Little More About My Quit
I can’t seem to pinpoint the actual date, but I know it was about 25 years ago. I was the new kid in school, and we all know you want to fit in as the new kid. I do remember the crucial moment was during gym class. See we had two periods of gym. The first period was for the basketball players, and the football players hung out in the bleachers. That is where it happened. That is where my life would change, and the struggle would begin. It was Kodiak Straight that first got my attention. Don’t remember who my “dip” buddies were, but we would sit at the top of the gym bleachers. Other than not being seen, I am not sure why we chose the top, because the dizziness that followed that first dip was HUGE!! We had no choice but to sit still until we decided to take the dip out, or we might risk falling down the stairs.
So the 25 year journey began here….just wanting to fit in and be cool, I guess… I won’t go into every pain staking detail of the next 25 years, but I will give you a glimpse of what the “dip” does to you.
The next five years I lived in ninja mode, seeing as I lived with my grandparents at the time. They definitely werenÂ’t having any of that around their house. I would dip on the bus coming home from school, on Fridays after school when we were waiting for the football game, and sometimes when I was hunting and fishing. I was still dipping even after throwing my guts up a few times. At this point, I believe I was still trying to be cool, but the addiction was starting to take hold.
Once I graduated high school and started college, I was free to dip whenever I wanted to, but something new came into my life. The trying to be “cool” thing was branching out, and I tried smoking instead of dipping. Luckily my allergies wouldn’t allow me to sustain that level of “coolness”, but I did stick with the dipping. As we fast forward through my college years, there were countless spit bottle spills, a few more times throwing up(dip and alcohol don’t always mix too well), and the DUI I got because I was driving home from the bar to get my Copenhagen I left at home(super duper stupid). Still dipping….
I met my wife in college, and not long after we met she started working on me to quit. I made promises to quit, tried to quit, went into ninja mode, and I think she finally gave up hassling me about it. The problem here is people that don’t have an addiction problem just don’t understand. “Just lay it down and quit,” they say. “I don’t know why you don’t just quit that crap,” they say with a disgusted look on their face. I say how bout you start doing everything with your non-dominant hand. How about you stop drinking your cokes that you love so much? How about you give up your daily coffee? Unless you have an addiction, you truly don’t understand, although your intentions are good.
So I will fast forward another 14 years of excuses not to quit. Things like, “I can’t quit right before a deployment.” “Things are just too stressful right now,” was another good one. Then it turned into, “I am just not ready. “ I know what you are thinking, “How could you willingly kill your body?” Really good question, and there is no real good answer. The problem is people don’t put it all into perspective. It is easy to point out the easy things like drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and chew, but what about the not so obvious things? Do you walk around asking people that are overweight, “why they are killing their bodies with that 3,000 calorie meal they are eating?” What about the person that is drinking a 12 pack of soft drinks a day? What is my point? These are all addictions, but they are viewed very differently. Addiction is often down played, and portrayed to be easy to get over. That makes people think they don’t need help to overcome it, and that turns into many failed attempts to quit that vice. Doing it on your own doesn’t make you a superhero, and getting help doesn’t make you weak, it makes you QUIT.
I decided 2016 was going to be the year of change for me! I was going to get into better shape, and quit filling my face with cat poop (snuff,dip). I was strolling along, and made it about 60 days without dipping. Then I just went right back to my previous ways, and made the excuse that I needed to dip again. I wasnÂ’t coping with stress very well, and dipping was my safe haven. The nicotine helped calm my nerves and anxiety. Then I made another attempt, and I made it for almost a month. I wasnÂ’t seeing my problem with quitting, other than I had not 100% committed to the QUIT. So I was right back to square one again. I wasnÂ’t going to give up though!
Then I DECIDED, and announced to all my Facebook family and friends. It was time! It was time to get the “monkey” off my back! Shortly after my Day 1 post, I had a long message pop up in my inbox. It was an high school friend telling me I had made the best decision of my life, and that I needed to jump head first into a website called
www.killthecan.org. He went on to tell me that this site and the community there had helped him QUIT, and he had been QUIT for over 1,000 days. Obviously I was gonna check it out, and I did. That was 11 days ago, and I am not looking back! The site is setup with groups very similar to the fitness challenges groups I run with my Beachbody business. The accountability and support of others that understand what I am going through is priceless! We post roll daily(sign a promise not to dip), we txt each other daily, and support those that may be having a hard time that day. It is pretty easy now that I have the right tools. We follow the golden rule. We can do anything One Day At A Time, and that is what we do. We wake up each day and make a new commitment to our QUIT Brothers/Sisters and our family to not use nicotine for another day. Got to bed, rinse and repeat.
I am glad I am QUIT! Addiction is realÂ….donÂ’t fool yourself about what is going on.
