How To Quit Smokeless Tobacco With Hypnosis

If you think smokeless tobacco is "up to snuff" and harmless, think again. Whatever you call it - chewing, dipping or spitting - it is every bit as harmful as smoking. A lot of medical professionals believe more so because people are unaware of the dangers. Cancers of the mouth, lips, tongue and throat can quickly grow in people who use smokeless tobacco and leave grotesque and debilitating - even deadly - results.

Even with the dangerous and painful effects of smokeless tobacco, quitting with traditional practices remains very demanding. A lot of people believe the reason lies in nicotine, a natural, super toxic substance found in tobacco that is the plant's protection against being eaten by bugs. Measuring equal amounts, nicotine is more deadly than strychnine or snake venom, and three times deadlier than arsenic.

When dipping, the nicotine travels to the brain in less than 10 seconds, where it generates a flood of dopamine, which brings about a soothing sensation. Nicotine also stimulates adrenaline production, so it both calms and energizes. However, the emotional component of smokeless tobacco addiction is much stronger and produces many more obstacles to quitting smokeless tobacco than nicotine.

A lot of users had their first chew as early as nine years old. In as little as a few months, using smokeless tobacco becomes an ingrained habit that yields reliable stress relief. In addition to the psychological conditioning, a social conditioning takes place, as images of many sports celebrities dipping also attract young users.

Knowing that there are individual emotional and physical factors that contribute to a chewing habit makes it easier to create a plan to prevail smokeless tobacco addiction. Let's look at each component separately and look at effective methods to curb them.

Dipping for Relaxation and Pleasure: Just like using a pacifier to calm an anxious child, over the course of time, people who use tobacco products begin to associate putting an object in their mouths with relaxation and satisfaction. Curbing the effects of tobacco usage means addressing all aspects of the addiction.

Dipping Tobacco is a Conditioned Response: The classic illustration of a conditioned response relates to Pavlov and his dogs, which were trained to anticipate food - and thus began salivating - after a bell was rung. In relation, if, for example, you always chew tobacco after each meal, you will consequently acquire a craving to chew when you get finished eating.

In your mind, the images of folding the napkin and pushing the play away may be tied to using snuff, even though you are not conscious of it. Developing awareness of the trigger images or situations can help you beat cravings.

The Physical Addiction to Nicotine, But … : In spite of the powerful addiction, medical professionals say that the physical component of nicotine addiction is broken after people quit using tobacco for seven days. It's my strong belief that nicotine addiction comprises a mere 10 percent of smokeless tobacco dependency. Therefore, 90 percent of the fight to quit dipping involves overcoming the mental and emotional components. So what does this mean for people like you who wish to quit?

Quitting becomes much more feasible if you can:

A. Deal with and eliminate the tension or anxiety that compels you to use smokeless tobacco
B. Cancel the conditioned responses to chew in specific settings

But how does one triumph over those issues?

Self-hypnosis offers a way to deal with the psychological and emotional components of the addiction while reducing difficulties, which will eliminate the symptoms of withdrawal. When we understand how self-hypnosis works, it makes the decision to quit dipping much easier to accept.

When people dip for relaxation and pleasure, it is to pacify stressful feelings. People often play the same images over in their heads, like a bad video, which leaves them feeling anxious and tense. With self-hypnosis and different Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques, you retrain your brain to instantaneously and naturally prohibit stress-inducing images and trade them with calming images and mental movies. This produces relaxation and satisfaction while eliminating cravings and oral compulsions. You shake the impulse to put the chew in your mouth, and you will not get any urge to substitute food in its place. This quells weight gain.

In order to combat the conditioned response of chewing smokeless tobacco, the NLP Flash technique erases the associations of dipping during certain activities or situations. This means your subconscious will no longer trigger the craving. Further, the Flash can even be used to create a compulsion to deny smokeless tobacco.

Drawing on specific and strategic NLP techniques makes the decision to stop dipping smokeless tobacco very easy and painless by avoiding cravings, withdrawal and weight gain. The method is dependent on retraining the unconscious mind to follow the same thought patterns that create your mental addiction to smokeless tobacco in the first place, to eliminate the habit.

Your brain is a powerful instrument—far more powerful than an addiction. With dedication and the aid of self-hypnosis and NLP, you can quit smokeless tobacco forever.

About The Author
Alan B. Densky, CH is a pioneer in the use of hypnotherapy stop smoking methods. He now offers a potent Quit Chewing Tobacco program based on the same methods. See more at his Neuro-VISION self hypnosis site where you can see Free hypnosis videos and articles.