"The reason we like certain substances – from caffeine to cocaine – is that they mimic the brain's own feel-good chemicals," he explains.

"The trouble is that the substances then hijack the brain so that your brain no longer produces its own feel- good chemicals, called neurotransmitters, so you need more and more of the drug to feel normal.

"Without the substance you feel lousy, with it you feel normal, but no longer high."

He says ultimately the drug hijacks your brain so you think, without it, you will die. No amount of will power can over-rule your brain's survival mechanism.

"If you scramble your brains, sitting around in a group and talking about it isn't going to unscramble your brain," says Patrick in his new book How to Quit, co-written with Dr David Miller and Dr James Braly.

"Many people, months after quitting, still have what we called 'abstinence symptoms'," he says.

These don't just mean cravings they include hypersensitivity to stress, noise or pain; feeling "empty" or incomplete; not feeling "normal"; feeling anxious or shaky; having problems with memory or sleep; experiencing fatigue, mood swings, restlessness and impulsiveness or depression – in short: pain and misery.

"The good news is that, by feeding your brain the exact nutrients that are needed to make its own feel-good chemicals, the abstinence symptoms and craving go away," says Patrick.

Most treatment centres for serious addiction have up to a 20 per cent success rate – meaning only 20 per cent are clean or sober at the end of a year. But he maintains that no matter how much you want to quit, you are likely to fail unless you change the chemical make-up of your brain. Changing your diet and taking a cocktail of nutrients and supplements, Holford says, can greatly improve your chances of kicking a habit.


"We recently followed up 23 hard-core addicts who had used the How To Quit approach one year later. Twenty one were clean or sober. That's a 91 per cent success rate."

He says on average, people reduced their abstinence symptom score by more than half to three-quarters within a month, with the nutrients first given intravenously.

A recent survey revealed that doctors are seeing an unprecedented number of people with addictions.

"Twenty-first century life is much faster; we all have to work harder, process more change, our relationships are getting shorter and we are more time poor," says Patrick. "People turn to substances to give them more energy or to help them relax. It is a vicious cycle."

Patrick first became interested in mental health and addictions after he qualified as a psychologist specialising in schizophrenia.

He worked in addiction treatment centre in the East End and often saw many professional people with drugs and alcohol problems.

"I learnt about the lengths people will go to get drugs. I started to realise that for educated people to act in the extreme way they were, despite wanting to stop, there had to be something about the way the drugs worked that was hijacking their brain.

"As I studied the brain I realised how important nutrition was for it to function properly so I decided to study nutrition."


ADDICTION FACTS

One in four people are addicted to or dependent on something

We drink 70 million cups of coffee a day – two each per adult

One in 10 use illicit drugs

Five million are addicted or dependent on alcohol –

probably another 5 million are addicted/dependent on prescribed drugs

31 million anti-depressant prescriptions are issued every year

1.7 million are addicted to benzodiazepines, with 9 million prescriptions last year

Patrick Holford will be holding a How to Quit seminar on Tuesday September 30, 6.30pm. Thorpe Park Hotel, Century Way, Leeds.
Visit www.how2quit.co.uk or call 02088712949.