My name is Thomas. I am 45 years old and had my first dip in college. For several years, I was an occasional dipper – long drive, final exams, drinking buddies – stuff like that. Not long after college, I worked for the Catholic Church in East Africa where American tobacco products were not available. One day, I bought an Indian variant that had a heavy ginseng flavor. My addiction was not yet strong enough to overcome that bad taste, so I emptied the pouch out the back of a deuce and half outside Nairobi. Mistakenly, I thought that nicotine was finished with me.
My college degree is a BSME but jobs were still scarce when I returned home in 1996. Furthermore, the Boston area is my part of the world, and it is not the best area for mechanical engineers. Better opportunities probably exist in other states. While looking for a professional job for several months, I worked with a group of laborers (mostly moving furniture). I liked the work and the physical activity that went along with it. However, many of the guys had drug and alcohol problems. If I would dip on break or at lunch, they wouldnÂ’t ask me if I wanted weed or anything else. Kodiak was considered to be my vice, and I accepted it as what I considered to be the lesser evil.
After 6 months, I did find an engineering job that I liked and set to work digging myself and my parents out of the mounds of student loan debt accumulated by a big Irish family. Twenty years, two houses rebuilt brick by brick, hundreds of engineering projects, and thousands of gray hairs later – yup, you guessed it – Kodiak has followed me all the way.
I would visit the same local convenience store early every Saturday morning to buy a roll of 5 tins. The cost in Massachusetts has increased in the past few years from $30, to $45, and then to $55. Even as a long-time customer, the owner would no longer give me the insiderÂ’s deal. At that price, I could no longer justify the habit or make any excuses for it. Just think what $2,860/year could do for a family (or a village for that matter) in the poorest areas of the world.
And so I am quit: instigated by money, motivated by personal health, supported by KTC, and hopeful of a better life!
TEC
