological Association.
He was noted for his often unconventional approach to psychotherapy, such as described in the book “Uncommon Therapy
Erickson’s work and techniques were 'modeled' by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the co-founders of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).
For a very in-depth look at Erickson, written by Jay Haley while Erickson was still alive, click here.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Chantix Suicide Lawsuit
I will continue to post stories like this as they emerge. The bottom line is that, even if the percentage of people who die as a result of taking Chantix is small, every single death is completely unnecessary. You'd be better off continuing to smoke cigarettes than to take these far more potent and dangerous pharmaceutical concoctions.
More than enough methods are available to stop smoking that have absolutely no harmful side-effects. Although I recommend hypnosis before any other method, I'd recommend anything other than pharmaceuticals (Chantix, Champix, Wellbutrin). The top of the list would have to be hypnotherapy and acupuncture. These methods should be attempted before any other because they're absolutely safe.
What you are beginning to see in regard to Chantix is only the tip of the iceberg. These cases tend to remain buried until the first one bursts through; others quickly emerge. You have to wonder if it's only a matter of time before we see a story like this about Chantix:
$894 million deal ends Pfizer's lawsuits over Celebrex, Bextra
If you wonder how drugs like these get approved in the first place, here's another headline:
Lawsuit claims Pfizer massaged Neurontin studies
Wed Oct 8, 2008 6:50am EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc tried to suppress medical studies that did not support the use of its epilepsy drug Neurontin, internal Pfizer documents submitted in a U.S. lawsuit against the company showed.
The documents suggest that Pfizer's marketers influenced Neurontin's scientific record to boost sales at least until 2003 by delaying the publication or altering the conclusions of studies that had found no evidence the drug worked for various conditions besides epilepsy.
Remember this headline, from USA Today, back in 2005?
Pfizer faces a barrage of lawsuits
Here's another from June of 2005:
Federal Judge Rejects Pfizer’s Efforts to Dismiss Zoloft-Suicide Lawsuit
Minneapolis, Minnesota - - On July 20, 2005 United States Chief District Court Judge, James M. Rosenbaum rejected Pfizer’s effort to dismiss Kimberly Witczak’s Zoloft-suicide lawsuit. Mrs. Witczak asserts that Zoloft induced her husband, Timothy (“Woody”) Witczak, to commit suicide after suffering severe adverse reactions to the drug. Mrs. Witczak claims that Pfizer fraudulently marketed Zoloft as safe and effective and failed to provide warnings about Zoloft’s propensity to induce suicidality, despite Pfizer’s knowledge of the risk, as evidenced by internal memoranda and studies obtained through discovery. [my emphasis]
In an effort to prevent this evidence from reaching a jury, Pfizer sought to dismiss the case, arguing that Mrs. Witczak’s state law claims are "preempted" by federal law. Pfizer argued that, since the FDA approved Zoloft and did not, until recently, require a warning about suicide risk, any lawsuit blaming Pfizer for failing to warn about the risk is legally impermissible.
Suicides, side-effects and lawsuits are not the exception - they're commonplace. Because of their history and track record, pharmaceutical drugs, particularly those that affect you psychologically, should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. These companies (Pfizer, Merck, etc.) have shown repeatedly that the bottom line is more important to them than the well-being of the public.
Here are the first few paragraphs from the article about Chantix suicide. Click the link below for the full story.
Widow Sues Pfizer Over Chantix Suicide
By Ed Silverman // July 10th, 2008 // 12:43 pm
On January 3, David Collins killed himself with a shotgun, three months after he began taking Chantix, Pfizer’s controversial smoking-cessation pill. Now, his widow, Linda, has filed what may be the first product-liability lawsuit against the drugmaker over Chantix side effects and an alleged failure to provide sufficient warnings. And her lawyer predicts many more such lawsuits are on the way.
In her lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Indianapolis, Collins claims Pfizer failed to adequately study Chantix; delayed publication of studies containing Chantix risk info; failed to update Chantix labeling sooner, and denied Chantix is explicity to blame for suicide by instead suggesting such behavior may be the result of nicotine withdrawal. Here is the lawsuit.
