How much would you pay to stop smoking ?

goz83

Answers in bold. I am on phone.

crotalus667 wrote: »

One of the reasons a lot of people seek hypnosis is a lack of will power :rolleyes:

No. It is one of the excuses they give. I turned a client away yesterday, because she said she did not have enough will power to stop smoking. I explained that her will is her own and that hypnosis would not change her will (will = conscious decision making in this context). Sure, hypnosis can take away the cravings and associations, but it cannot take away, improve, or control ones will. This is my experience with the large numbers of clients I have treated.

No, to be indifferent will work for a number of people

True. But, only a small number. In my opinion, it is not ethical to treat someone who displays indifference, because it is just as likely to fail as going cold turkey.


Is it really ??? ok in compared to price others are charging but in the grand scheme of things when you look at money saved an health benefits ??

Yes. I believe it is. Just because someone will save thousands per year, it does not justify charging someone 700e. At the end of the day, the session will last an hour on average and the standard 150-250 is more than enough to charge. This also means more business, because most people would not hand over 700, even if hypnosis was 100% guaranteed to work for smoking cessation.

Not exactly true , cd's will work for a very small proportion of people (never sell them my self)

I would again point to the fact that cold turkey can also work. In fact, it is the second most effective way to stop smoking, after hypnosis. The fact that such a small number of people succeed with the cd's (mostly poor quality), would suggest that they are actually more damaging, because they are far less effective than any other treatment I can think of.

I am guessing that you are newly qualified, or nearly qualified. I have run a successful practice for five years now and I know of many "trends" out there, which are damaging hypnotherapy and which help many new hypnotists to fail in their first few months. You are welcome to pm me and we can discuss this in private, because this thread only highlights the massive canyon of differences of opinion on hypnosis and hypnotherapy between hypnotists.

brokenarms

Just stop.
Simple.
Hard but simple.

All other ways seem like a crock of brown TBH.

crotalus667

goz83 wrote: »

I am guessing that you are newly qualified, or nearly qualified.

You are guessing wrong , this is point less we are not going to see eye to eye

goz83

crotalus667 wrote: »

You are guessing wrong , this is point less we are not going to see eye to eye

Well, the very first question would have made me believe that you are inexperienced and looking for attention on the subject and some sort of verification that the price you had in mind for smoking cessation hypnosis was the right price range. I am aware that you are a student, or graduate of the HA, formerly known as the IHA. My offer stands, as i am sure we would see eye to eye on plenty of things. You mentioned in another thread that you are a full time senior health care assistant, so unless you were practicing several years ago, I find it very hard to believe you are an experienced hypnotist. To the best of my knowledge, the school you graduated from has been running for less than 10 years, but it is a good school for hypnosis.

Also the vast majority of qualified hypnotists would be saying almost exactly what I am saying. The only area which seems to divide opinion on the subjects of this thread, is on the use of post session CDs. I believe they are a hindrance to proper hypnotherapy and others believe they are a very useful tool for clients. I may be wrong, but I am more than happy with my current method, which works perfectly fine.

MickelRants

crotalus667 wrote: »

Will power comes out above a lot of things including nicotine replacement therapy

Actually willpower is the bottom BASE level in studies of smoking cessation. It is effective totally in about 5% of attempts to quit smoking...it is also free and you can try it as often as you like (or as often as you could put up with given the cravings regime).

Then above willpower are things like hypnotherapy and other placebos... although only now being studied seriously by neurologists the placebo effect is quiet powerful. Some placebos work better than others. For example Homoeopathy works on the placebo effect and taking two homoeopathy pills instead of one works better than the one...even though both contain only sugar pills. A placebo injection works many times better than a placebo pill!

A good placebo will increase the odds of smoking cessation by a further 10% tops but more likely around 5%. Hypnotherapy acts at about 5%.

On top of willpower and placebo there are then NRT's and other pharmaceutical methods which have a physical effect on the body... I'm not a doctor and therefore I can't comment on the way they work or any side effects. Best to talk to a doctor about that after you do some research. But these can raise the efficacy of the placebo effect and willpower which together are at 10% to about 15% or 20%. Some have terrible side effects documented by scientists, the manufacturers and health departments...so always read up on the NRT or medicine first. In some cases suicidal tendencies were demonstrated. Pfizer for example recently settled a court case against Champix for $175 million USD when cases were taken against the company for patients that had committed suicide using it. Essentially its an anti-depressant and given to those that are not depressed can have serious side effects.

