Lately I have had a number of clients who have come to me for smoking cessation. At the beginning of a session, I ask them what is motivating their desire to be a non-smoker, what they will be giving up, and what they will gain.
Many folks mention with a chuckle that they will save money. I went online in search of statistics regarding how much smokers spend on cigarettes and found a handy calculator at the American Cancer Society’s website. It calculates an individual smoker’s cost per day, per week, per month, and per year.
They also have another calculator that helps an individual smoker see how many cigarettes he or she is smoking over a given period of time. Multiply that by the number of minutes it takes to smoke a cigarette.
While time and money may not be primary motivating factors to quit, they’re a nice bonus.
For a 2007 study on the efficacy of hypnotherapy for smoking cessation, see this article in Science News. Here’s an excerpt:
Hypnotherapy For Smoking Cessation Sees Strong Results
ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2007) — Hospitalized patients who smoke may be more likely to quit smoking through the use of hypnotherapy than patients using other smoking cessation methods. A new study* shows that smoking patients who participated in one hypnotherapy session were more likely to be nonsmokers at 6 months compared with patients using nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) alone or patients who quit “cold turkey”.
