Like any other addiction, the smoking phenomenon has a plethora of marketers and snake oil salesmen ready to leap upon your misery. You will get pills, injections, patches, books, support groups, books and even the idea of genetic modification as ways to quit cigarette smoking.

But listen. There is only one way which can truly beat the cigarette habit, and that is to simply stop smoking. It is a wonderful concept, because it is so simple in statement, and yet many people find it incredibly difficult to successfully execute.

Out of the many ways to quit cigarette smoking, the only method which has a mass of anecdotal evidence to support it is that of quitting cold turkey. Now, that is not to mean you can't use a secondary method to help you with quit the cigarette habit cold turkey; on the contrary, that is encouraged.

I smoked 40 cigarettes a day for a decade, yet I was able to quit very quickly and without any of the side effect such as weight gain, dizziness, cravings or a change in temperament. Ostensibly I simply packed in the smokes cold turkey, but in order to do that successfully, I had to rewire my brain by looking at the habit differently.

Out of the many ways to quit cigarette smoking, it was hypnotherapy that did it for me. Now, I know it is likely you think of hypnotherapy as going into a seedy office with an even seedier man who has a pencil moustache and swinging medallion. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Hypnotherapy does not involve going into a trance. It doesn't even have to mean leaving your home. There are plenty of books and CD products which act as hypnotic therapy. Using hypnotherapy to kick the cigarette habit is really quite simple - it changes your views of smoking. Whereas you might argue that smoking helps you shed anxiety, hypnotherapy will question whether that is really the case. In essence, hypnotherapy removes the reasons you have for smoking. If you have no justification to smoke, then you won't feel the need to pick up a cigarette.

Nicotine patches, nicotine gum, herbal cigarettes and the like are all ineffective ways to quit cigarette smoking. Smoking is primarily a psychological addiction, and these remedies don't cure the psychological bond you have with cigarettes - they just strengthen it. How many times have you gone to the cinema for three hours without smoking? In fact, I'm willing to bet that the only time you did want a cigarette was when you actually thought about the fact you had not smoked for a while.

In conclusion, it is essential that you break the psychological addiction to cigarettes. The only way to break the psychological addiction is to break down the thinking patterns your brain has developed over the course of your smoking career. The best way to do this is through hypnotherapy. If you are intent on quitting the cigarette habit, ensure you don't replace one dependency with another one.