In the 90s, lots of memories of sexual abuse were found through hypnosis. Only the abuse never happened.

The causes ranged from 'direct' suggestions such as "go back and remember being abused" to 'indirect' pre-induction talk eg "we've found lots of people with repressed memories of being abused so we're going to hypnotise you".

The mind is quite capable of creating plausible events that never happened eg dreaming.

So when expected to, the mind comes up with something that seems like a plausible memory.

This is quite different from motorway trances. Driving on a motorway fully conscious is both tiring and boring so the mind adapts a more suitable state. It does not make the mind more suggestible or more likely to hallucinate (probably less likely).

So I'd say no. The phenomenon of self-reported alien abduction is almost unheard of in Britain and most of the world as far as I know.

I've never met anyone who claimed to be abducted.

But I was always taught that, however outrageous the claims of a client, one should consider the possibility that they're true.

It is more of an art form than a method. It's like asking how good films are in general.

Smoking cessation is the more straightforward of these problems. You have both cravings and habitual choosing to smoke.

I've only found one method that's effective for cravings - EFT. You can do it with NLP anchoring but that takes rare skill and possibly hours. I've read many reports of ex-smokers saying the cravings are still there after 20 years.

Changing the decision to smoke is simply repeated mental rehearsal of how an ex-smoker would think about smoking ie resolve, distaste and a clear understanding of why they don't want to smoke.

Weight loss is another matter. Even the medical profession is clueless about the major factors that cause it.
eg after the age of 30, people's metabolism typically drops like a stone. This is due to a drop in the release of growth hormone (the same thing they give short kids).
After this time, exercise does almost nothing for weight loss (there are exceptions).

So there are 2 options, eat far less or take growth hormone precursors.

For the former, you need clients to completely change their relationship with food ie a re-imprint. Hypnosis is practically inevitable here.
Hypnosis can also be used to boost metabolism.

It's perhaps easiest to think of hypnotherapy as an amplifier of experience, but it can be used to bypass everyday self-doubt. It cannot do anything that people can't do on eg their best day in ten years.

Feel free to ask more questions.

Interesting news on Stroop test, Krishna.