When you started, it looked really cool. Many of the Major League Baseball players were doing it, and when some older friends offered you a bit, you felt really mature. You probably didn’t have any idea how hard it was going to be to stop chewing tobacco – or how deadly this substance was going to be. Now you know, and it’s too late. Or is it?
Studies have shown that a person’s greatest risk of developing mouth and throat cancers is a result of chewing tobacco (also referred to as dip, snuff, or chew) occurred during the years the individual was using it. Once you have used chewing tobacco, you will never again have the same risk of developing throat cancer as someone who has never used it, but your risk will drop sharply after quitting.
Quitting tobacco, however, is hard. Certain aspects of the nicotine cause a person’s cells to become physically dependent on the nicotine. This makes it almost impossible to quit, and without a successful quit program, people risk relapsing for many years after their initial quit date.
Most tobacco cessation products focus on this aspect of addiction, the physical component of the habit. Unfortunately, however, this accounts for only about 10 percent of the reason that people return to tobacco after kicking the habit. The remaining 90 percent of the habit involves unconscious reasons, which make it difficult to stop chewing tobacco or quit smoking.
Some of these reasons include unconscious associations between nicotine and pleasurable activities, or as a means of stress reduction. Hypnotherapists and NLP practitioners use approaches designed to help people overcome the unconscious component of their addiction, resulting in a much more successful outcome.
In fact, people who use hypnotherapy and NLP to quit chewing tobacco are far more likely to experience success than people who use nicotine replacement or behavioral therapies. If your life depends on your ability to kick the habit, why not choose the most successful methods of quitting.
