If you think smokeless tobacco is "up to snuff" and not dangerous, think again. Whatever it is called - spitting, dipping or chewing - it is every bit as hazardous as smoking. A lot of doctors judge more so because users are unaware of the threats. Cancers of the lips, mouth, tongue and throat can quickly develop in people who use smokeless tobacco and cause debilitating and grotesque - even deadly - results.

Even with the painful and dangerous effects of smokeless tobacco, quitting with traditional practices remains very difficult. A lot of people believe the reason lies in nicotine, a natural, super toxic substance found in tobacco that is the plant's defense to prevent being eaten by insects. Comparing equal amounts, nicotine is more deadly than strychnine or snake venom, and three times deadlier 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 relaxing feeling. Nicotine also promotes adrenaline production, so it both calms and energizes. However, the emotional component of smokeless tobacco addiction is much stronger and produces far more obstacles to quitting smokeless tobacco than nicotine.

A lot of users took their first chew as young as nine years old. In just a few months, using smokeless tobacco becomes an ingrained habit that delivers reliable stress relief. In addition to the psychological conditioning, a social conditioning occurs, as images of many athletes dipping also attract young users.

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

Dipping for Relaxation and Pleasure: Just like using a pacifier to appease a fretful 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 involves addressing all components of the addiction.

Tobacco Dipping is a Conditioned Response: The classic case in point of a conditioned response relates to Pavlov and his dogs, which were trained to anticipate food - and thus began salivating - when a bell was rung. In relation, if, for example, you always use chewing tobacco after each meal, you will consequently have 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 if you are not conscious of it. Developing awareness of the situations or trigger images can help you defeat cravings.

The Physical Addiction to Nicotine: Despite the intense addiction, medical professionals say that the physical part of nicotine addiction is quelled after people quit using tobacco for a week. 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 is overcoming the mental and emotional components. So what does this mean for people like you who would like to quit?

Quitting becomes much easier if you are able to:

A. Address and remove the tension or anxiety that compels you to use smokeless tobacco

B. Cancel the conditioned responses to chew in particular situations

But how does one surmount those issues?

Self-hypnosis offers a way to deal with the emotional and psychological factors of the addiction while eliminating impediments, which will eliminate the withdrawal symptoms. When we comprehend how self-hypnosis works, it makes the decision to quit dipping much easier to assume.

When people dip for relaxation and pleasure, it's to soothe anxious feelings. People often play the same images over in their minds, like a bad film, which leaves them feeling very stressed. Using self-hypnosis and different Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques, you retrain your brain to instantaneously and naturally stop stress-inducing images and replace them with calming images and mental movies. This generates relaxation and satisfaction while eradicating cravings and oral compulsions. You lose the inclination to put the chew in your mouth, and you do not get any desire to substitute food in its place. This controls 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 won't trigger the craving. Further, the Flash can even be used to create a compulsion to reject smokeless tobacco.

Using specific and strategic NLP procedures makes the decision to quit dipping very easy and painless by avoiding cravings, withdrawal and weight gain. The method depends 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 compulsion.

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