Yep, the story starts out like many of you I imagine. Started chewing in baseball practice when I was around 16. One of my buddies had a can and we all passed it around. Tried to hide it from coach. IÂ’m sure he knew but I think he actually chewed too so he never said anything. Went through all of college with a big fatty in and then into corporate America.
Met my wife in 94 and then again in 99 (she was an exchange student). She knew I chewed even though she wasnÂ’t real enthusiastic about it. A few years later she would start asking me to quit. I resisted at first. She was persistent though and instead of arguing, I made the decision to start ninja dipping. I would get caught at first and we would have an argument, IÂ’d say I was sorry and then would start ninjaing it again. Now donÂ’t get me wrong, I tried to quit every time we would have these arguments, I just wasnÂ’t very committed to the idea. Quitting truly is one of those things that you have to be selfish about. It has to be about YOU first and everybody else second.
Eventually I got to be too good at the whole ninja dipping thing and probably went 5 years or more without my wife knowing. I had a whole plan with it all. Before getting into my car to go to work I would first open the trunk and lift up the carpet to expose my skoal hiding spot. IÂ’d grab the skoal and the diet pepsi spittoon and go to work. Before getting to work I would stop by the C-Store and grab a can and another diet pepsi. Once at work IÂ’d sit down at my desk, pour 3 quarters of the diet pepsi into my drinking cup and set the diet pepsi bottle aside. IÂ’d empty out whatever was left in my old can and then grab the new can and put one in my mouth. I could spit in the bottle and nobody would know since diet pepsi is about the same color as chew spit. IÂ’d chew all day, then get in my car and go home having one more chew before I got home. Before IÂ’d get home I would stop somewhere and hide the evidence in the trunk and then head home. On the weekends I would find every excuse there was to get out of the house. I bought all the groceries for the week (this would usually take me two trips as I would conveniently forget something). IÂ’d run by Wal-Mart to get deodorant. IÂ’d run by the local hardware store. IÂ’d hit up best buy. Every time I would try my hardest to make some excuse so that I could go by myself.
And then one day it all started to unravel. I came home that night and my wife asked me what all those $6.22 charges were on my credit card. There seemed to be one everyday. I was sweating, what would I tell her…”Oh, it’s my lunch…uh…oh yea, I buy myself a burrito and a soda everyday.”. I had just lied to my wife for the first time (or so I thought). You see, the nic bitch had her claws wrapped around me and had twisted my thoughts so much that I actually believed that as long as she wasn’t asking me a direct question about chewing then it wasn’t lying. Well that opened up the flood gates in my head. What would I do now? I had been “trying” to quit for the last couple years. Every weekend or so I’d tell myself that starting Monday I’d quit. Monday would come by and it would be the same old thing all over again. I started searching for that one magic article on the internet that would give me the motivation to finally do it. That’s when I stumbled upon KTC.
At first I thought just another site to scare you into quitting. That type of motivation doesn’t work for me. But the more I read the more I became a believer. I think I spent that whole first day reading KTC articles. I signed up for a membership and then posted an opening thread to “Introductions”. I still was still kind of on the fence. But then something happened. I started getting replies from people who said they could relate. These were people like myself, people who had chewed, people who wanted to help me get through it. They were no nonsense people who weren’t going to feed me a bunch of bullshit, they were going to tell it too me like it is. It’s HARD but it’s DOABLE! I was hooked. They encouraged me to read and read some more. I found out I wasn’t the only person who hid the shit from people. I read HOF speeches that sounded like my life. For the first time in my life I really believed I could do this and I wanted it bad! They encouraged me to come clean to my wife. As much as I was afraid to do this I manned up and told her. She was understandably upset. Her trust in me had just vanished. For the next few weeks I was on a tight leash. If we needed to do any shopping either we all went as a family or she went alone. For most of the first 50 days I could sense the uneasiness in her to let me do anything by myself. I deserved it and I took it. Since then it has been better. I think the trust is slowly building back. I think she’s seeing that I’m serious about this and I’m doing everything I can to beat the nic bitch down. This morning when I woke up my daughter brought me a card and some candy. The card was from my wife and daughter but mostly from my wife. She’s proud of me and for that I feel like a real man!
In closing IÂ’d like to thank all of my quit brothers. IÂ’d like to thank 11X4 for taking me under his wings. IÂ’d like to thanks all of my July brothers and all of those who posted in July taking us by the hands and leading us along. And of course chewie and all the other admins can never get enough respect for what they do with this siteÂ…angels in disguise.
STFUAQ!!!
