A Redditor recently shared the claim that they quit smoking cigarettes through ChatGPT hypnosis and shared their story on the r/ChatGPTPromptGenius subreddit, which is dedicated to “curating a collection of high-quality & standardized prompts that can be used to generate creative and engaging AI conversations.”
u/InsideAd9719 wrote, “A Little Context: A few months ago, I quit nicotine…I used ChatGPT. I prompted it to perform conversational hypnosis on me, the same kind therapists use to rewire cravings. And it worked. No struggle. No white-knuckling through withdrawals. Cravings gone.”
They went on to write, “Then I took it a step further. I built a custom GPT for my best friend using the same technique. He is now 32 days sober and quit drinking. After that, I shared both my methods here on this subreddit.”
“The response was insane! Over 120+ people have reached out personally to tell me they successfully quit nicotine & alcohol, and 1,400+ have reexamined their relationship with substances. Which is simply amazing, It shows the power of prompting!”
They shared the links to those posts. They shared that they’d been getting a lot of requests for quitting weed as well, which they included at the bottom of the post.
“As a 22 year old. I have a strong belief AI will change the world. Not someday but right now. WE ARE THAT CHANGE!! We don’t have to wait for change, we can create it. AI can help people break free from habits that no longer serve them and make real, lasting changes.”
OP then shared a link to a custom GPT they built on ChatGPT. It includes the “conversational hypnosis” prompt that others could plug into their own ChatGPT accounts if they prefer.
Does hypnosis work to break habits?
According to a research study available via the NIH, the results of hypnosis as a method of quitting a vice such as smoking or alcohol are inconclusive at best. They write, “There is insufficient evidence to determine whether hypnotherapy is more effective for smoking cessation than other forms of behavioral support or unassisted quitting. If a benefit is present, current evidence suggests the benefit is small at most. There is very little evidence on whether hypnotherapy causes adverse effects, but the existing data show no evidence that it does. Further large, high‐quality randomized controlled trials, and more comprehensive assessments of safety, are needed on this topic.”
Medical News Today shared statistics of hypnotherapy success rates, which varied wildly from 4% to 88% success for older studies, which they noted were not well-controlled studies. More recent studies, they note, “have found a success rate of 20% to 35%, although the review’s authors indicated that these studies were unreliable and uncontrolled.”
Responses to the ChatGPT hypnosis prompt
Redditors’ responses to u/InsideAd9719’s AI-powered hypnosis prompts were largely positive, with folks requesting prompts for other hypnosis prompts from the OP.
The Reddit post was reposted on X, formerly known as Twitter, where responses were more mixed:
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