Cessation Hypnosis

From animal magnetism to hypnotism

A neuroscience review by John Kihlstrom traces hypnosis to the technique of animal magnetism practiced by Franz Anton Mesmer in the eighteenth century. The same review states that James Braid coined the term hypnotism to shed the associations of mesmerism, and that Braid's own theory held that fixing the eyes produced a paralysis of nerve centers and a sleep-like state. A 2024 historical overview adds that the role of imagination was argued as early as 1784 against Mesmer's theory of animal magnetism.

Clinical use in the twentieth century

The 2024 overview describes hypnosis as present at the start of psychoanalysis, with Sigmund Freud moving away from it from 1900, and notes later hypnoanalytic approaches and attempts to combine hypnosis with behavior therapy. It states that present-day hypnotherapy is characterized by techniques and strategies developed by Milton H. Erickson. Kihlstrom dates the modern era of hypnosis research to the 1930s and links a later period of research to scales that measure hypnotizability.

Use for stopping smoking

The sources reviewed for this page do not give a dated account of when hypnosis was first offered to people who smoke. The earliest evidence they document is the trial literature collected by the Cochrane review, whose first version appeared in 2010 and whose latest version was published in 2019. Hypnosis for smoking cessation is described there as widely promoted, so the practice is better documented through its trials than through its own history.

Hypnosis, hypnotherapy and cessation hypnosis

The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) says hypnosis is also called hypnotherapy. The Cochrane review uses hypnotherapy for the smoking trials and describes it as intended to act on underlying impulses to weaken the desire to smoke or strengthen the will to stop. The NHS describes hypnotherapy as the use of relaxation techniques to try to improve unhealthy habits or ways of thinking. Cessation hypnosis is the label this page uses for the habit-change application, and it is not a separate technique with its own standard.

Hypnotizability and suggestion

Hypnotizability is the term for individual differences in response to hypnotic suggestion, and standardized scales for measuring it were developed during the twentieth century. The 2024 overview notes that harder hypnotic phenomena can be shown only in highly hypnotizable people, while those who are moderately hypnotizable may also benefit from hypnosis rituals. Researchers continue to debate whether hypnosis is a special state of consciousness or an ordinary social interaction.

Related Machipedia pages

This page belongs to the family described on the Hypnotherapy page, which covers the wider field and its uses, and it should be read with the Clinical Hypnosis and Self-Hypnosis pages. The trials discussed below mostly test sessions led by a practitioner, so findings should not be carried over to self-hypnosis recordings or apps, which the sources reviewed here do not assess.

Session formats in trials

Trials describe the format only in general terms. In a San Francisco Veterans Affairs trial of 286 smokers, both arms had two 60-minute sessions, three follow-up phone calls and two months of nicotine patches. A later trial from the same group enrolled 140 smokers, and those who had quit for at least three days received two 60-minute face-to-face sessions and four 20-minute follow-up phone calls. A US hospital trial gave one 90-minute hypnotherapy session.

How hypnosis is combined with other support

The Cochrane review describes hypnotherapy as being tested against no treatment, advice, behavioral treatments, rapid smoking and drug treatment, and as an add-on to other treatments. This shows that it is offered in several ways, including alone, with counseling and with nicotine replacement. The sources reviewed describe the sessions only by length and number, and they do not set out what a practitioner says or does, and this page does not either.

Smoking cessation and relapse prevention

Proponents offer hypnosis to weaken the desire to smoke or to strengthen the resolve to stop, as the Cochrane review puts it. NCCIH lists smoking cessation among the conditions for which hypnosis has been studied. The Veterans Affairs group also tested hypnosis as a way of helping people who had already quit to stay abstinent, which is a relapse prevention use rather than a first quit attempt.

Other habits

Hypnosis is also promoted for other habits, such as vaping, alcohol use and weight management. The sources reviewed for this page do not include trials or reviews on those uses, so the page makes no claim about them, and nothing from the smoking trials should be carried over to them. The NHS describes hypnotherapy in general terms as relaxation techniques aimed at unhealthy habits.

