Don’t Chew Tobacco: Try One of These 6 Alternatives Instead
Anyone who chews tobacco is probably well aware of its dangers. Oral cancer is only one of the results of long-term chewing tobacco use. Fortunately, for people who want to quit or have tried to quit but haven’t yet been successful, there’s good news. How about a substitute to hold a user over at least until they are more motivated on their own? The issue is deciding which alternative is best. The truth is that tools are different for everyone, so it’s mostly a matter of what is best for the individual. This article will give the user six alternatives to chewing tobacco.
The alternatives to chewing tobacco are numerous, including Flora CBD, so quitting the use of tobacco can be accomplished. All a user needs is a little support and maybe one of these methods to get off the habit.
Cold Turkey
It’s been said and done in many ways, but it bears repeating that one of the most effective ways to quit a bad habit, including chewing tobacco, is to do it cold turkey. People have been doing it for years, and yes, it can result in success, but the user must stick with it to be successful. If a user needs support, why not contact a health professional such as a doctor or a health educator from an organization like the American Cancer Society, which helps people quit? Even users who have been chewing for a long time have found cold turkey to be an excellent way to stop.
Cold turkey merely is deciding that you will do something—anything—other than chewing tobacco. A user who gets the urge to chew might end up reading a book, exercising, having sex, or literally anything except taking that first dip.
Oral Alternatives
Any chewer who finds themselves to need oral gratification, to “just have something in my mouth” would do well with an alternative, including candy, which is a popular choice. It doesn’t matter to most quitters whether it’s a candy that is soft or hard, it works wonders. For others who simply can’t get over the feeling of having a pouch or a chaw in their mouth might benefit by using a new product on the market to help: mint. That’s right, the same stuff many people like to use in their tea and other drinks and food can now be found sold in little pouches just like tobacco. It’s found at many tobacco shops.
Whatever a chewer uses, this approach allows them to continue the behaviour and yield to the act of chewing without the dangers of tobacco. And, if a chewer feels a relapse coming on, he or she can pick up a pouch and put it in their mouth. Perhaps best of all, since mint is simply a herb, there’s no health danger to using it.
Educate Yourself
Even for the heaviest chewing tobacco users, there’s a good bet they have seen the pictures of those former chewers who have lost much of their faces, tongues, throats, and other parts of their bodies to chewing. If that hasn’t motivated a chewer to quit, try contacting a source such as the American Cancer Society for educational materials on the topic. One of their quitter’s workshops will serve as a lot of motivation by showing precisely what chewers are doing to their bodies by keeping their habit. Many chewers quit after only a few of these sessions.
Titration
Titration is a fancy word for the elementary idea of slowly substituting one substance for another. For anyone who can’t conceive of quitting by cold-turkey or giving up having something in their mouth, titration is a good idea. All this involves is, over time, slowly reducing the amount of chewing tobacco that is used and mixing it with an increasing amount of another substance, such as mint. For example, a chewer could mix mint with tobacco in a ratio of 1:4 one week, 1:3 the next week, 1:2 the following week, and 1:1 afterwards, and finally to straight Mint Snuff. An alternative to this technique is to substitute one product for another in alternate periods. Advocates say to use chewing tobacco for one week, mint the next, etc., and soon the urge will be gone.
Nicotine Substitutes
Many users get started in their habit because they believe that the nicotine levels in chewing tobacco are lower than in cigarettes. This is incorrect. The nicotine levels in chewing tobacco are higher than cigarettes. A cigarette has about 1.8 mg of nicotine, but an average chew of tobacco has about 3.6 mg. People who have had no success with other methods of quitting chewing tobacco might look into nicotine substitutes such as nicotine patches or gum. There is also a prescription drug called Zyban or Wellbutrin that, when used with an alternative like mint, has helped many unnamed professional athletes get out of the habit.
Salt
As strange as it might seem, salt is an excellent substitute for chewing tobacco when someone is trying to quit the habit. Unknown to most people, an average can of chewing tobacco contains over 1100 mg of salt. This leads many users to become just as addicted to the salt as they are to the tobacco. As a result, putting just a pinch of salt in place of tobacco can have a significant effect on anyone trying to quit the habit.
Intervention
This method might not be as much an alternative as it is a method, but it works wonders for many people. An intervention involves the chewer spending time with someone else charged with keeping the user away from using chewing tobacco for a given period until the urge to use is overcome.
The use of chewing tobacco is a hazardous habit. Anyone who uses these products, including snuff, which is only a powdered form of tobacco, should be strongly encouraged to quit. Fortunately, for many people, the methods outlined above are highly effective at helping people overcome the urge to chew tobacco. Anyone who uses these methods or combinations of these methods might find them helpful in getting rid of their chewing habit. If not, get help somewhere. Your life depends on it.