Then theres some non medicinal yet pretty high efficacy methods like for example Lobelia... now this plant is also known as 'Puke Root' and for a very good reason...its very aptly named... but its also known to remove cravings for nicotine. There are others like steaming black pepper in a basin of boiling water...which works...but perhaps only for a few hours...but it will remove cravings. You'd look real stupid in work though with your head over a basin of steaming water and black pepper.

I use an e-cig...which is a different approach entirely. I tried everything to give up over the course of perhaps 20 years or more...and I got sick of giving up... so my solution was to give up cigarettes...but not nicotine because nicotine in the levels in an e-cig have no known health risks, in independent studies demonstrated no health risks but all the other things in a tobacco
cigarette certainly do.

So I took the choice of continuing to enjoy nicotine but use it in an alternative way than burning tobacco. And to be honest I'm pretty happy with that... I get the enjoyment of a cigarette without the cigarette and also minus the cost and health problems.

I think a distinction between 'giving up smoking' and 'giving up nicotine' is important here ...because if you removed the nicotine from all cigarettes on sale then sales of cigarettes would disappear as nicotine addicts like me and many of you guys al hunted around for a replacement source. But if you remove the cigarette from the nicotine there is no problem.

Anyway the long and short of this is that from what I see with 2 million e-cig users in the UK and 9 million smokers then this invention has decreased smoking in a little over 5 years than all the other methods combined in the last 30.

Greenmachine

Total quack science altogether. If a doctor offered hynonosis instead of anaesthic before surgery he would be throttled just for suggesting it.

MickelRants

Greenmachine wrote: »

Total quack science altogether. If a doctor offered hypnosis instead of anaesthetic before surgery he would be throttled just for suggesting it.

In fairness what he's offering is an increased effect of placebo... now if X amount of folks increase the likelihood of smoking cessation due to this than the price is (for them) every penny they spend on cigarettes for the rest of their lives... thats almost 4k a year. However it doesn't work on everyone...only an extra 5% above placebo... which means that 90% of folks are wasting thir money.


Hypnosis or placebo does have a place in smoking cessation therapy... personally I don't care if folks believe in it or not...or whether it has bone fide efficacy or not... if it stops folks from smoking that my personal benchmark.

However €150 does seem rather steep when you consider that a provari electronic cigarette costs less and is at least 400% more effective. Although by the time flks buy one of those they haven't smoked in a year anyway.

goz83

MickelRants wrote: »

A good placebo will increase the odds of smoking cessation by a further 10% tops but more likely around 5%. Hypnotherapy acts at about 5%.

I'm very curious as to how you managed to come to 5% odds with hypnosis. I understand you are factoring will power in there too, but that figure is actually ludicrous. Most people attending my clinic have tried many other things and failed, including cold turkey. Seems unlikely that a high success rate with smoking cessation at my clinic is thanks only to a 5% increase. Do you have any links to studies on this, or any other proof?

MickelRants wrote: »

On top of willpower and placebo there are then NRT's and other pharmaceutical methods which have a physical effect on the body... I'm not a doctor and therefore I can't comment on the way they work or any side effects. Best to talk to a doctor about that after you do some research. But these can raise the efficacy of the placebo effect and willpower which together are at 10% to about 15% or 20%.

Generally speaking, Nicotine Replacement Therapies work by replacing nicotine lost from the subject no longer smoking tobacco products. The success rates in the long term are between 3 and 7%. I cannot find the published studies, but it is a relatively recent study conducted by the American Health Organisation.

MickelRants wrote: »

I use an e-cig...which is a different approach entirely.

How is it different? Ok, you don't chew it, or stick it on your arm, but you do inhale it, which is closer to smoking than any other method. There is little difference between the e-cig and the nico-cig pen, but I do accept the e-cig is more effective than the nico-cig pen.

MickelRants wrote: »

I tried everything to give up over the course of perhaps 20 years or more.

So I took the choice of continuing to enjoy nicotine but use it in an alternative way than burning tobacco. And to be honest I'm pretty happy with that... I get the enjoyment of a cigarette without the cigarette and also minus the cost and health problems.

People don't try everything. I hear this from almost every client, but when questioned, they might have tried 2, or 3 different methods and have tried with gum and patches several times.

It's great that you no longer smoke tobacco by the way. The e-cig is a less harmful way of getting your nicotine fix, but it is still harmful. Nicotine is a highly toxic substance and causes harm every time you ingest it. The e-cig is certainly a saving over regular cigarettes too, but being a non smoker means you spend no money on tobacco, or quit smoking aids.