“The magnitude of the safety signal associated with the risk is alarming,” Kristian Rasmussen, one of Collins’ lawyers, tells us. Prior to the suicide, David Collins exhibited aggression and had strange dreams, but had no history of mental illness. Pfizer has been criticized for not including people with mental illness in its clinical trials, because the drug causes neuropsychiatric side effects.
You may recall the FDA, last February, issued a health advisory about Chantix concerning ties to the side effects, shortly after Pfizer upgraded the labeling. At the time, the FDA reported 39 suicides and 491 cases of suicidal behavior or thoughts.
full article: http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/07/widow-sues-pfizer-over-chantix-suicide/
More than enough methods are available to stop smoking that have absolutely no harmful side-effects. Although I recommend hypnosis before any other method, I'd recommend anything other than pharmaceuticals (Chantix, Champix, Wellbutrin). The top of the list would have to be hypnotherapy and acupuncture. These methods should be attempted before any other because they're absolutely safe.
What you are beginning to see in regard to Chantix is only the tip of the iceberg. These cases tend to remain buried until the first one bursts through; others quickly emerge. You have to wonder if it's only a matter of time before we see a story like this about Chantix:
$894 million deal ends Pfizer's lawsuits over Celebrex, Bextra
If you wonder how drugs like these get approved in the first place, here's another headline:
Lawsuit claims Pfizer massaged Neurontin studies
Wed Oct 8, 2008 6:50am EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - Pfizer Inc tried to suppress medical studies that did not support the use of its epilepsy drug Neurontin, internal Pfizer documents submitted in a U.S. lawsuit against the company showed.
The documents suggest that Pfizer's marketers influenced Neurontin's scientific record to boost sales at least until 2003 by delaying the publication or altering the conclusions of studies that had found no evidence the drug worked for various conditions besides epilepsy.
Remember this headline, from USA Today, back in 2005?
Pfizer faces a barrage of lawsuits
Here's another from June of 2005:
Federal Judge Rejects Pfizer’s Efforts to Dismiss Zoloft-Suicide Lawsuit
Minneapolis, Minnesota - - On July 20, 2005 United States Chief District Court Judge, James M. Rosenbaum rejected Pfizer’s effort to dismiss Kimberly Witczak’s Zoloft-suicide lawsuit. Mrs. Witczak asserts that Zoloft induced her husband, Timothy (“Woody”) Witczak, to commit suicide after suffering severe adverse reactions to the drug. Mrs. Witczak claims that Pfizer fraudulently marketed Zoloft as safe and effective and failed to provide warnings about Zoloft’s propensity to induce suicidality, despite Pfizer’s knowledge of the risk, as evidenced by internal memoranda and studies obtained through discovery. [my emphasis]
In an effort to prevent this evidence from reaching a jury, Pfizer sought to dismiss the case, arguing that Mrs. Witczak’s state law claims are "preempted" by federal law. Pfizer argued that, since the FDA approved Zoloft and did not, until recently, require a warning about suicide risk, any lawsuit blaming Pfizer for failing to warn about the risk is legally impermissible.
Suicides, side-effects and lawsuits are not the exception - they're commonplace. Because of their history and track record, pharmaceutical drugs, particularly those that affect you psychologically, should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. These companies (Pfizer, Merck, etc.) have shown repeatedly that the bottom line is more important to them than the well-being of the public.
Here are the first few paragraphs from the article about Chantix suicide. Click the link below for the full story.
Widow Sues Pfizer Over Chantix Suicide
By Ed Silverman // July 10th, 2008 // 12:43 pm
On January 3, David Collins killed himself with a shotgun, three months after he began taking Chantix, Pfizer’s controversial smoking-cessation pill. Now, his widow, Linda, has filed what may be the first product-liability lawsuit against the drugmaker over Chantix side effects and an alleged failure to provide sufficient warnings. And her lawyer predicts many more such lawsuits are on the way.
In her lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Indianapolis, Collins claims Pfizer failed to adequately study Chantix; delayed publication of studies containing Chantix risk info; failed to update Chantix labeling sooner, and denied Chantix is explicity to blame for suicide by instead suggesting such behavior may be the result of nicotine withdrawal. Here is the lawsuit.
“The magnitude of the safety signal associated with the risk is alarming,” Kristian Rasmussen, one of Collins’ lawyers, tells us. Prior to the suicide, David Collins exhibited aggression and had strange dreams, but had no history of mental illness. Pfizer has been criticized for not including people with mental illness in its clinical trials, because the drug causes neuropsychiatric side effects.
