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There are three distinct parts to the addiction to smokeless tobacco. Two of the elements are emotional/mental, and one part is physical.

Part A: YOU DIP FOR RELAXATION AND PLEASURE.

When you were a tot and you got restless, your mother would put a bottle into your mouth to distract you from that upset. You would get distracted, become mellower, and often go to sleep. That scenario was repeated thousands 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 a grownup, if you feel tense or anxious, you crave something in your mouth for relaxation and pleasure - dip!

Part B: CHEWING IS A CONDITIONED RESPONSE.

Remember Pavlov? He rang a bell every time that he fed his dogs. After several repetitions, he would just ring the bell, and the sound of the bell would trigger the dogs to salivate.

When you associate chewing with any other behavior, the other behavior will trigger cravings for chewing tobacco and a compulsion to chew. This is called a conditioned response.

For example: If you chew while you watch a movie, you will automatically get an urge to chew each time you go to the movies.

Here is exactly how this conditioned response gets programmed into your unconscious: If a person dips and simultaneously drinks a cup of coffee, the mind takes a picture of the chew in the hand, and ties it to the cup of coffee. Thereafter, every time the person sees a cup of coffee, her unconscious mind fills in the missing part of the picture. It flashes an image of the chew, and the dipper gets a craving for smokeless.

You may not be consciously aware of the mental image of the smokeless, because it may only be at the unconscious level of mind. Just as you are not consciously aware of what you are seeing through your peripheral vision until someone or something draws your attention to it. But the image is there, creating a craving for chewing tobacco.

Part C: THERE IS A PHYSICAL ADDICTION TO NICOTINE, BUT . . .

I've worked with several thousand people who are addicted to tobacco and I give you my personal guarantee that the physical addiction to smokeless is the weakest part of the addiction. In fact, I believe that it is only ten percent of the habit. The strongest parts of the smokeless are the mental and emotional parts! (Parts A and B).

HERE IS WHAT THIS MEANS TO A PERSON WHO DIPS SHOKELESS TOBACCO AND WHO WANTS TO QUIT.

What this means is that when you eliminate the anxiety that pushes you to dip smokeless to create relaxation and pleasure (Part A) . . . and if you can extinguish the conditioned response of feeling a craving for dip when having a cup of coffee, driving, or finishing a meal, etc. (Part B) . . . then you can dipping without needing willpower, and without having to experience withdrawal symptoms or weight-gain.

Hypnosis will make it easy to break the addiction to smokeless because it takes care of Parts A & B! Here is how:

Part A is where you dip tobacco for relaxation and pleasure. It's your thoughts that create tension. More to the point, people always watch mental movies in their mind's eye. If the movie is negative, it manufactures a feeling of anxiety.

We can use different NLP techniques to re-program the subconscious to instantly and automatically take those stress producing mental movies, and instantly exchange them for relaxation producing mental pictures and movies. This instills relaxation and pleasure, and obliterates the stress that creates the oral compulsions and cravings for chewing tobacco.

Because of the elimination of tension, the person who is quitting doesn't feel the compulsion or need to substitute food in place of the dip. So quitting without weight gain is possible.

Part B is where you chew smokeless because chewing smokeless tobacco 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 triggers an urge to dip?

There are effective and powerful hypnosis techniques that can quickly extinguish those conditioned responses so that a person's unconscious will lose the cravings for chew, and the compulsion to chew. As a matter of fact, you can even get a compulsion to reject dipping smokeless.

TO SUMMARIZE

In summary, by using certain hypnotic and NLP techniques, it becomes very easy to quit dipping smokeless without withdrawal or weight gain. And many of these techniques don't even depend on post-hypnotic suggestions. They depend on programming the subconscious mind to use the same mental processes that the unconscious mind is using to create the smokeless habit, to eliminate the mental addiction.

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Alan B. Densky, CH started his professional practice in hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming in 1978. He has worked one-on-one with over 10,000 clients for stress related symptoms including weight loss hypnosis and appetite control, and quit smoking hypnosis. He maintains a library of original hypnosis & NLP articles, and offers FREE hypnosis and NLP newsletters and MP3 downloads. He can be contacted through his website at www.Neuro-VISION.us