When I ask David Spiegel, MD, the associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and former president of the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, if this is, in fact, “it,” I’m surprised to learn that, yeah, it kinda is. She cites a 1970 study that found hypnotherapy to be 93 percent effective after six sessions, and says that when she takes on new clients currently, she only does so if they commit to a minimum of 12 sessions (to the tune $15,000-Smith tells me that, as CEO of her company, her personal clients are mostly celebrities and executives, but she has hypnotherapists on her team who charge $100-$150 per session) in order to maximize their chances of success. Her success with quitting smoking after a single session isn’t the norm, Smith cautions me. Then Smith gets out her swinging pocket watch and begins counting down from 100…kidding, there’s still no pocket watch. pick-me-up cookie), my family’s relationship with food when I was growing up (fraught, in a word), and goals (eliminating my cravings and being able to turn down a sugary snack when offered one). Smith asks me about my current relationship with sugar and sweets (I can’t say no to an office cupcake or 4 p.m. Our first session, done in one of my office’s conference rooms after hours, starts not with a swinging pocket watch or spoon tinkling against a teacup’s rim, but with a chat. We have 40,000 people on our email list just for this.”
I flip through a mental Rolodex of issues I’d like to vanquish-stress, trouble sleeping, lack of self-confidence-and stop on one that feels measurable and manageable: cutting back on sugar. (But, notably, both experts say it's divisive whether hypnosis is effective for smoking cessation.) Irving Kirsch, PhD, associate director of the Program in Placebo Studies and lecturer in medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, adds irritable bowel syndrome to this list. According to Guy Montgomery, PhD, director of the Center for Behavioral Oncology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and former president of the American Psychological Association Division for Hypnosis, it’s had success treating cases of pain management, common symptoms and side effects cancer patients face (such as nausea and fatigue), and anxiety. “I just thought, why does anybody have lung cancer? Why does anybody have emphysema? Why is anybody continuing to smoke if they don't want to smoke?”īecause-and let’s get this out of the way right at the beginning-research does show that hypnotism works for many people. “I was so appalled from a justice standpoint,” she says. And she was mad-mad that this powerful tool had been overlooked (or, worse yet, made a joke of) for so long.
After one hypnosis session, Smith says, she was through with cigarettes.