CLEVELAND -- You've seen the ads, but can hypnosis really help you quit smoking?

"It's just a sensation you need. You want it so bad," Sandy Zickursh told NewsChannel5's Ron Regan.

Just the thought of smoking would spark a craving for her.

"Now, breathe in deep. Good. Now, breathe down fast and physically drop the whole body like a ton of bricks. Just begin to sleep now," said hypnotist Don Mannarino.

Zickursh said she soon came under a spell.

"As the eyes go back and forth, you go deeper and deeper," Mannarino said.

He hypnotized Zickursh and a roomful of others desperate to quit smoking.

"So I'm all relaxed and I'm listening to him," Zickursh said.

"As you exhale, let the body relax into a trance of hypnotic sleep," Mannarino said.

All of a sudden, my mind starts to wander and I'm thinking, 'Can I pick up my arm?' I don't know. And so I started to try and I couldn't," Zickursh said.

Mannarino runs a stop-smoking program for the American Lung Association.

"The claim that we try to stay away from at the American Lung Association is guaranteeing anyone, anything," Mannarino said.

But recently, Regan said that you might have seen a newspaper ad for another program operated by a totally different organization. It offers "110 percent" seminar guarantee.

Hundreds of smokers answered the ad and packed seminars all over Cleveland.

"I lit a cigarette from a cigarette, there was never a time I did not have a cigarette lit," said Sandra Frischmann.

She spotted a Gorayeb Stop Smoking ad two years ago when it came to town from its New Jersey headquarters.

"I am a believer. I would recommend it to anyone. I have recommended it. It saved my life," Frischmann said.

According to Regan, federal regulators once called Gorayeb's advertising deceptive and unsubstantiated. Specifically, the Federal Trade Commission complained about ads that claim you could stop smoking without craving and without withdrawal. At first, the company declined to talk with NewsChannel5, so Regan dropped by one of their seminars.

"What's the deal with these claims?" Regan asked.

"Look, I have a seminar to do, I have to help people quit smoking," a Gorayeb hypnotist said.

The Federal Trade Commission said Gorayeb Seminars remains under a 20-year agreement finalized in 1995, prohibiting claims without "competent and reliable" scientific evidence.

Gorayeb settled the charges without admitting any violation of law and changed it ads.

Regan checked into what's different about the new ads.

"Do you exaggerate claims?" Regan asked.

"This is ridiculous, this is a sham, go away," the hypnotist said.

But a few days later, company founder Ron Gorayeb agreed to talk by phone about the evidence he has to support his claims.

He said the evidence shows 58 percent of participants stop smoking, another 25 percent cut down. But it also contains information he wouldn't want competitors to see. Eventually, he offered to show us the data, but only if we would go to company headquarters in New Jersey.

As for the ads, the word "designed" was added to prevent any deception.

"What my ad says now is, "You can stop smoking tonight and the hypnosis is 'designed' so you will have no irritability," Gorayeb said.

And Gorayeb said nutritional supplements sold at his seminars, where participants can spend hundreds of dollars, are not aimed at helping you stop smoking.

"You're with the American Lung Association for a serious medical reason," Mannarino said.

The American Lung Association believes its program is focused on one thing, Regan said.

"Our mission is not to sell vitamins, it's not to try and make money," Mannarino said.

And Regan said that guarantees are only as good as potential ex-smokers make them.

"I just don't have the desire to have a cigarette. Not at all. And nothing else has ever done that. This is amazing," Zickursh said.

While hypnosis can stop smoking, Regan said that only you can decide where help should start.

For more information on the American Lung Association's hypnosis seminars, click here. Or check out Gorayeb's seminars here.