But my curiosity about the Russian's methods was piqued. Especially after I met a sensible, skeptical Midwestern woman -- someone just like me except her teeth were brown from decades of chain-smoking. Her nicotine cravings were so intense she had started lighting up in the shower. At her husband's pleading, she saw the Russian. Now she is a nonsmoker. I'm not crippled by deadly habits, but I'd love to effortlessly lose a few unwanted pounds that landed in my midsection when I hit 30. So I packed my bags and headed for Boston to find out if what I had heard of the Russian shaman was true.

There are no glamourpusses in Yefim Shubentsov's waiting room. Some are bloated and flushed, others pale and skinny in all the wrong places. The stench of stale cigarettes is acute. I settle in for an evening observing two sessions, one for smokers, the other for weight loss. The too-warm waiting area is filled with glimmering seascapes. (Shubentsov, an artist in the former Soviet Union, painted them all.) A quick tally reveals that about 80 percent of the group had traveled from out of state, mostly from Florida, New York, Pennsylvania and California. Word of mouth, they say, brought them here; the famously reclusive Russian doesn't advertise.

A young Russian woman summons us through a hallway into a smaller room. We sit in a circle in plastic chairs. The Russian walks in, closes the door behind him with a thud and steps to the front of the room.

Dapper, bespectacled and compactly built, Shubentsov looks more like Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan than a New Age healer. His accent is so thick he sounds like he is speaking into a bowl of oatmeal. "I am the eraser," he announces to the 25 people slumped in plastic chairs in a circle around him. "The ERASER," he repeats, meaning he will erase the cravings that torment his patients. Eyes lock around the room in confusion. "I am your last chance," he finally says, turning to face his flock. All 25 heads bob.

The Russian claims to cure with a method called bio-energy. He says it's a way of marshaling the body's own healing forces. The bio-energy bible also happens to be Shubentsov's own self-help book, "Cure Your Cravings," for which he was the sole reference source.

Shubentsov grew up in the Soviet Union, then worked as an artist until his healing gifts were discovered. He says he was trained in bio-energy in a top-secret Soviet underground laboratory, where his hands brought dead plants to life and restored animals' broken limbs in controlled experiments. He rose through the upper echelons of Soviet medicine, eventually becoming the Evil Empire's most respected energy healer. Then he defected.

He's eager to prove that bio-energy works miracles on, say, a leg injury. You tell him where it hurts. He makes a series of hand movements over the afflicted area, steps to and fro, waves up and down, then steps back, his gold jewelry clanking. He'll ask if the pain is gone. If the answer is yes, he'll twirl around like a magician who just made a tiger disappear. Poof! If you say no, he will shake and dance and flap his hands, growing more and more exasperated. Most people eventually get embarrassed and tell him yes, the pain is gone. Then he'll twirl, triumphant.

What all this has to do with smoking and addiction is simple: If he can make pain disappear, he says, he can make your cravings disappear. Of course, mainstream addiction specialists say that his "treatment" is merely the power of suggestion wielded by a charismatic figure. "There is nothing in the medical literature to suggest that cravings can be reversed in one session with anyone," says Eric Scheiber, M.D., medical director of the Doreen E. Chapman Center for the Treatment of Addictions at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare. "I keep an open mind about alternative therapies, but addiction treatment is a process, not an event."

The two marathon "healing" sessions I observed fit my definition of an event, though I doubt this is what Scheiber had in mind. Imagine being berated for six hours by a cross between Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Ricki Lake. First he tells us that Americans are simpering brats whose biggest problem is a lack of backbone. Then he exhorts everyone in the room to volunteer complaints. Do you have pain? Do you suffer from phobias, depression and sex addiction? I find myself searching for pathologies to report. "I have a pain in my chest," one woman says. "I've already had two heart attacks, and I suffer from anxiety," chimes another.

Shubentsov beams when a stunning blond stockbroker from Manhattan admits she is depressed, anxious, phobic, can't quit smoking, has a searing pain in her foot ("I feel like someone stuck a knife in me") and is terrified about gaining weight. Shubentsov bends down on one knee, runs his hands over her foot and asks if it feels better. Bio energy to the rescue. "No," she whispers. He tries again. "A little better," she says. Shubentsov tells her she needs to see a chiropractor and move to Arizona. (Her eyes scream, "Why am I here?") He continues, "Your circulation is terrible; you need a warm climate." He breaks away from her to explain to the group that a high-pressure system in the Northeast is the reason many of them don't feel well. "I hate Arizona," the woman wails. "What about Carmel?" Shubentsov tells her Carmel or Napa Valley -- in fact, anywhere in Northern California -- would be OK. "What about Florida?" asks a woman with a Long Island accent. "NO!!" thunders Shubentsov. "Too humid."

