I woke up today and decided I am done. Done with peeling dead skin off of my gums. Done with scrapping up change to buy a tin. Done with making my mother cry. Done with having to wear dark jeans to cover up the dip stains. Done with worrying about if the new sore in my mouth could be dangerous. I am 22 years old and have been dipping since I was 16, and today I decided I am DONE!
I remember my first chew like it was yesterday. Smallest excuse for a pinch, but boy did it pack a punch. I started sweating and instantly hated it. But for some reason I kept doing it and telling myself it will get better, it has to right? It got better; a lot better (for now). After I got past the sweats and the upset stomach, nothing was better after hockey practice than a warm shower and a lip full of tobacco. It started off as one here, one there, harmless. But then around my Junior year in highschool it started becoming a daily habbit. Waking up at 6:30 in the morning sucked! But I always looked forward to that dip on the drive to school. As sad as it is, that was usually my motivation to get out of bed. I was averaging about 2-3 dips a day. One before school, one after hockey, and one right before bed. I hid it from my parents like a champion too, at first. Rinsed out every spitter, kept a tooth pick on me at all times, made sure there was no way they would ever find out. But they eventually did. You get lazy. I won't go into that part of the story, but it caused a void in the relationship with my mother which I can't wait to fix.
The summer before my senior year. Thats when this little habbit started to become a problem. I wasnt quite to a can a day, but damn was I close. Hey do you wanna go fishing? Yea lets pick up a can. Hey do you wanna go to beach? Yea lets get a can. Anything and everything had to be done with a dip in. It didn't help either that one of my other new habbits was drinking a case of beer with my buddies on those beautiful summer nights, because let me tell you (which most of you probably know) is that nothing beat a chew after a couple beers. This habbit kept up through my senior year in highschool, and all through college to where I am now. But boy has it just gotten progessively worse.
These days I'm chewing on average a can to a can and a half a day. Sad. Thats all I can say to describe it. It consumes my life. I don't even like doing it anymore. I can barley keep in a chew for more than 10-15 minutes before I just want to get it out of my mouth. I won't get into every detail of my life these days with that little circle can, but I will just say its time for me to throw that b**** to the curb and start fresh. Its ruined relationships, Its ruined my finances (not ruined, but I don't like buying a tin a day), Its ruined my mouth. So today I woke up and decided its time. Its time to quit. And I can only imagine how these next couple of days, weeks, months are going to be. But I can too only imagine how good its going to be in the long run. If anyone has actually taken the time to read this, I can now say that after typing out this little sob story, I actually feel like it helped a little. I know its not the most interesting story, but its mine, and its all I got. So I hope that these words are the final paragraphs to the chapter of my life consumed by tobacco, because if so, I can't wait to read what happens next.
-Al
(If this is poorly written or vague, its because I'm half asleep and my writing/proof reading skills are sub par. But it felt good to get this out. Didn't think this is what i would be doing when I woke up, but I'm glad I did.)
