Are you looking for excuses? I have no excuses. I am an addict and have been weak for a long time, always rationalizing one more tin/chew.
What happened?
I bought a tin. I had two quick guilt-ridden dips before tossing the can into the wastebasket.
Why did it happen?
Apparently, I wasn't serious about quitting.
What are you going to do different this time?
Get serious about quitting. For whatever the reason, it has taken interaction with ktc brothers for me to truly commit.
I hadn't read any of the replies to my earlier posts about being a serial quitter. Wastepanel, LionHeartedGirl, Dougie, CBird65, Jungleland, Billybill3934, and Mthomas3824, and others, have been particularly helpful in helping me recognize the absurdity in my serial quit. I also appreciate the concept of quitting each day, for one day. Wastepanel's comments in particular...
This time, I'm going to quit today, each day.
I realize that the Jake Frawleys of the world, having been on ktc for 3 weeks, are eager to toss me out for being poisonous to the group. Fair enough, I get it.
Minny -
Might be helpful if you shared a little about yourself, where you from, how'd you start, what your triggers are, what issues you may have in your life that have made in hard in the past for you to quit. It'll surprise you how many common threads there are among quitters.
BTW - you do realize no one really wants to toss you out - we want all you got dedicated to this quit - nothing less.
I'm around day 50, and it's taken that long for me to reeeaaally believe what a complete f'n idiot I've been to let this shit control me for so long. I can't change the past, but I damn sure can change today.
I'm in my early thirties, live in Minneapolis, and have a wife and daughter. I don't really have any life issues that make it harder than anyone else to quit. I do live a very stressful life, though I feel like most people do, too.
I got started with nic when a buddy's older brother started smoking and chewing. I was thirteen. I was a smoker and dipper for years until I met my wife, at which point I became a ninja dipper. Grizzly Wintergreen, Cope long cut, skoal and kodiak some times. I kicked my addiction into 5th gear when I realized I could put in an upper at work whenever I wanted to and no one knew.
My triggers are driving, working, hunting, fishing, golfing, playing vids, sporting clays, etc. Breathing... Beers certainly don't help the fight to quit.
Over the past nine days I've been in very tempting situations. Several long days in the car for work, 2 hours in a car with a dipping buddy and his tin within an arm's reach. Golfing with three other dippers, shooting clays with five pals chewing kodiak, etc. Yesterday a friend actually held out an open tin of bandits and offered me one, and for my birthday we spent the day on a boat and I was given cigars and a nice cutter. It was a perfect day for a cigar.
It has certainly gotten easier. Days 2, 3, and 4 were awful. I hope the fog doesn't come back.
I appreciate the support. I didn't "get it" at first: that these sections of KTC are for people that are tobacco free, period.
Minny,
Although your answers were brief, I'm glad to see you finally answered them and gave us some background about yourself. Like both you and FuFu, I lived in Minneapolis during college and make it back there a few times a year to visit friends and enjoy the amazing Minneapolis summertime.
And I have a lot of the exact same triggers you do. I started chewing when I was 16 and never looked back until I was 28 and started literally waring little holes in my gums. I can resonate what you said about pulling a top-decker; I discovered that around age 23 and that revolutionized how much poison I could squeeze into my system every day.
And since I'm from the Sioux Falls area, dipping on I-90, then on HWYs 30, 60, 169 was an integral part of my life for 10+ years. Every trip included multiple dips on each stretch of the journey. I'd spent more time with dip than any friend, family member, or significant other.
The funny thing was that I didn't really enjoy being around dip. Dip always required that I have an empty bottle or some beverage to consume along with it. Dip was constantly making me stock up in South Dakota where it was cheaper before I headed east. Dip started causing issues with my gums, gave me quasi panic attacks if I didn't have enough of it, and started affected my professional and personal decisions. And through all of this dip kept costing me more and more money.
Then one day (well, it was actually over the course of months) I started deciding that I really didn't like dip. I felt that dip was treating me as if I was a dependent, an addict, and that dip was disrespecting me. It was the quintessential bad romance. Dip was daring me to quit, to walk away, and each time I failed I became more addicted. Until one day I succeeded. I managed to free myself from dip's bondage and walk away. And I did so on a second day. And a third. And although breaking off the relationship hurt at first, I knew I didn't miss it, knew that I never wanted to go back.
And so here I sit at day 25 with you. The best way I can describe it is that I contracted some type of minor STD from dip and it occasionally flares up. It sucks because I will always fight this STD. But the symptoms become less and less with time. The biggest thing to remember is that if you ever participate in that bad romance again then the slavery comes back and rather than fighting a minor STD you're going to contract HIV. You can't flirt with this relationship and you can't start to romanticize about the "good times" you had. It was a depraved relationship in which you were a dependent through and through, and one that you can't EVER join again, not for any reason. So today let's be quit today and recognize the dip demon for exactly that.