You may recall the FDA, last February, issued a health advisory about Chantix concerning ties to the side effects, shortly after Pfizer upgraded the labeling. At the time, the FDA reported 39 suicides and 491 cases of suicidal behavior or thoughts.
full article: http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/07/widow-sues-pfizer-over-chantix-suicide/
Friday, June 13, 2008
Viva La Trance
Coldplay has a new album out next week, and in a new article it’s revealed that they hired a hypnotist to help them while creating “Viva La Vida” in the studio.
Here’s an excerpt from Entertainment Weekly:
Q: And you also hired a hypnotist during the sessions? What was that about?
BUCKLAND: [Producer] Brian Eno knew a hypnotist and we thought it might get some interesting results. We all went upstairs, sat down, and he walked around us. He got us into some strange kind of trance, and we came down and played some more.
MARTIN: Quite a long time, I think. It did work, actually. We came up with a lot of interesting noises, which we used. I think the whole process of getting our own place and working with Brian has been really liberating for us. Because it was starting to become a little difficult to be in Coldplay — there's so much opinion, expectation, and criticism. We wanted to be free from that for a bit, to try things and just be a little group, which Brian really spearheaded. So things like the hypnotism, all these little crazy experiments that he tried with us was just an effort to say, ''It's OK. Not everybody hates you because you're in Coldplay. Just play some music and don't worry about it.''
Other famous people known to have used hypnosis include Matt Damon, Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson, Tiger Woods, Jimmy Connors, Rod Carew, George Brett, Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone, Jackie Kennedy-Onassis, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein.
For a full list, see this page on my official website.
Here’s an excerpt from Entertainment Weekly:
Q: And you also hired a hypnotist during the sessions? What was that about?
BUCKLAND: [Producer] Brian Eno knew a hypnotist and we thought it might get some interesting results. We all went upstairs, sat down, and he walked around us. He got us into some strange kind of trance, and we came down and played some more.
MARTIN: Quite a long time, I think. It did work, actually. We came up with a lot of interesting noises, which we used. I think the whole process of getting our own place and working with Brian has been really liberating for us. Because it was starting to become a little difficult to be in Coldplay — there's so much opinion, expectation, and criticism. We wanted to be free from that for a bit, to try things and just be a little group, which Brian really spearheaded. So things like the hypnotism, all these little crazy experiments that he tried with us was just an effort to say, ''It's OK. Not everybody hates you because you're in Coldplay. Just play some music and don't worry about it.''
Other famous people known to have used hypnosis include Matt Damon, Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson, Tiger Woods, Jimmy Connors, Rod Carew, George Brett, Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone, Jackie Kennedy-Onassis, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein.
For a full list, see this page on my official website.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Why is Hypnosis Still Obscure? Think Green.
I went through the first 26 years of my life without learning anything significant about hypnosis. I’ll spare you the story of how I first got into it, but I was certainly skeptical at first. I figured anything useful or effective would naturally be known about and widespread by now. I mean, duh… if hypnosis is so freakin’ great, why isn’t everyone doing it?
First of all, many people are doing it, but not nearly enough have even heard much about it.
There are many reasons why hypnosis still remains on the fringe. One answer is fear. People fear the unknown. They fear being controlled. They fear feeling stupid for being taken in by a scam.
Another reason is that there isn’t much money in curing people through hypnosis. Sure, there are hypnotherapists who make a decent living for themselves, but that’s nothing compared to the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry, which is based upon the assumption that only drugs can “fix” us, and that we, as humans, are ultimately powerless.
The top ten pharmaceutical companies earn more money per year than the other 490 Fortune 500 companies combined. You see, there is BIG money to be made by convincing people that they are powerless to help themselves.
Just watching the commercials during the evening news will “inform” you of two important things:
1) You have lots of problems.
2) A powerful new drug can help you.
Are you depressed? Try this powerful new anti-depressant! Can’t sleep? We have a great drug for that, too! Problems with erectile dysfunction? We’ve got you covered! Allergies? You betcha!
Take a look at “Big Bucks, Big Pharma” below. This is only part one, so visit YouTube to view the remaining portion of this informative video.
