Giving up smoking: Log on, tune in, stub out

Freddy Jacquin's clinic isn't the first place you'd expect a world revolution to start. Tucked in the basement of his terraced Tunbridge Wells home, there isn't even a plaque to advertise his trade to passers-by. Even once you step into the calm yellow room with its cream armchair and sofa, it hardly feels as though you've entered the nucleus of a new development that has the potential to change the lives of millions of people. But Jacquin, 54, is convinced he has the ability and the tool to free people around the world from their current problems, be they smoking, over-eating, phobias, pain or lack of motivation.

A hypnotherapist for more than 10 years, Jacquin says he has helped more than 25,000 people quit smoking and thousands of others lose weight and deal with other issues. But, with what claims to be the first website in the world to offer instant hypnosis online, he hopes to help hundreds of thousands more.

The idea came out of the group sessions he runs around the country for up to 200 people at a time. "To show people how powerful their mind is and how suggestible they can be I developed a quick induction of persuading them their hands were stuck together, but it was so powerful I was having to bring people out of that state. Most inductions are long and involve the words 'sleep' and 'relaxation', but it occurred to me that I'd developed a really rapid, visual induction that would work online with video-streaming. Other hypnosis websites exist, but you've got to send off for a CD or wait for the download. With mine you can do the session in 15 minutes during your lunch break and never crave a cigarette again. It's easy. It's painless."

If you've struggled and failed to give up cigarettes or yo-yo dieted for decades, this may sound too good to be true. Gay Sutherland, a consultant clinical psychologist who runs an NHS smoking cessation clinic at the Maudsley Hospital in London, certainly thinks so.

"There are some smokers who - for reasons we don't understand - manage to give up with great ease and wonder why they didn't try before. But in a country like England, where there is a lot of information about the risks of smoking, most smokers have already tried to quit and failed. They are very unlikely to give up totally painlessly. They are likely to go through a range of symptoms, from feeling depressed or anxious to experiencing sleeping problems and loss of concentration, for several weeks."

Jacquin insists it's easy and painless to get people to quit because smoking isn't really addictive. He gives convincing arguments: that smokers can go through the night without waking for a fag; they tend to smoke the same amount for years and don't keep having to increase their intake; and that, unlike other addicts, they limit their habit to what they can afford or what is socially acceptable. But it's an argument that is at direct odds with the established medical view, summarised by the Royal College of Physicians report Nicotine Addiction in Britain (2000) which concluded: "Tobacco dependence is a serious form of drug addiction which, on the whole, is second to no other."