Independent's Charlotte Philby tells of her success with stop smoking hypnotherapy

Charlotte Philby has told the readers of The Independent about "how my habit went up in smoke" through the assistance of hypnotherapy.

Philby writes that she had smoked a pack a day for over fourteen years - an addiction of more than half her lifetime - and saw no reason to quit. She says that she felt no need to quit, even accepting the cost as necessary for something that made her "life a little bit better".

However, after seeing her father pass away from lung cancer in 2009, Philby made a commitment to kick the habit for good. After two months using nicotine replacement products - she says that she was still gripped by nicotine cravings.

Revealing that she'd sneak off "every few days" for a solitary cigarette, Philby admits that she was finding it impossible to stop smoking. Hypnotherapy had recently helped a friend of hers kick the habit, so she decided to give it a try.

After placing a £50 bet with her friend, Philby visited a hypnotherapist who used NLP techniques to appeal to her subconscious mind. She says that though she was initially dubious, six weeks later she has felt no need to go back for a "top up session"; in her own words, she says she "stopped thinking of [herself] as a smoker.''

She says that its not that she can resist cigarettes - it's that she's "just not interested''.