Also, check out this interview with Gwen Olsen, a former pharmaceutical sales rep and author of “Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher,” a book revealing her experiences not only as a member of the industry, but also as someone who took dangerous anti-depressants herself. Also check out Prescription: Suicide?, a documentary based in part on her experiences.
And by the way, if you’re wondering why you don’t hear too much about hypnosis on the news, just imagine how thrilled the drugs companies would be if, just after running an expensive commercial for Lunesta, CNN aired a story about how you can sleep easily and naturally after a few sessions of hypnosis.
Just a thought you may wish to consider...
Heck, women in the United States can’t even give birth to a child without going to the hospital and getting injected with a chemical cocktail. Even though women have been giving birth since, well, forever... they have been hypnotized by our society to believe that a hospital is the only safe place to bring a child into the world.
Here’s a trailer for “The Business of Being Born,” an excellent documentary about the state of the birthing industry in America.
Is there nothing we can do on our own?
You have a problem? Chances are there’s a fancy new drug out there that’ll make it go away.
Of course, there will be side effects to taking all these drugs, which are often far more serious than the problem being treated.
Furthermore, most pharmaceutical drugs have tested only slightly better than placebos! That’s a documented fact. In fact, the placebo issue has become so problematic for drug manufacturers that they are currently making efforts to exclude subjects who responded to placebos from future studies. How awful it would be if the public discovered that their new wonder drug was only 2% more effective than a sugar pill, not to mention the enormous financial expense and all the dangerous side-effects.
Sadly, many of today’s licensed psychiatrists have become more like glorified drug dealers. I have worked with many clients who had previously seen psychiatrists or other mental health professionals over a long period of time without experiencing any noticeable improvement. Maybe that’s because psychiatrists openly acknowledge that they can’t “cure” any mental illness (see video below).
The underlying message is that you need medical intervention to solve your problems. Now, is that empowering? Is that the kind of treatment that builds self-confidence or a sense of independence?
Of course not. But it is very difficult to sell people things they don’t need unless you first convince them that they actually do need it.
My message to my clients always boils down to this: you can do it. It may not come easily, but you can do it. You can find a better career. You can get back in shape. You can have fulfilling relationships. You can stop smoking, drinking, biting your nails and obsessing over trivial things.
You can do it and you can do it on your own. You may benefit from some guidance and good advice, but you don’t need to take a pill, and you don’t need a nose job or a tummy tuck to feel better about yourself.
That’s my message, and yes, I make a decent living by helping people understand it and change their lives for the better.
Hopefully by now you understand a bit more about why hypnosis, if it can be so powerful and effective, still isn’t as popular as McDonald’s or Starbucks.
Anyone who’s seen “Supersize Me” knows what a steady diet of McDonald’s will do to you, and that healthy, fresh foods are the way to go.
So maybe the fact that something is popular (or not) isn’t the most important thing when considering your options.
The truth is, you don’t even “need” hypnosis... but compared to the alternatives, it sure is a safer and far more reasonably-priced solution.
Keep that in mind, and keep that mind open.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Chantix Linked to Traffic Mishaps
This story from the Los Angeles Times illustrates yet another danger of taking Chantix for help with smoking cessation.
[More info about Chantix follows below story.]
Drug taken to stop smoking is linked to traffic mishaps
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
May 25, 2008
Daniel Williams decided he’d listen to his girlfriend and his 8-year-old son and finally quit smoking, with the help of a new prescription drug called Chantix. He started taking the medication, and a couple of nights later, as he was driving his pickup truck on a country road in Louisiana, Williams suddenly swerved left.
His girlfriend, Melinda Lofton, who was with him, later told him that his eyes had rolled back in his head and that it had seemed as if he was frozen at the wheel, accelerating. Moments later, they were in a bayou, struggling to escape the murky water, Williams said.
“Since I was a kid, never had anything like this ever happened before,” he said. “It never happened before, and it hasn’t happened since. And all the tests I’ve taken say I have nothing wrong with me at all.”
The nonprofit Institute for Safe Medication Practices last week linked Chantix to more than two dozen highway accidents reported to the Food and Drug Administration, saying the mishaps may have resulted from such drug side effects as seizures.
