(this was written on 9 January in the afternoon)

As someone who has smoked with few and insignificant interruptions his entire adult life and a scary part of his childhood, I have lulled myself into a belief that quitting smoking would be fine, but that the time needs to be right and a number of unspecified factors need to be in place. And THEN I will be ready to make the decision.

What a load of rubbish. Bullshit and poor excuses!

The most important part of this article comes at the end. Here I will summarise and outline why quitting smoking really isn't as difficult as people think it is. And how to do it.

If you don't want to read it all, skip to the section on withdrawal symptoms.

Jan Hellesøe

Sometimes it's coincidence that determines whether things in life change.

Danish hypnotist and entertainer Jan Hellesøe, who has appeared on Danish state TV (Danmarks Radio) in a number of programmes where he downright fucks with your brain and does things you don't understand at all but are impressed by, offered shortly after the New Year to share a smoking quitting video on his YouTube channel, where the primary tools were a thorough introduction/rationale and a hypnosis course.

I passed when it was streamed live on 5 January 2025 at 20:30. In general, I like to choose when I watch something on my TV and not be dependent on a predetermined broadcast time. However, I did save the video to ‘Watch Later’ in my YouTube account.

The next day, 6 January 2025 at 20:15 (a time worth remembering, at least for me!), I thought I'd watch the video to assess whether I thought it would be good enough, and then decide when I'd be ready to consider watching it seriously and maybe quitting smoking.

I sat down and listened, eventually quite attentively. In the introduction, I particularly noticed the section on making a decision, where Jan Hellesøe, with an internal image of saving himself from a life-threatening fire, stated that if you had to jump from one building to another, you would probably not just ‘give it a shot’ - you would do everything you possibly could to set off strongly and land safely on both feet. The difference between trying things out or actually making a decision.

That point became important to me because it hammered a stake through my worst excuses to give it a try once all the factors were in place, the planets were ideal and I had neither cigarettes nor ashtrays available within a radius of at least 100 metres. A situation that any thinking person, but not a smoker, can easily see will never happen.

The other point that really stuck was that you have to decide to be stronger than a cigarette. In other words: ‘Is it up to me, a reasonably grown man of 63, to decide whether I should give in and light a cigarette? Or should I let the cigarette decide?’

The two points are extremely simple. But they are also very important, and they can be the tools you use to overcome cigarettes. Because what's at the centre of it all is simple: To not do it. And to not do it every time you really want a cigarette.

Hypnosis

After his introduction, Hellesøe moved on to the hypnosis session, where you had to sit or lie comfortably with your eyes closed and follow his instructions. First instructions to relax from the top of the head and then through the different parts of the body until you reached your toes and - if successful - were completely relaxed and compliant.

For me personally, I have to say that part of it worked perfectly. I could control my thoughts, but I felt that I would only be able to move my limbs if I was told to do so or was fully aware that ‘now I will lift my left arm’.

It was a good feeling!

Next, Hellesøe instructed on different things to imagine by trying to visualise them in front of you.

First, you had to leave yourself sitting or lying down and walk through a door into a room that was your inner control room. It went well and I could almost see myself sitting there in the armchair.

Then you had to go into another room, which was a cinema. Here you had to sit down and wait for a film on the screen. That was fine too.

But when it came to putting the film on afterwards, it didn't go quite as smoothly. The film was supposed to show when you smoked your first cigarette. But I don't have such an image, because when my brothers and I were children, our shared games were often about getting away with smoking secretly in dens and the like, and the images of this get lost in the uncertain veil that childhood memories often have. So the whole sequence of seeing and then dissolving the sequence of ‘my first cigarette’ was not convincing for me.

The next exercise was about imagining that cigarettes smelled disgusting in a certain way that you have encountered in real life. In other words, smelling like something disgusting that you know. Preferably something you're about to vomit over.

And here my brain failed me again, I couldn't really think of anything that was terribly disgusting and very clear to me. I had to make do with the unpleasant odour that my childhood town of Grindsted was often enveloped in by the local chemical factory, but that didn't go down too well. I couldn't pin it on the cigarettes, though. Again, childhood was probably too far away in my memory.

After hypnosis

When Hellesøe had finished the instructions on what to imagine, you were led back to your seat and asked to open your eyes again. It had felt like 10 minutes, but had lasted 45 minutes.

I was still heavy for a few minutes, but quite comfortable. Perhaps a little disappointed at not being able to deliver the images of something concrete that I had been asked for. But Hellesøe assured me that it was OK.

And now, when I opened my eyes after the hypnosis - after so long without a cigarette - I should have lit one, but it was fine not to. I basically just sat and relaxed while I was entertained by the TV for the rest of the evening, and when my routine told me to reach for a cigarette, I told myself not to.

But despite everything, after a couple of hours I still got into some classic Lausenheim bullshit: ‘Well, it's not that difficult when it comes down to it. I haven't suffered at all in the first few hours, which must be the hardest. I can light up a cigarette and then quit smoking another day when I'm completely ready and motivated.’

You can see it, right?

Bullshit of the highest quality!

Fortunately, I didn't do it. Jan Hellesøe just had time to whisper in my ear: ‘Who is stronger? You or the cigarette?’