Cochrane review of hypnotherapy for smoking cessation

The latest Cochrane review (Barnes and colleagues, 2019; searches to July 2018) included 14 randomized trials with 1,926 participants, comparing hypnotherapy with 22 different control interventions. Only one trial was at low risk of bias, 10 were at high risk and three were unclear. The studies were too diverse for a single meta-analysis, and the review concluded that they did not provide reliable evidence of greater benefit than other interventions or no treatment.

Against attention-matched behavioral treatments the pooled risk ratio was 1.21 (95% CI 0.91 to 1.61; 6 studies, 957 participants; low certainty), and against intensive behavioral interventions it was 0.93 (95% CI 0.47 to 1.82; 2 studies, 211 participants; very low certainty). Five studies of hypnotherapy added to other treatments showed a pooled risk ratio of 2.10 (95% CI 1.31 to 3.35), which the authors said to interpret with caution because of high risk of bias and substantial heterogeneity. They concluded that any benefit is small at most.

Later and individual trials

In the 286-person Veterans Affairs trial, hypnosis plus patches was compared with behavioral counseling plus patches. Self-reported seven-day abstinence at six months was 29% against 23% (relative risk 1.27, 95% CI 0.84 to 1.92), and the difference was not statistically significant at six or 12 months. The authors reported significantly higher validated quit rates among participants with a history of depression, a subgroup finding that should not be generalized.

In the 2017 relapse prevention trial, 102 participants who had quit for three days were randomized. Validated point-prevalence quit rates at 26 weeks were 35% with hypnosis and 42% with behavioral counseling (relative risk 0.85, 95% CI 0.52 to 1.40), and at 52 weeks they were 29% and 28%.

A trial by Hasan and colleagues randomized 164 hospitalized cardiac or pulmonary patients to nicotine replacement therapy, one hypnotherapy session, or both, with a comparison group who refused intervention. Unadjusted abstinence at 26 weeks was 36.6% with hypnotherapy and 18.0% with nicotine replacement (p=0.06), and an adjusted analysis gave a relative risk of 3.6 (p=0.03). Quit rates in the untreated comparison group did not differ from those in any treatment group at 26 weeks.

Overviews and guideline position

A 2024 overview of 22 Cochrane reviews found that drug and behavioral interventions increased smoking cessation, while data on hypnotherapy, acupuncture and several other approaches were unclear. NCCIH says studies of hypnosis for quitting smoking have had conflicting results. The 2021 NICE guideline on tobacco (NG209, updated 2025) lists the interventions that should be made accessible to adults who smoke, namely behavioral support, very brief advice, cytisinicline, nicotine replacement therapy, varenicline, bupropion, nicotine-containing e-cigarettes and the Allen Carr's Easyway group seminar. A text search of the guideline found no recommendation on hypnosis or hypnotherapy, so it neither recommends nor advises against it.

Reported adverse events

The Cochrane review found very little evidence on adverse effects: most trials did not say whether harms were collected, and the one that did found no significant difference from relaxation. An analysis of trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov reported no serious adverse events likely attributable to hypnosis and a rate of other adverse events of 0.47%, but several registered trials gave no adverse event data, and those studies used hypnosis for medical symptoms, not for psychiatric conditions or habit change. Absence of reports is not evidence that harm does not occur.

Cautions and care boundaries

The NHS states that hypnotherapy may not be suitable for people with schizophrenia or a history of psychosis, or with epilepsy, and notes that complementary therapies are not tested in the same way as standard medicines. It advises people not to stop prescribed medicines without speaking to their doctor. Hypnosis does not replace the stop-smoking support described in NICE guidance, and anyone with smoking-related illness, or who is considering stopping alongside medication, can raise it with a clinician. This page is not a substitute for care.

Training and choosing a practitioner

The NHS advises choosing a private therapist who is registered with a professional organization accredited by the Professional Standards Authority. The sources reviewed for this page do not set out course content, hours or competence standards for hypnotherapists who treat smoking, and no source reviewed describes harms from negative effects of therapy in this context. Readers can ask a practitioner about their training, the number of sessions proposed and how outcomes are judged.