MickelRants wrote: »

I think a distinction between 'giving up smoking' and 'giving up nicotine' is important here ...because if you removed the nicotine from all cigarettes on sale then sales of cigarettes would disappear as nicotine addicts like me and many of you guys al hunted around for a replacement source. But if you remove the cigarette from the nicotine there is no problem.

Interesting point. But I think its more likely that sales would drop only slightly. There is a lot more to the addiction than nicotine, but I won't get into that. As an experiment, over the course of a few weeks, i gave 30 e-cig kits to clients who had partners smoking an average of 20 cigarettes per day. 15 kits had the 14mg nicotine cartridges and the other 15 had no nicotine. Only one partner did not participate and he had a nicotine cartridge kit. I never said that there was no nicotine in half the kits. I relied on the client assumption that the kits would contain the nicotine hit and removed the stickers that said there was nicotine, or no nicotine in the cartridges. Each person who was given the kit by their partner, believed it was to help their partners stop smoking and had to use the e-cig only. The report was that all partners who took the kit stuck to the promise and used the kit for 3 weeks. There was no noticeable difference between those who had the nicotine kits and those who had the "placebo" kits. The averages were the same. Some craved real cigarettes and some claimed to have no real cravings at all. This might be bad for business, but placebos are quite effective. It proved to me that nicotine is certainly not the only factor involved in the smoking habit.

Greenmachine wrote: »

Total quack science altogether. If a doctor offered hynonosis instead of anaesthic before surgery he would be throttled just for suggesting it.

In the republic of Ireland, you're bang on the money. But then, we are usually decades behind the rest of civilised society with most things. There is a note worthy exception however. The late Doctor Jack Stanley Gibson, who practiced at Naas General Hospital performed a number of surgeries using hypnosis in place of anaesthetic. And I am not talking about wart removal either. A quick search will give you what you need.
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Stanley_Gibson

The BBC also followed numerous studies on alternative practices. Hypnosis was the only one that showed calculable results when tested scientifically. I happened to catch a BBC program where a dentist used hypnosis in place of anaesthetic and removed teeth from a female patient. Gruesome to watch, but she was conscious the whole time and had a fear of the dentist to begin with. Here is a separate report. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8359170.stm

MickelRants wrote: »

Hypnosis or placebo does have a place in smoking cessation therapy... personally I don't care if folks believe in it or not...or whether it has bone fide efficacy or not... if it stops folks from smoking that my personal benchmark.

However €150 does seem rather steep when you consider that a provari electronic cigarette costs less and is at least 400% more effective. Although by the time flks buy one of those they haven't smoked in a year anyway.

€150 is not steep in my opinion if the work is put in and the time is spent. It's not cheap to study hypnosis and there are no grants available either. Plus, you have CPD after graduation, which can be very expensive. Consider rent, secretary, insurance and other business costs for a proper set up and €150 is suddenly a great deal. On average, i would spend 90 minutes with a client and will typically see 4 in a day.

Claiming that e-cigs are at least 400% more effective than hypnosis really is pushing against reality. You see, the e-cigs are still new here and I do not know a single person who has used an e-cig for more than 6 weeks. I know there are plenty out there who are long term vapers, but I don't know any of them personally and I have a bunch of e-cigs, regular cigs and tobacco in a big jar in my office that my clients use to leave their filthy habit behind. What I do know, is that I have used hypnosis very successfully to help people stop smoking and they need not spend a penny on NRT (including e-cigs) when I am done with them. Of course, that assumes the person wants to be a non smoker to begin with.

MickelRants

The e-cig is different because I'm not using it to address an attempt to decrease my nicotine dependence and the vast majority of folks buying an e-cig use it for a lot longer. Many mistakenly thingk the e-cig can answer the question of nicotine addiction...its can't, it contains nicotine for heavens sake...so thats not likely to help a nicotine addict any more than whiskey would help an alcoholic to quit drinking. However if those same people were told outright its an alternative not a 'quitting' solution..then they might be able to come up with a gradual reduction plan of their own.

Incidentally the base starting position for a new vaper is 24mg for the first week not 14mg, 18mg for several more weeks (maybe a month or so) and then no plan whatsoever except the wishes of the subject for the rest of their life... if that means they go on to reduce fair enough...if not then It not a biggy. Nicotine boils at over 240 deg cel. So in an e-cig most of it never leaves the chamber... essentially 55% of the nicotine is wasted by an ecig... its very ineffective as a nicotine delivery device. To compensate the levels of nicotine are usually larger.