After the first minor crisis

I decided to make smoking just a little bit more difficult: I removed the two open cigarette packs from the coffee table and put them in a drawer (yes, I had two different types of cigarettes, you care about your smoking, right?) I also removed the ashtray, washed it thoroughly and placed it on the far shelf of my pantry. The idea was that now I had to take 3 actions to smoke:

1: I had to convince myself that it was a good idea

2: I had to get the cigarettes from the drawer

3: I had to retrieve the ashtray from its hiding place at the back of the pantry.

I was hoping that having to do 3 things in order to smoke would ensure that I'd actually have time to change my mind before it goes wrong. They're all simple things to do, but I still have to decide to do them, fully aware of what I'm doing as I stand there rummaging through the back of a shelf in the pantry. So I haven't done it yet.

Master of Ceremonies

It's been a few days now. I haven't smoked, but I've thought about it many times. What gets me is the habit. The ceremonies. And there are many of those.

Of course, the classic: the first and best cigarette of the day, preferably after breakfast with the second cup of coffee of the day. Oh, how wonderful it is!

But I have more ceremonies: Another classic is ‘smoking immediately after putting food in your mouth and swallowing the last mouthful’. I have refined these morning and meal ceremonies by having a particularly good cigarette for these occasions. Currently, it's a cigarette with a little menthol ball that can be clicked to make the smoke almost like candy and nicotine in a divine blend. They're no longer legal in Europe, but I took plenty home in my suitcase when I was in Vietnam this summer and I'm saving them. The special cigarettes. Jesus Christ!

Other ceremonies are the time interval I've tried to keep between cigarettes to control consumption. So I've also got used to the fact that ‘it's smoking time’ every 45 minutes. Not approximately every 45 minutes. Exactly every 45 minutes. Unless another good excuse to smoke came first. Believe me, I've kept track of time. Jesus Christ!

Or that last cigarette before bed, as late as possible so you don't miss it too much while trying to fall asleep. Or the cigarette before boarding a plane. Actually, preferably 2 cigarettes, because now you have to go through the airport, get strapped into a plane and go through another airport before you can smoke again. Jesus Christ!

All these many ceremonies I've covered my day with. These are the ones I have to break and not care about.

Who's in charge?

And it's getting better. Most of the ‘interval smokes’, the ones that are smoked on the clock, I pretty much forget about now. I haven't forgotten the after-meal smokes, but they're getting easier to ignore. So things are looking up. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm not shy about repeating ‘Who's in charge? You or the cigarette?’ as many times as it takes.

I also remember that I don't just give it a try, this jumping from one roof to another. I take off, make an effort and land on my feet.

It's banal. But it works.

Withdrawal symptoms are a load of bollocks!

Apart from the excuses, which I think I've already covered, fear has kept me from quitting smoking. Fear of suffering.

After all, don't you hear over and over again that it's harder to quit smoking than it is to give up a career as a drug addict? That nicotine is more addictive than cocaine?

Luckily, I have no experience of quitting drugs, but I have seen a number of documentaries where addicts have been hit really hard by freezing, vomiting, wanting to die and so on.

So let me just let you in on the secret of nicotine withdrawal: it doesn't exist! And remember, I've smoked extensively throughout my life!

No, I haven't had hot flashes.

No, I don't feel nauseous!

No, I don't have a headache!

No, I'm not tearful!

No, I haven't lost any sleep!

Yes, I am. I'm hungrier than I usually am. I think the cigarettes simply took away some of my appetite. And I have to be careful not to give in and become even fatter than I already am.

I'm convinced that the talk about how addictive nicotine is is part of smokers' poor excuses for not even trying.

I recognise that the issue of getting rid of the ceremonies. That's where the battle is, and it's difficult enough.

But physical withdrawal symptoms? Rubbish!

What's next?

It's been less than 3 days so far, and I'm sure the hardest part lies ahead of me. I've quit smoking before, and although it sounds strange, the hardest part hasn't been quitting. It's not starting again.

I never managed to quit smoking for so long that I thought of myself as a non-smoker. I saw myself as a smoker who didn't smoke.

I know that you can get to the point where you become a non-smoker rather than an ex-smoker. Good friends who have quit tell me so. So I'll have to see if I can achieve that.

But it's still something I'm a little unsure if I can keep to. You know, the thing about not slipping in. A bit like the intelligence service versus the terrorist. The intelligence service has to win every single time. Because if they lose just once, it's the terrorist who emerges victorious from the conflict. The same with the tempting cigarette.

To use the really big words...

Do YOU want to quit smoking?

Now I've tried quitting, but I'm no expert, although it's going well so far.  

I've taken away three simple lessons. And it's important to remember that you don't need hypnosis to quit. That part wasn't important in my process. It was:

1: The right time is not something you have to wait for. It can be right in the middle of the evening after your 15th cigarette of the day, with a glass of wine in one hand and cigarettes right next to you on the coffee table.

The right time is when you make a decision and not just give it a try.

In fact, it could be right now!

2: Who is the strongest? You or a cigarette?

3: The task is to not do it. And not to do it every time you really want to. Nothing more. Nothing less.