How You Can Break The Smokeless Tobacco Addiction

For a large percentage of the world's population, smokeless tobacco is a substance they have tried, if not something used regularly. Most people associate smokeless tobacco with sports stars, and falsely believe that it is a safe alternative to smoking cigarettes. Unfortunately, this proves to be wrong, as smokeless tobacco has a range of harmful effects.

A diverse range of people use this highly addictive substance and no one is safe, regardless of income, race, or sex. The reasons for using smokeless tobacco vary widely from appetite control to generalized stress relief. This epidemic is hurting the world. Targeting the world's future with the primary users being only teenagers and in many cases preteens, it is a highly dangerous habit.

The truth of the matter is that teens and smokeless tobacco are getting to be too close to each other and creating lifelong habits and health risks that are just too great to be overlooked and too dangerous to be ignored. Adolescent use of smokeless tobacco is constantly on the rise, with some users starting when they are only nine or ten years old.

Rural Caucasian teenagers have the highest risk of using smokeless tobacco, and if the teenagers share a home with an adult that uses, their risk of also using smokeless tobacco rises dramatically. In the United States, among high school students grades 9-12, an average of 9.3% use smokeless tobacco. In white male students, the average is approximately 1 user out of every 5 students.

But what are the effects of smokeless tobacco and what are the pros and cons of using it? For some people, the appeal is in "looking cool," and fitting in. It also causes an unusual sensation in users by first relaxing them, through the release of dopamine in the brain, and then exciting them with a release of adrenaline. Also the appetite is suppressed.

On the down side are more consequences that make the reasons to chew look pretty weak. Use of smokeless tobacco causes a number of diseases, along with dental problems, bad breath, and of course the financial spending of the user to obtain this product. Most tobacco users with a can a day habit, over thirty years at current prices will spend up to fifty thousand dollars on chewing tobacco in their lifetime, assuming they survive long enough.

There are no known cures for either the gastrointestinal or the oral cancers smokeless tobacco causes, and this may potentially cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment and ultimately funeral costs.

Quitting smokeless tobacco is widely believed to be much harder than quitting the smoking habit. Part of the addiction includes a great amount of nicotine absorbed by the body while chewing or dipping. This amount is two times as much as that received from smoking a cigarette.

But how can one quit smokeless tobacco? Various products are on the market to help users quit snuff and chew, such as a product that uses mint leaves as a substitute for the tobacco without supplying the nicotine. And some success has come out of using the same shot that inhibits receptors for smoking. But the way to stop and permanently stay tobacco-free without withdrawal symptoms, stress, and weight gain is through hypnosis.

Hypnotherapy offers a two-fold attack to the systematic chewing or dipping reflex built up by your prior habits and lifestyle choices. It first attacks the emotional reasons why you desire a dipp, and then it works to end the mental habit itself.

First you'll want to consider the emotional reasons. Dopamine is a "feel good" chemical produced in your body and released by your brain during pleasurable activities. In times of stress, dopamine can produce a general feeling of well being. Some common occurrences of natural release include eating a large meal, or sexual relief. In other words, putting some chew into the mouth provides relaxation and pleasure. The very essence of hypnosis is relaxation, and hypnosis is superb for promoting stress relief and relaxation.

Hypnotherapy also works to break the cycle of expectation created by your mind. When you habitually chew tobacco after dinner, your mind starts to tell your body that you need a chew after every dinner. By blocking or eliminating this unconscious thought process, you won't feel the need to pack your cheek after you pack your stomach.

By eliminating these two root causes of chewing tobacco use, hypnotherapy can eliminate the urge to dipp or chew, ending your need for the extra dopamine release. Thus freeing you from this harmful addiction and providing a stress free method for quitting.