Good stuff, Jeff. I had a similar story, father died at an early age (42) of heart disease after a life of smoking, for whatever reason I began smokeless tobacco when I joined the Air Force because it was "cool", it was "safer than cigs", and hey, my older brother had been doing it for years.
After twenty plus years of being a slave to the can, I'm on day five of quitting. You know the scary thing is, despite knowing I needed to quit for years and years, and finding all of the excuses we all find not to or to delay the quit, in the back of my mind I don't think I believed I could. I never would have believed I would make it through five sorry ass days of no tobacco, I assure you. And as a husband and father of two great kids who look up to me, that's a pretty sad state to be in, when you know you are addicted and don't believe you can overcome something. You just continue showing up at the fucking convenience store, staring at the same counter help and asking for the same damned can day after day after day.
I am so done with tobacco, let's roll. Fuck this.
--Russ
