Only the drug companies are winning!

Now hooked on another drug?

With over eleven million smokers wanting to stop smoking in the UK alone it would seem that there would be a massive supply of customers clambering to get their hands on stop smoking products. Not so! The vast majority of smokers who seek help in quitting try products recommended by Doctors and Government programmes. These products are either greatly subsidised or free to the smoker. Great! I hear you say. Well is it?

Most group practices and health trusts are funded by central government and as such are bound to meet targets and have to make a profit or break even to ensure their grants are maintained. I was only yesterday speaking with my practice nurse who also overseas care of the smokers who want to quit. I was seeing her for my annual check up and she was asking about what methods I used and how successful they had been. She was very surprised that my success rate was nearly three times higher than hers. I asked her about her methods and sure enough she was now prescribing Chantix and reported that it was giving better results than NRT( patches,gums Inhalers). When I asked what the actual success rate was she thought around 25%. It was not surprising to me. Most of my clients have tried these products with little or no success. Their first option of course as it is free. She then asked me how I was achieving around a 90% success rate. I told her how, describing in detail how we approach each smoker as an individual with their own particular 'method' and triggers for smoking. I went on to explain that we then show smokers what really causes them to smoke, and how we convinced people that the nicotine was not the problem. This really surprised her she said she found our approach really sensible and enlightening but said, "My trouble is I only get 15 minutes with each smoker. I see them for fifteen minutes and then give them Chantix if they feel they need it." !

What a joke I thought. I told her that we see smokers for around an hour and a half and then they go away and the vast majority never smoke again. Around 10% come back for a free boost but that is about it. We use simple psychological techniques approaching the problem at it's root cause. When I asked how many she sees again she said, "Nearly all of them".

It was clear to me that the route favoured by the government just meant that the poor smoker was going around and around in circles being prescribed drugs that essentially didn't work. The the only winners were the drug companies like Pfizer (who even state that their products 'May help' and that willpower is still required) and The Practices, who are seen to meet the target set by government. These targets achieved whether or not the smoker quits! It's all about turnover.

The methods I use are sensible non invasive and chemical free and rely upon harnessing the persons own inner strength and resources to help them escape the ridiculous habit cycle that they feel stuck in. We use a combination of relaxation therapy, positive reinforcement and Neuro Linguistic Programming(NLP). A fancy sounding name for the simple process of installing new habits and behaviours. The smoker essentially gets to choose between feeling good about being a non smoker and feeling bad about being a smoker, when confronted with a situation that would have resulted in smoking before. The brain will usually choose a good feeling as opposed to a bad one. It's not rocket science. Only trouble is there is no revenue for the drug companies and no tax going into the chancellors coffers.

I know that if all smokers who want to quit used the methods we use in our practice then we would be doing ourselves out of a job, but there are lots of other habits people need help with! As there are only around four hundred practitioners using our method we could never even hope of helping 11 million people, but for those who really want to stop we keep on helping. That's why we developed the online version of the system we use. Much cheaper than one to one but essentially the same process. Give it a try you might be surprised !

(For one to one help you can contact the practice at info@12free.org)