I'm using it to stop smoking only. I'm still addicted to nicotine. Nobody uses patches or gum, or spray as a permanent alternative...there are no 'nicotine gum' clubs or forums...you don't sit in a cafe aimed at patch users... they are used solely as a nicotine dependence reduction therapy. The e-cig is an alternative to smoking in that it replaces smoking with something else.

Most folks might spend money on gum and leave it at that... however I like vaping... the most expensive unit I've bought thus far cost me about €200...I've spent maybe €2k in the last 3 years including buying e-liquid... but very few would spend that much in that period. Its a lot less than the nearly 4k I'd spend a year on tobacco though. Instead I could (if I was that tight) get by on maybe €300 a year in e-liquid and parts.

I clearly have no intention of using it to cease an addiction to nicotine... just like others don't bother to address their addiction to caffeine but might buy an expensive peculator.

I'm not ingesting nicotine...I'm inhaling it... some will likely find its way into my digestive tract... likely the same way it does with smokers or those that chew tobacco... I'll live with that...but at the levels present in e-liquid I'm not that bothered. And given nobody has tuned up in an A&E or doctors practice to complain of health issues from this even though there are 120 million vapers now I'd consider it a very low risk.... certainly lower than being struck by an asteroid.

I tried everything... gum 2 brands and about 10 times, patches several times one brand, hypnosis..... self hypnosis, meditation, champix (until I tried to kill our family pet and was advised by my doctor to stop using it and he refused a further prescription)... I tried the hiding of cigarettes around the house method... lets put it this way ... I read everything, tried everything I could think of...

I did not try the following because they are hokum... Praying (I'm not religious), homoeopathy... its just sugar pills and I can buy a bag of those on Alibaba for $20.

I tried several root, herbs and assorted spices, peppers... placebo effects...over the years.

In total maybe 50 attempts to cease smoking in 20 years or more... finally I gave up giving up. To be honest that was the best and smartest move I've made in relation to this issue.

On the hypnosis thing the figures are from the Cocrane library of smoking cessation studies. The study is a study of studies... and indicates a 5% efficacy rate above simply quitting with a deviation of about 1%. about 0.5% of the deviation would well be considered the deviation from simply quitting using nothing. So yes I say 5% but in point of fact you are right to be concerned since its actually 5% +/- a 0.5% deviation.... so 4.5% to 5.5%...

There is a general study of solely hypnosis in their library.
see (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001008.pub2/pdf/standard)

The most effective part of hypnotherapy is the fact that its administered during a session with another human being...a counselling session. Counselling sessions for smoking cessation have the same efficacy without hypnotherapy. I'm not deriding that... if people want to quit I'd suggest they do so WITH counselling... with hypnotherapy thrown in if they think it will do any good... in fact throw the kitchen sink at the issue if you can afford it. But also I'd advise not to expect more than the studies show. Now in those 5% of folks there will be very suggestible people who will doubtless never smoke again...but they will be the exception to the rule...


The study you done with e-cigarettes is in contrast to other studies carried out worldwide on e-cigarettes...even one study where the subject expressly stated an intention NOT to cease smoking...and their effect was still above that of gum and patches. They have pretty much a very high efficacy...demonstrated by the sales of the units with no marketing.

Hence the concern from the affected industries and a move to remove them from circulation. You'll notice that both the pharmaceutical and tobacco industry have an absolute disinterest in other forms of smoking cessation...including their own offerings. Thats because they pose no great danger to either purchases of cigarettes or future long term sales of anti-cancer treatments. E-cigs on the other hand came out of nowhere and resulted in 2 million users in the UK in just 4 years... e-cigs are absolutely cannibalising tobacco sales at the moment... I'm sure you might have noticed. In the UK over the past 48 moths they have dug a hole of 10% of UK smokers not buying cigarettes. Thats why the cigarette companies are jumping on the bandwagon... you don't spend 175m USD on an ecig business if it has no future, no customers and no efficacy in retaining customers...Lolliard did last year. They were followed by BAT, Phillip Morris and others. Its pretty hard to argue with a trail leading to massive investment based on study of market trends and consumer advocacy.

Now having said all that yes you can give folks no nicotine in e-liquid and it will take almost a full day for them to realise there is no nicotine in it. Thats due to the blood plasma absorption ate of e-liquid V's smoking... with combustion its a lot faster than with an e-cigarette... but the e-cigarette has a slow absorption over a prolonged period. I'd question your self study in that its contrary to whats already been discovered from almost all other studies.