Williams said he was considering suing Pfizer. His lawyer, Kristian Rasmussen of Birmingham, Ala., said he was aware of at least one other Chantix accident, involving a deliveryman who fell out of a moving truck.
Click here for the full story at the L.A. Times.
----------
This is merely one of the dangerous side-effects that Pfizer (the drug company that produces Chantix) failed to inform the public about. Here are some of the negative side-effects that Pfizer openly admits:
"I swallowed my first pill the next day before work... by the time I was halfway to the office, I started to feel a slight nausea coming on."
"By night four, my dreams began to take on characteristics of a David Cronenberg movie. Every time I’d drift off, I’d dream that an invisible, malevolent entity was emanating from my air conditioner... I’d nap for twenty minutes or so before bolting awake with an involuntary gasp."
"The most unsettling thing about sleeping on Chantix is that I never felt like I was truly asleep. Some part of me remained on guard. It was more like lucid dreaming, what I thought it might feel like to be hypnotized. And it didn’t entirely go away come morning. As I showered, shaved, and scrambled into clothes, I tried to shake a weird, paranoid sense that I’d just been psychically raped by a household appliance."
"For me, self-destructive fantasies began cropping up as cartoonish flights of fantasy—nagging chatter that became a little more concrete with every passing day."
"One afternoon... I began to wonder how I had succeeded in fooling myself that my life had any sort of value at all. Writing? Sure, it was what I’d wanted to do since I was 6—but at the end of the day, who cared? Maybe I should just go downstairs and leap in front of a tour bus. Or launch my head through the computer screen. All this seemed logical, but also weirdly funny, even at the time: I could see how crazy these impulses were, I could recognize them as suicidal clichés. But I couldn’t make them go away."
"I’ve blacked out a handful of times before, but now it wasn’t unusual to have five or six hours completely wiped out of my memory. I’d wake up with my clothes on, music blasting, and strange half-eaten sandwiches lying on the floor that I had no recollection of buying."
So what are the benefits of taking Chantix? After all, some people do quit with it, right? From the article about the traffic mishaps, there is this woman who's been successful...
Kathy MacInnis, 44, of Kingston, Mass., said she had been smoking for more than 30 years and quit on New Year’s Day. “Without Chantix, I had never been able to quit,” she said. “It just put me in a calm place.”
Okay, so it makes you feel calm. This is important, because irritability, anxiety and nervousness are typically what smokers refer to as "cravings," so take away those feelings and the cravings can go away. But how many people are successful with Chantix, and for how long?
Pfizer boasted in commercials that 44% of people taking Chantix in studies hadn't smoked after 12 weeks. After a year, about 23% still hadn't taken a puff.
And who were the people who took part in those studies? From the NY Mag article...
A total of 3,659 people were handpicked for the Chantix tests before it came on the market, an almost equal number of men and women, with an average age of 43. Nearly all were white, and the tests excluded anyone with a history of depression, panic disorder, heart disease, kidney or liver problems, alcohol or drug abuse, and diabetes.
So, if you're thinking about taking Chantix, the benefit is that you have about a 23% chance of being successful, at least for a year... but only if you happen to be about 43 years old, white, have no history of mental or physical problems of any kind, and don't drink much alcohol.
The cost is the risk of nausea, constipation, headaches, gas, depression, disturbing dreams (aka "nightmares"), difficulty sleeping, suicidal thoughts and tendencies, and perhaps having a seizure and driving your car into a lake.
Continue to seek out more sensible and less risky alternatives to kicking the habit.
[More info about Chantix follows below story.]
Drug taken to stop smoking is linked to traffic mishaps
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
May 25, 2008
Daniel Williams decided he’d listen to his girlfriend and his 8-year-old son and finally quit smoking, with the help of a new prescription drug called Chantix. He started taking the medication, and a couple of nights later, as he was driving his pickup truck on a country road in Louisiana, Williams suddenly swerved left.
His girlfriend, Melinda Lofton, who was with him, later told him that his eyes had rolled back in his head and that it had seemed as if he was frozen at the wheel, accelerating. Moments later, they were in a bayou, struggling to escape the murky water, Williams said.
“Since I was a kid, never had anything like this ever happened before,” he said. “It never happened before, and it hasn’t happened since. And all the tests I’ve taken say I have nothing wrong with me at all.”
