2008- I was 24 years old when I “started dipping”. For me, dipping started out as a way to get a nice buzz before slow-pitch softball games. Soon enough it would balloon into a web of lies and secrecy.
I began dipping at softball games, then progressively started dipping in my truck to and from work. Turned out, dip actually had a pleasant effect on me while driving in rush hour traffic day after day. Before I started dipping I had a very short fuse when it came to traffic (most know this as road rage). Dip had a calming effect on me while driving so I used that as an excuse. This habit of dipping while driving would turn out to be an extremely difficult habit to break.
Dipping at this stage was still new and fun to me, I didnÂ’t feel as though it controlled me, I just had fun with it. When I go back in time and pinpoint the time I can admit to being on the hook, I had only been married for 3 months. My wife and I took a trip to Brady, TX to spend Christmas with her family. Brady is a small boring town and I didnÂ’t have much in common with my wifeÂ’s family so it was a tough place to visit. I knew I would be with my wife and her family the entire trip so I didnÂ’t think of even bringing dip or needing dip (afterall, it was just something I did for fun, I wasnÂ’t hooked). Well of course I got really bored after awhile and I made up an excuse to go for a drive by myself. I immediately went to the convenient store, bought me some Grizzly Wintergreen and went for a nice drive. When I look back, I can admit this was the point in time where I can say i was hooked because this kind of action was completely unlike me. Anyways, I eventually started to dip even at work and then after a year or so I was pretty much just dipping anytime I wasnÂ’t around my wife. It began to take over my life, it felt like an escape for me when it was really just a trap. It would be the first thing I would think of when I woke up in the morning. I would stay up late playing video games and dip two plugs at a time just because. I wonÂ’t lie, I actually liked dipping for a few years, I knew it was bad, gross, my wife would hate me, friends would disrespect me, and I still liked it. Ridiculously, I felt like it gave me an identity, especially in the world of baseball where it was so engrained.
Baseball and dip go together hand and hand right? IÂ’m 28 now and IÂ’ve played baseball 22 years of my life. I knew a bunch of teammates in high school that dipped and I was never tempted back then. I played ball all through college and stayed away despite a roommate/teammate who dipped all the time. Why now at 24 had I started? Why now, after IÂ’d known my wife for 4 years, graduated college, had a good job and reputation, and just gotten married had I turned into this other guy? I believe deep down it had something to do with being married. It was like a game to me, could I keep this secret? She canÂ’t control me! But, it was dip that really controlled me. Time for a change.
Day 1 (Monday January 28, 2013)- I woke up today with an unbelievable, unexplainable strength that I’ve never felt capable of before. This was not a physical strength like “The Hulk” or “Superman”, but a feeling of unwavering resolve, or in the sports world something they call “heart”. In sports, “heart” describes the player who exhibits a never cave attitude in the most intense of situations. It might be the ‘little guy’ going up against a big guy and holding his own or the pine-riding pinch hitter standing in and getting that hit against the best closer in the game with two outs in the ninth. Today I woke up with that feeling, like I could not be beat, like I had somebody else on my side in a fight that would define the rest of my life. I had said “I quit” many times before only to just break down and go get another can, but today was something totally different. Like it wasn’t just me in the fight.
I hadnÂ’t dipped since about 3:30pm on Sunday afternoon and that was the only dip I had all of Sunday which was really good for me. I was out of dip on Sunday night but luckily I felt tired and decided against going to the convenient store for a new can so I went to bed early (2 hours early for me). I slept terrible (maybe because I didnÂ’t dip before bed, I donÂ’t know) but I know I woke up different. I went through the day in a London fog. I couldnÂ’t concentrate on anything. I was guzzling water and scarfing down food to keep from obsessing about dip. I donÂ’t think I got any work done at all. I found a website called KilltheCan.org which had some great support for my decision to quit. By the end of the work-day I was extremely tired despite the fact that I went to bed at 8:45p the night before and didnÂ’t get anything done at work that day. I was so tired I couldnÂ’t even muster up the energy to go to the gym after work (a norm for me). I went home and spent the evening with my beautiful, funny, and pregnant wife and was never tempted to dip. I can and will do this. I am David vs Goliath.