Shubentsov loses patience when the disclosures trail off. "You're so afraid to speak in front of each other! That's so American! Nobody cares about your problems."

From across the room a young balding man tells Shubentsov he suffers from a condition called anxiety disorder. "Are you trying to drive me crazy?" the Russian bellows. "Speak English!" The man coughs, inhales and booms back, "I tear my hair out in clumps!" Shubentsov paces a while, then says, "I call that a bad habit." He chuckles at his own joke. Everyone smiles tightly.

And so it goes, hour after hour, the Russian sharing his views on lawyers (hates them), attention deficit disorder (doesn't buy it), American education (sub-par) and sexual harassment ("I never touch American women"). Someone worries that quitting smoking will make her fat. He retorts that if cigarettes helped keep weight off, "you wouldn't see big fat pigs that smoke three packs a day." Later on in the session, he "cures" a heavyset blond woman of a hearing problem, although she later tells me she wasn't hard of hearing when she walked in.

By the end of the performance, Shubentsov is pacing from one end of the room to another, mopping his brow and reaching out to people like an Eastern Bloc Jimmy Swaggart. He asks a woman to read a passage from a recent issue of Time magazine on the evils of antidepressant medication. Then he grabs a small statue of a man and shoves it in each person's face, demanding they guess his identity. No one can, and Shubentsov is ebullient. "It is Rembrandt, the greatest Dutch painter who ever lived! The antique dealer I bought it from didn't know either."

After the anti-smoking session comes the weight-loss session, slated to last four hours. It is identical to the smoking session, as if he choreographed the entire evening. He "cures" a second heavyset blond woman's imagined hearing problem, women are told they have circulatory disorders and banished to drier climes and someone is prompted to read Time magazine. A man is told to see a chiropractor. When Shubentsov brandishes the Rembrandt statue, I excuse myself and head for the door. The Eraser leaves the group and follows me out.

"What did you think? Did you think it was good?" he asks. I say it was interesting. He tells me I have a problem he is able to define just by looking at me. Is he on to my plans to devour an entire chicken at my favorite Greek hole in the wall and wash it down with several glasses of retsina? "You have very poor circulation," he says. I tell him I don't think so. He blinks twice, smiles sweetly and touches my hand. "Of course I am right. You're so cold." But my hand is warmer than his.

When I follow up with people who attended the sessions I had, everyone -- even one of the women with the so-called hearing problem -- is glad to have seen him. "I think it was a mass hypnosis," says Alice Thompson, a recipe developer in Manhattan and former pack-a-day smoker who hasn't wanted a cigarette since her session. She shrugs off the fact that Shubentsov vehemently denies the ability to hypnotize anyone.

Valerie, a Boston graphic designer who didn't want her last name published, says her sweet tooth has abated since Shubentsov put his hands on her and asked what she wanted erased. "I said 'chocolate,' and I felt a not unpleasant sensation in my head. Since then my cravings have definitely backed off a bit. Maybe I was just ready to take that step."

Anne, who asked that her real name not be used, wanted Shubentsov to help her lose 50 pounds gained after a hysterectomy. During the confessional call-outs, she revealed a history of manic depression that was being managed with medication. When the session ended, she says Shubentsov implored her to get off antidepressants and "put your life in my hands." But he later denies telling her to quit the prescription drugs, saying, "I am very, very legal. I never recommend what is illegal." When I ask him if he has ever been sued, he just says, "I have enough problems in my life." Anne characterizes her experience as "more negative than positive" but admits that, post-Shubentsov, she has been eating less compulsively.

So what are we to make of the mountains of anecdotes that suggest bio-energy really does work? I don't think that his arm-flapping and twirls of bio-energy really do anything. But there is new evidence that the placebo effect -- patients are cured simply because they believe they will be -- works up to 70 percent of the time. And a handful of maverick medical experts, including Andrew Weil, argue that healing works in mysterious ways that science can't measure. If that's the case, then I believe all credit should go to the the Russian's patients. His success stories are ripe to quit smoking, drinking and overeating. Because they're addicts, they're especially receptive to his quick-fix promises. (By definition, addicts hate delayed gratification.) If it takes a bully with an accent like Dr. No to get them back on the straight and narrow, the $65 they paid him is probably worth every penny.