The nonprofit Institute for Safe Medication Practices last week linked Chantix to more than two dozen highway accidents reported to the Food and Drug Administration, saying the mishaps may have resulted from such drug side effects as seizures.
Williams said he was considering suing Pfizer. His lawyer, Kristian Rasmussen of Birmingham, Ala., said he was aware of at least one other Chantix accident, involving a deliveryman who fell out of a moving truck.
Click here for the full story at the L.A. Times.
----------
This is merely one of the dangerous side-effects that Pfizer (the drug company that produces Chantix) failed to inform the public about. Here are some of the negative side-effects that Pfizer openly admits:
- Nausea
- Sleep disorder
- Gas
- sleeplessness
- Constipation
- Headache
- Loss of taste
"I swallowed my first pill the next day before work... by the time I was halfway to the office, I started to feel a slight nausea coming on."
"By night four, my dreams began to take on characteristics of a David Cronenberg movie. Every time I’d drift off, I’d dream that an invisible, malevolent entity was emanating from my air conditioner... I’d nap for twenty minutes or so before bolting awake with an involuntary gasp."
"The most unsettling thing about sleeping on Chantix is that I never felt like I was truly asleep. Some part of me remained on guard. It was more like lucid dreaming, what I thought it might feel like to be hypnotized. And it didn’t entirely go away come morning. As I showered, shaved, and scrambled into clothes, I tried to shake a weird, paranoid sense that I’d just been psychically raped by a household appliance."
"For me, self-destructive fantasies began cropping up as cartoonish flights of fantasy—nagging chatter that became a little more concrete with every passing day."
"One afternoon... I began to wonder how I had succeeded in fooling myself that my life had any sort of value at all. Writing? Sure, it was what I’d wanted to do since I was 6—but at the end of the day, who cared? Maybe I should just go downstairs and leap in front of a tour bus. Or launch my head through the computer screen. All this seemed logical, but also weirdly funny, even at the time: I could see how crazy these impulses were, I could recognize them as suicidal clichés. But I couldn’t make them go away."
"I’ve blacked out a handful of times before, but now it wasn’t unusual to have five or six hours completely wiped out of my memory. I’d wake up with my clothes on, music blasting, and strange half-eaten sandwiches lying on the floor that I had no recollection of buying."
So what are the benefits of taking Chantix? After all, some people do quit with it, right? From the article about the traffic mishaps, there is this woman who's been successful...
Kathy MacInnis, 44, of Kingston, Mass., said she had been smoking for more than 30 years and quit on New Year’s Day. “Without Chantix, I had never been able to quit,” she said. “It just put me in a calm place.”
Okay, so it makes you feel calm. This is important, because irritability, anxiety and nervousness are typically what smokers refer to as "cravings," so take away those feelings and the cravings can go away. But how many people are successful with Chantix, and for how long?
Pfizer boasted in commercials that 44% of people taking Chantix in studies hadn't smoked after 12 weeks. After a year, about 23% still hadn't taken a puff.
And who were the people who took part in those studies? From the NY Mag article...
A total of 3,659 people were handpicked for the Chantix tests before it came on the market, an almost equal number of men and women, with an average age of 43. Nearly all were white, and the tests excluded anyone with a history of depression, panic disorder, heart disease, kidney or liver problems, alcohol or drug abuse, and diabetes.
So, if you're thinking about taking Chantix, the benefit is that you have about a 23% chance of being successful, at least for a year... but only if you happen to be about 43 years old, white, have no history of mental or physical problems of any kind, and don't drink much alcohol.
The cost is the risk of nausea, constipation, headaches, gas, depression, disturbing dreams (aka "nightmares"), difficulty sleeping, suicidal thoughts and tendencies, and perhaps having a seizure and driving your car into a lake.
Continue to seek out more sensible and less risky alternatives to kicking the habit.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Destroying Hypnosis Myths
“Are you going to make me cluck like a chicken?”
“Only if you want to.”
Let me tell you, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve had that exchange…
Here we are, forging our way into the 21st Century… we carry our ten thousand “favorite” songs around in our ipods, NASA is blasting probes into comets just as in those horrible (horrible) movies from 1998, scientists are able to clone anything that moves, and an overwhelming majority of the civilized world still thinks hypnosis is something that causes you to behave like a fool in public.
