Rapper Kid Cudi tells Joe Rogan How He Was Hypnotized to Stop Smoking
Article by Tony Sokol
Kid Cudi doesn’t have a problem talking about his addictions. He has spoken openly about kicking his cocaine habit by going cold turkey. But the Brooklyn-based rapper, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, had a harder time quitting cigarettes. Kid Cudi opened about going to a hypnotist on the “Joe Rogan Experience podcast.”
Joe Rogan is a stand-up comedian, actor, martial artist, sports commentator and podcaster. He hosted Kid Cudi last year after the musician and actor was coming off a hard run.
Kid Cudi admitted he took a long look at himself after his arrest. He was being described as a “coke fiend, crazy cracked out dude, but I’m like, man it’s just a little blow.”
He said things got so bad he had to ask himself “how did I let this become Scott Mescudi?”
Cudi told Rogan about how he stopped smoking through hypnosis after picking up the habit from emulating his father. It was the last bad habit he had to drop.
“Sometimes after a good meal, I want a cigarette, but I don’t have one. I got hypnotized,” he said.
Rogan asked the rapper if he went to a hypnotist and if he “remembered them hypnotizing you?”
Kid Cudi said he remembered the hypnosis session.
“You have to listen in order to ‘process the information’” you get during a hypnosis session. “It’s really a re-education. It’s like what we learned in health class during school as kids,” Cudi explained.
New York City Hypnotist Elena Mosaner explained “indeed, a hypnosis session to stop smoking is almost like a very intense education course. The client receives information about the dangers of smoking while being in the state of trance. They hear everything perfectly without any judgment.”
“That’s the purpose of the hypnosis session to build rapport with a client,” Mosaner continued. “We guide them into trance and tell them, with details, everything they already know about smoking. Except now it is all going into a subconscious level of their mind. On top of all that powerful visualization helps to anchor these beliefs about smoking.”
Kid Cudi added that the fear of smoking that is instilled on students In health classes lessens over time with the influence of the “James Deans” and the hypnotist simply “reminds you of the dangers of cigarettes.”
Kid Cudi said the hypnotist “kind of reboots you,” and allowed the rapper to again “see things as a fourth grader.”
Rogan asked Kid Cudi to walk him through the process of hypnosis, whether the hypnotist asked him to lie down and close his eyes.
Cudi told the comedian that the hypnotist came to his “crib, because I wanted to feel comfortable. And I had a knife there, so if he tried any funny business I was just going to [makes noises like a cutting blade]. I thought he was going to touch me. I had a shank underneath my pillow in case.”
Rogan immediately picked up on the paranoia, telling Cudi about a comedian who used to go to The Comedy Store “that used to hypnotize women. His thing was, he was a comedian but he also did hypnotist work and he would always hypnotize girls.”
“I remember very clearly,” Rogan continued. “One time I was walking to the back of the Comedy Store and he was talking to this woman and she pulled her head back and said ‘no, I don’t want you to hypnotize me.”
But Kid Cudi had his hypnosis session on his couch. He said that when he was counted down he felt “tired as hell.”
Kid Cudi said he had three separate sessions and that he was allowed to smoke after the first “therapy session of hypnosis then after the second week you’re done completely and then after the third it’s done.”
Generally, it can take one or two session to help someone overcome a smoking habit, according to NYC Hypnotist Elena Mosaner.
“It really depends on a hypnotist you go to and also the client. The more resistance one has the more sessions they may need,” Mosaner explained.
Kid Cudi said he had the urge to smoke, but wasn’t “that quick to get into it.”
Cudi moved to Brooklyn from Cleveland, Ohio, to chase his dream of rap superstardom. His first official full-length project, a 2008 mixtape called “A Kid Named Cudi,” which caught the ear of Kanye West. West’s GOOD Music record label dropped Cudi’s breakout single “Day ‘n’ Nite” that same year.
Kid Cudi has sold over 5.2 million digital singles and collaborated with such artists as Jay-Z, Common, Mary J. Blige, Steve Aoki, David Guetta, Shakira, MGMT, Ratatat, Snoop Dogg and Michael Bolton.
As an actor Cudi starred in the HBO series “How to Make It in America” in 2011 and in the short films “Maniac” (2011), directed by Shia LaBeouf; and “Cruel Summer” (2012), directed by Kanye West.
Kid Cudi also acted in “Goodbye World,” “Need for Speed” and “Entourage.” He showed his off his comic chops in on The Cleveland Show and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. In 2015, he became the co-host on the IFC series, Comedy Bang Bang.
Kid Cudi talked about how his sudden and unexpected fame drove him to alcohol and drugs in an interview with Headkrack’s Hip Hop Spot. He recounted how he was kicked off Lady Gaga’s tour for his drug use and he spent a night in jail. He claimed he quit his addictions without clinical help.
“I had a problem. I think with any addiction you have to be ready to make the choice, whether it’s cigarettes or anything. You have to just commit and you just have to stick with it,” he said. “I stopped everything cold turkey… I didn’t go to rehab. I don’t believe in these things. Some people need the extra help, not me.”
Now Kid Cudi keeps himself in check with self-hypnosis.
For more information of hypnosis sessions check out our self-hypnosis audio for smoking cessation, a perfect source to prepare yourself to stop smoking. Some of our customers report stopping a bad habit after listening to the audio just a few times. Make a decision and stop smoking today with your own will power and self-control.
To listen to the conversation between Joe Rogan and Kid Cudi about hypnosis and smoking cessation, start at a 57-minute mark of the whole episode on Spotify.