So why and how does hypnosis work? When the Conscious mind does something three, four or five times, the subconscious mind says "aha, I'll do that job for you and take it on board as a habit. Now, some of those habits are useful like driving a car or riding a bike and some of those habits aren't, such as smoking or over eating. You can try and probably have tried to change some of those unhealthy habits with conscious will power but the far more powerful subconscious mind will protect it's habits otherwise a person could forget how to drive a car in the middle of driving somewhere or forget how to swim while in the middle of a lake. So smoking has become an automatic habit, it is not an addiction. If a person smokes 20 a day, and sleeps on average of 8 hours, they are smoking, on average, every forty minutes. Do they wake up every 48 minutes during the night as nicotine levels decrease? No so, OK, do they wake up and smoke eleven cigarettes straight off to rebuild their nicotine levels? Again No, In fact, most of the Nicotine chemicals will disappear overnight and many are flushed in the morning urination. If Nicotine were addictive they would HAVE to replace them. Look at another property of chemically addictive drugs, anybody (and I mean anybody) who is addicted to a chemically addictive substance. And who suddenly stops taking it will go through hell. It is generally called cold turkey because of the effects on the body, constant temperature changes giving "goose flesh". But all of the symptoms are the same for everyone who goes through the process. Stomach cramps, the sensation of inflamed joints, tremors, and delirium, all of the symptoms could practically timetable. This does not happen with smoking or nicotine. With smoking the "withdrawal" will be pretty much what we believe it to be. Some will get angry, some hungry, some tense, some lethargic and for many, NOTHING AT ALL. The believe will be based on experience, urban myth, their friends experience and pure conjecture. Most people however can recall somebody, a relative or fiend, who just quit. One day they decided not to smoke anymore, not to take the risk and they just stopped, no withdrawal, nothing. The New Scientist journal, in October 1992 "hypnosis is the most effective way of giving up smoking"