Throughout the country, states have forbidden smokers to smoke in public areas. Numerous business organizations have demanded that their employees quit smoking, and are disciplining workers for smoking during work hours. Persons who smoke huddle in bad weather, and smoke away as quickly as possible so that they can go back to work.

In some cities, smoking is a behavior as controversial as drug dependence. these as well as other stop smoking benefits, a significant number have started trying to find ways to stop smoking.

Smoking habits consist of three elements:

1. Approximately 45 percent of the habit of smoking involves seeking pleasure and relaxation.

2. Another reason that people continue to smoke is an unconscious connection between cigarettes and pleasurable locations or activities. This causes them to crave a cigarette every time they encounter that location. For instance, an individual may come to associate smoking with their bedtime ritual. They will come to associate smoking with sleep so strongly that it is almost impossible to go to sleep without having a cigarette first. Example: If you watch TV and smoke, the smoking will become a conditioned response to watching TV. So each time you watch TV, you'll feel an urge to smoke. This is the reason for approximately 45 percent of the smoking habit.

3. A physical addiction to Nicotine is another reason people continue to smoke. This element is approximately 10 percent of the smoking habit. Within about three days of quitting smoking, all of the Nicotine has been cleaned from a person's system!

Numerous strategies are designed to assist individuals find ways to stop smoking. One of the most inexpensive ways to stop smoking, covered by most insurance underwriters, is the nicotine patch. These patches, which are easy to apply, are used for 24 hours and can be secreted beneath the wearer's clothing. The drawback to these patches, however, is that they are not very beneficial. Because these products only help treat the physical addiction, which results in merely ten percent of the reason for which people continue to smoke, only seven percent of smokers will find this method of smoking cessation helpful and effective.

An identical degree of effectiveness applied to nicotine gum or lozenges. Less than ten percent of the individuals who attempt these products succeeds with these ways to stop smoking for as long as six months. In addition, these products have side effects. substances, which contain Nicotine, are often irritating to the users' mouth and lips, while a significant percentage of people experience skin irritation under the patch. Remember,, these items only deal with the physical dependence, which only includes about 10 percent of the problem.

Another strategy is the development of counseling and smoking cessation courses. These programs include cognitive therapy and detailed instruction regarding the negative outcomes of smoking. These programs are three hundred percent as beneficial as nicotine replacement products; the success rate is 22% at six months.

A considerable number of smokers have utilized laser treatment programs to help stop smoking. This technique is in some cases covered by insurance, even though it is new. Clinical trials done by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), however, indicate that these sessions are no more successful than placebo. (Placebo is the effect that occurs when individuals believe they are taking a treatment, but in reality are not.)

Another of the ways to stop smoking has shown a little more effectiveness than formerly used strategies. In one study, smokers received shots to assist them stop smoking by taking away the 'buzz' of the nicotine rush. This strategy, in the preliminary stages of testing for success, thus far seems to work for 15 percent of the patients who tried it.

Hypnotherapy is another way of helping clients to stop smoking. Hypnotherapy deals with programming the unconscious mind to instantaneously employ other behaviors to provide contentment and peace, rather than the smoking addiction. It also can be employed to remove or "extinguish" behavioral conditioning like the association outlined between cigarettes and behaviors as described earlier, so the person who smokes loses the desire to smoke when in the locations that formerly trigger it.

Male clients appear to respond better to stop smoking hypnosis than female patients do. One benefit resulting from self hypnosis stop smoking, however, is that, unlike those who utilize nicotine replacement as strategies to stop smoking, there are no irritating side effects.

Another positive aspect of hypnotherapy is that it focuses on the 90 percent component of the problem that is psychological, as opposed to the other methods that just work against the ten percent piece of the problem that is physical. Therefore, hypnosis results in a noticeably greater treatment success than the aforementioned approaches to stop smoking treatments. Traditional hypnosis approaches can offer a 35 percent chance of success, while Ericksonian hypnotherapy can provide a fifty percent or higher treatment success.

A recently introduced, innovative, and far more useful approach that coaches people to kick a smoking dependency is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. This approach is far more beneficial than traditional styles of quit smoking hypnosis as it does not rely on post-hypnotic suggestions at all. The majority of clients, particularly clients who are critical thinkers, do not easily accept post-hypnotic suggestions. With NLP, the unconscious is trained to use the identical mental processes that trigger the mental dependence on cigarette use, to eliminate it!

A well-designed NLP stop smoking strategy organized by a trained NLP Practitioner can offer a positive outcome rate of as high as 70% or greater.

Summary: The majority of smoking cessation programs attempt to use nicotine replacement products as ways to stop smoking. Alternative techniques, including smoking cessation and cognitive or behavioral treatment approaches, attempt to help the mind find ways to stop smoking.

While hypnosis works much better than other approaches, primarily with male clients, it is not rated as the most successful way to stop smoking. Neuro-Linguistic Programming, which focuses on the mental facets of the smoking habit, actually assists people to change their mindset and assist them stop most successfully.

Because 90 percent of a person's addiction to cigarettes is psychological, these methods are significantly more successful than simply replacing the nicotine and dealing with the ten percent element of the dependency that is physiological.

Conclusion: Numerous smoking cessation sessions, including nicotine replacement treatments and counseling exist. These techniques frequently have a success rate of less than 20%. Unlike these programs, hypnotherapy has a consideratbly higher rate of success. Neuro-Linguistic Programming offers an even higher degree of effectiveness in helping people to effectively fight against the mental component of their habit and find much more success in their struggle to become smoke-free.

Alan B. Densky, CH is the developer of the best way to quit tobacco use with hypnosis. He offers a potent Quit Smokeless Tobacco program based on those same techniques. Learn more at his Neuro-VISION hypnotherapy site where you can watch Free hypnosis videos and articles.