Sam Ward marvels at the wonders of hypnotherapy, as she
gives up smoking for good

I wouldn’t say I was a hardened smoker, certainly not your 80-aday type, but without realising it I had become hopelessly addicted.Usual story really — it starts out as a social thing, a couple of crafty fags behind the greenhouse at school, then BOOM, you’re staring lung cancer and premature death right in the face. Not really my cup of tea, so, despite my fierce scepticism, I agreed to a hypnotherapy session with Harrogate-based Martin Lancaster, to see if I could kick the habit for good.

Martin’s technique is to get you to enter a state of complete relaxation, not an easy feat when inside you are in fits of giggles. It’s quite a strange experience; your mind wanders all over the place and you end up thinking about things that haven’t occurred to you for about 10 years, although an hour later you can’t really remember anything at all.

It felt like I had been in the ‘trance’ for about 15 minutes, although in reality it had been over an hour. I didn’t smoke that evening, but then I didn’t go to a pub or smoky environment so wouldn’t really expect to.The next day I woke up thinking about cigarettes, and couldn’t stop thinking about them until I got to the pub at 4pm. For some reason, by this time, I had convinced myself that smoking was good, and that I was really looking forward to my first cigarette in 24 hours.

I don’t really know what happened, but I shook a cigarette out of the packet, tipped out the contents of my bag looking for a lighter and literally just sat there, staring at it like a woman possessed, for about five minutes. Something of an epic battle was going on in my head, a battle between my really wanting to smoke, and just not being able to. I put the cigarette back in the packet, and into my bag, where it has been for the last five days, completely untouched.

Sam Ward
PLUSH magazine June 07