The smokeless tobacco addiction is every bit as debilitating as a cigarette addiction – maybe even more so. In fact, most experts believe that it is even more insidious. It has been glamorized by sports professionals. Many people who dip tobacco started as early as nine years of age! And by the time that many of these children turn 18, they are overcome by throat and mouth cancer, and many are dying.
While a person with lung cancer can look normal, the face of a victim of mouth cancer can be an awful sight. Imagine how a face looks after having a jawbone cut out, or the lips or tongue surgically removed. Usually the surgical butchering of the victim’s face is all for nothing, because many die within a year or so anyway.
The experts tell us that the physical addiction to Nicotine is broken after abstaining for seven days. But the psychological part of the addiction is far stronger and may take a much longer time and a lot more effort to overcome, which makes it very difficult to give up smokeless tobacco.
There are 3 distinct parts to the addiction to chewing tobacco. Two of the components are emotional/mental, and only one part is physical.
Part A: YOU DIP FOR RELAXATION AND PLEASURE.
When you were a baby and you got cranky, your mother would put a bottle into your mouth to calm you down. You would get distracted, become calmer, and often fall asleep. That scenario was repeated dozens of times so that your unconscious mind was programmed: When something goes into your mouth, you get relaxation and pleasure from it.
Now that you are an adult, if you feel tense or nervous, you crave something in your mouth for relaxation and pleasure – chew!
Part B: CHEWING TOBACCO IS A CONDITIONED RESPONSE.
Remember Pavlov? Every time that he fed his dogs he would ring a bell. After a few repetitions, he could just ring the bell, and the sound of the bell would trigger the dogs to salivate.
When you pair dipping tobacco with any other action, the other action will trigger cravings for chewing tobacco and a urge to dip tobacco. This is called a conditioned response.
For example: If you dip tobacco when you see someone else chewing tobacco, you will automatically get an urge to dip tobacco each time you see someone else chewing tobacco.
Here is exactly how this conditioned response gets programmed into your unconscious: If a person dips tobacco and simultaneously drives a car, the mind takes a snapshot of the chew in the hand, and connects it to the image of the steering wheel, dashboard, or view out the windshield, etc.. Thereafter, every time the person drives the car, her unconscious mind fills in the missing part of the picture. It flashes an image of the dip in the hand coming towards the mouth, and the dipper gets a craving for smokeless.
You may be unaware of the mental picture of the smokeless, because it may only be at the unconscious level of mind. Just as you are unaware of what you are seeing through your peripheral vision until something draws your attention to it. But the image is there, creating a craving for smokeless tobacco.
Part C: THERE IS A PHYSICAL ADDICTION TO NICOTINE, BUT . . .
I’ve worked with several thousand people for tobacco addiction and I give you my guarantee that the physical addiction to smokeless tobacco is the weakest part of the habit. In fact, I believe that it is only ten percent of the addiction to tobacco. I believe that 90% of the smokeless tobacco addiction are the mental and emotional parts! (Parts A and B).
HERE IS WHAT THIS MEANS TO A PERSON WHO CHEWS SMOKELESS AND WHO WANTS TO QUIT.
What this means is that as soon as you eliminate the feeling of tension that causes you to put dip into your mouth for relaxation and pleasure (Part A) . . . and when you erase the conditioned response of feeling urges for dip when watching TV, driving, or finishing a meal, etc. (Part B) . . . then you can stop dipping tobacco without the requirement of willpower, and without having to suffer from withdrawal symptoms or weight-gain.
Hypnosis will make it easy to give up dipping because it takes care of Parts A & B! Here is how:
Part A is where people chew smokeless tobacco for relaxation and pleasure. It’s a person’s thoughts that create feelings of tension. More specifically, people invariably create mental movies in their mind’s eye. If the movie is negative, it causes a feeling of stress.
We can use different NLP techniques to train the subconscious mind to automatically take those stress producing mental movies, and automatically exchange them for relaxation producing mental pictures and movies. This produces relaxation and pleasure, and obliterates the stress that triggers the oral cravings and urges for dipping.
Because of the elimination of stress, the person who is quitting does not feel the compulsion or need to substitute food in place of the chewing tobacco. So quitting without weight gain is possible.
Stopping the addiction to smokeless tobacco is very similar to overcoming the addiction to food, cigarettes, and nail biting. I have many additional original articles on these topics in my free article library.
Part B is where people dip because dipping becomes a conditioned response to many different activities and locations. Remember in the earlier example how smoking became unconsciously associated with other activities and environments so that each time people get into that activity or environment, the mind flashes an image of smokeless, and the image of the smokeless creates an urge to chew smokeless tobacco?
There are powerful and effective hypnosis technologies that can effectively extinguish those conditioned responses so that your unconscious mind will lose the cravings for chew, and the compulsion to chew smokeless. As a matter of fact, you can even get a compulsion to reject dipping smokeless tobacco.
IN SUMMATION
In summary, by utilizing certain NLP methods, it can be very easy to quit dipping smokeless tobacco without withdrawal or weight gain. And many of these hypnotic techniques like video self hypnosis and NLP do not even require post-hypnotic suggestions. They depend on training the mind to use the same thought processes that the unconscious mind is using to create the addiction to tobacco, to eliminate the mental addiction.
About the Author:
Alan B. Densky, CH offers NLP & Hypnosis CDs to quit smokeless. He helps clients with stress related symptoms including weight loss hypnosis, and quit smoking hypnosis. He maintains a library of NLP & hypnosis articles, and offers FREE NLP and hypnosis newsletters & MP3s.