MickelRants

goz83 wrote: »

Claiming that e-cigs are at least 400% more effective than hypnosis really is pushing against reality. You see, the e-cigs are still new here and I do not know a single person who has used an e-cig for more than 6 weeks.

Here ... I'll introduce you to a few hundred ....

https://www.facebook.com/vapefestireland

Or see Irish Vaping or the many forums online. Most of those vapers will have tried e-cigs, retuned to smoking, taken up the ecig again, started smoking again and slowly reduced their smoking to zero in favour of vaping... as I said its not a nicotine dependence cessation therapy...its an alternative. Those folks you see back smoking will start vaping again... because its both enjoyable...and of course addictive.

Doubtless Nicorette will hold their Gumfest outing soon after. lol...

There are 750,000 smokers in Ireland (about 25% of the adult population) and in the past 2 years about 50k of those have started vaping...helped mostly by those VIP and greensmoke kiosks knocking about... but stores are starting to open now and vaporiums... so before long it will be catching up on the uk figures.

If the trend in the UK and USA is matched here...given our smaller population...there will be no smokers in Ireland by 2020, or at least very very few.

crotalus667

goz83 wrote: »

so unless you were practicing several years ago, I find it very hard to believe you are an experienced hypnotist.

About 13 years in total not that years mean much , I have known people with one or two years experience who show more knowledge than some with over 25 years experience


not going to go threw this thread because to be honest I am tired after a long day but the study by the WHO placed hypnosis above nicotine replacement and iirc will power cant remember the name of it but if either of you want to find it I am sure it will only take a few mins with google , saying that I don't trust it completely because A I have only read the results not the details of the study and B iirc thy put hypnosis at a lower percentage than from my personal experience I would of expected

crotalus667

ps

On a side note e-cigs are not regulated so to say thy are safer than smoking is guess work

grindle

crotalus667 wrote: »

e-cigs are not regulated

They're regulated by food safety laws (liquids) and standard product laws (for the devices). Actual laws - whether or not the government decide to use their own regulatory framework is up to them.
I think you've gotten confused by many a Daily Mail article that reads "no regulation" but means "no medicinal regulation".

Is there any regulatory framework governing hypnotherapy, pray tell? Not the self-regulatory kind, obviously. If that's what you thought governed ecigs (falsely) and you've poo-pooed it, it surely can't be right for hypnosis...

crotalus667

grindle wrote: »

Is there any regulatory framework governing hypnotherapy, pray tell? Not the self-regulatory kind, obviously.

Actually my insurance policy governs every thing I do :rolleyes:

grindle wrote: »

If that's what you thought governed ecigs (falsely) and you've poo-pooed it, it surely can't be right for hypnosis...

Not really worth responding to :rolleyes:

theglobe

no interest in quitting

Bandana boy

My understanding is that the average smoker spends €75 a week on cigs.

You mentioned two sessions roughly a month apart
I would postion your pricing based on two sessions €75 (1 weeks cigs) for session 1 and €200 for session 2 in week 4 .I would include an open cancelation policy on Session 2 for customers who your service has failed.
If your service works for the first 4 weeks then I imagine most smokers will proceed with Session 2 and your first session is priced at an enticing 1 week payback to consumers.

Alternatively you could charge €500 with a money back guarantee for People who return to smoking within say 3 months and I think People will be more likely to invest in your service.

goz83

MickelRants wrote: »

Here ... I'll introduce you to a few hundred ....

.

The long post above the one I have just quoted is quite interesting. I would be agreeable with most of it. I would be in complete disagreement with the 5% figures. I wouldn't have a business if those figures were factual to me.

The quoted section above, however, I have to call distorting and cherry picking. I had already said that I am sure there are many long term vapers and that I don't personally know any of them.

Bandana boy wrote: »

Alternatively you could charge €500 with a money back guarantee for People who return to smoking within say 3 months and I think People will be more likely to invest in your service.

I know a hypnotist who charges 200 for stop smoking hypnosis "or free sessions until you do" policy. I have had three of his clients come to me this year and tell me that he doesn't answer his phone if they call to repeat the therapy. If they call from a different phone, he worms his way out of giving the therapy. That is shameful behaviour and I think the only thing that keeps him going is regular paper adverts.

I also think it's a bad idea to invite a client back for a free session(s) within 3 months, as it sends the wrong signal. Like I said before, if it's done properly on a person wanting to stop smoking, it will work and should be permanent.