Dipping Tobacco - How To Break The Addiction

If you think smokeless tobacco is "up to snuff" and safe, think again. Whatever you like to call it - spitting, chewing or dipping - it is every bit as harmful as smoking. Many medical researchers believe more so because users are not as aware of the threats. Cancers of the mouth, lips, tongue and throat can rapidly develop in people who use smokeless tobacco and leave grotesque and debilitating - even deadly - results.

Regardless of the painful and dangerous consequences of smokeless tobacco, quitting with conventional means is extremely challenging. Many people believe the reason lies in nicotine, a natural, super toxic chemical found in tobacco that is the plant's defense against being eaten by insects. Analyzing equal quantities, nicotine is more deadly than strychnine or snake venom, and three times more lethal than arsenic.

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

Many users had their first chew as early as nine years old. In just a few months, using smokeless tobacco becomes a fixed habit that produces reliable stress relief. In addition to the psychological conditioning, a social conditioning takes place, as images of many athletes dipping also attract young users.

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

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

Tobacco Dipping 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 accordance, if, for example, you always use chewing tobacco after each meal, you will consequently acquire a craving to chew when you get finished eating.

In your mind, the images of pushing the plate away and laying down your napkin may be linked to using snuff, even though you are not conscious of it. Developing awareness of the trigger images or situations can help you overcome cravings.

The Physical Addiction to Nicotine, But … : In spite of the intense addiction, medical professionals maintain that the physical component of nicotine addiction is quelled after people quit using tobacco for a week. It's my firm belief that nicotine addiction comprises a scant 10 percent of smokeless tobacco dependency. Therefore, 90 percent of the battle to quit dipping is overcoming the emotional and mental components. So what does this mean for people like you who wish to quit?

Quitting becomes much easier if you are able to:

A. Address and remove the anxiety and tension that compels you to use smokeless tobacco
B. Cancel the conditioned responses to chew in particular settings

But how does a person conquer those issues?

Self-hypnosis offers a way to address the emotional and psychological factors of the addiction while eliminating struggles, which will eliminate the withdrawal symptoms. When we realize how self-hypnosis works, it makes the decision to quit dipping much easier to take on.

When people dip for relaxation and pleasure, it is to calm anxious feelings. People often play the same images over in their heads, like a bad film, which leaves them feeling very stressed. Using self-hypnosis and various Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques, you retrain your brain to immediately and naturally stop stress-inducing images and trade them with soothing pictures and mental movies. This creates satisfaction and relaxation while eradicating cravings and oral compulsions. You lose the urge to put the chew in your mouth, and you will not get any urge to substitute food in its place. This suppresses weight gain.

In order to resist 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 compulsion. Further, the Flash can even be used to create a compulsion to reject smokeless tobacco.

Employing specific and strategic NLP methods makes the decision to quit dipping smokeless tobacco very easy and painless by avoiding cravings, withdrawal and weight gain. The method depends on training the unconscious mind to follow the same thought patterns that produce your mental addiction to smokeless tobacco in the first place, to eliminate the compulsion.

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