I’m here to bust up a few myths for all of you interested in gaining some enlightenment. Today...
MYTH #1: The hypnotist controls his subjects.
The Truth: The hypnotist’s subjects cooperate with him.
Stage hypnosis shows can be highly entertaining. Unfortunately, they also do a great job of convincing people to NEVER allow themselves to be “controlled” like those morons on stage. Truthfully, no one can be hypnotized against their will. One must willingly follow instructions to be hypnotized.
Once a person is relaxing in a nice, deep trance, those nervous feelings of self-consciousness can disappear for a while. Think about it… relaxation is the exact opposite of tension. You can’t be both at the same time. Once a person is relaxed, as long as the hypnotist doesn’t suggest anything that is against that person’s moral code (ex. “kill the guy sitting next to you”), they’re more or less willing to follow along.
Hypnosis loosens up inhibitions… almost like a couple of stiff drinks. The difference is that afterwards, instead of feeling worse, you feel great.
Context has a great impact on what a person will do in a trance. For example, if a client seeks my assistance to stop smoking, and in the middle of the session I throw in a suggestion that he’ll have a strong desire to wash my car on his way through the parking lot, he has the presence of mind to ignore that bogus suggestion (though I often wish it did work that way).
Those people on stage know they’re up there to have a good time. They know they’ll be asked to do strange things. Remember, they volunteered in the first place. They weren’t dragged from their seats and chained to the stage.
A hypnotized person arguably has more control than normal, since his mind is free from distractions and focused on the moment. At any time while hypnotized, he is able to awaken and return to a normal state of awareness. However, most people find that it just feels better to hang out in a trance for a while.
So remember, when you see a magic show it’s not really magic that’s happening up there... we all know that. In a hypnosis show, the illusion often being presented is that the all-powerful hypnotist controls his subjects like puppets on strings.
The truth is much less impressive, yet makes for an equally entertaining show.
“Only if you want to.”
Let me tell you, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve had that exchange…
Here we are, forging our way into the 21st Century… we carry our ten thousand “favorite” songs around in our ipods, NASA is blasting probes into comets just as in those horrible (horrible) movies from 1998, scientists are able to clone anything that moves, and an overwhelming majority of the civilized world still thinks hypnosis is something that causes you to behave like a fool in public.
I’m here to bust up a few myths for all of you interested in gaining some enlightenment. Today...
MYTH #1: The hypnotist controls his subjects.
The Truth: The hypnotist’s subjects cooperate with him.
Stage hypnosis shows can be highly entertaining. Unfortunately, they also do a great job of convincing people to NEVER allow themselves to be “controlled” like those morons on stage. Truthfully, no one can be hypnotized against their will. One must willingly follow instructions to be hypnotized.
Once a person is relaxing in a nice, deep trance, those nervous feelings of self-consciousness can disappear for a while. Think about it… relaxation is the exact opposite of tension. You can’t be both at the same time. Once a person is relaxed, as long as the hypnotist doesn’t suggest anything that is against that person’s moral code (ex. “kill the guy sitting next to you”), they’re more or less willing to follow along.
Hypnosis loosens up inhibitions… almost like a couple of stiff drinks. The difference is that afterwards, instead of feeling worse, you feel great.
Context has a great impact on what a person will do in a trance. For example, if a client seeks my assistance to stop smoking, and in the middle of the session I throw in a suggestion that he’ll have a strong desire to wash my car on his way through the parking lot, he has the presence of mind to ignore that bogus suggestion (though I often wish it did work that way).
Those people on stage know they’re up there to have a good time. They know they’ll be asked to do strange things. Remember, they volunteered in the first place. They weren’t dragged from their seats and chained to the stage.
A hypnotized person arguably has more control than normal, since his mind is free from distractions and focused on the moment. At any time while hypnotized, he is able to awaken and return to a normal state of awareness. However, most people find that it just feels better to hang out in a trance for a while.
So remember, when you see a magic show it’s not really magic that’s happening up there... we all know that. In a hypnosis show, the illusion often being presented is that the all-powerful hypnotist controls his subjects like puppets on strings.
The truth is much less impressive, yet makes for an equally entertaining show.
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