Hello all!
Sorry for the incredible delay on this! I guess I’ll start this at the beginning. I moved in with my parents after graduating college and lived there for a year while I worked and applied to medical schools. One of my best friends was working for my dad’s construction company and the office was located in our living room. He was a dipper and got me to try it one evening while we were doing some gaming. From then on it slowly developed into a habit which persisted on/off throughout medical school. Often I would go a week or two without it, but this progressively turned into a daily habit. Longest quit prior to this was after matching into residency and knowing I would have to undergo nicotine pre-employment testing. Stayed quit for about 8 months at that time.
Then came my bachelor party and after a few too many beers I ended up having a dip. This unfortunately resparked the habit and the ninja dipping continued (Grizz Wintergreen Longcut). We moved for my work and it got to the point I’d look forward to my post-call days because I’d have the apartment to myself to dip. Dip in this new city was about 5x as expensive as before, and not even that was enough to stop me. I’d skipped out on dentist appointments, lied when going to see my PCP about my usage as the shame was great, and left events early to get home so I could throw in a quick dip while the place was empty.
The daily battle of “this is it, I get no joy from this, today is my last day” continued and then after going through that cycle for months I came across KTC. Found out the local 7-11 sold Grinds and set a quit date and since then have been posting here and staying strong. The urges have slowly died down and my body feels the best it has in years. I take that wasted money I used to spend on a tin and am now able to put an extra ~$250 towards my student loans each month. It’s a marvel how much money I wasted on that stuff, surely it cut a year out of Roth IRA savings.
Looking back I laugh at the lengths I went to in order to get a quick dip in. Leaving for work an hour early to throw in one or two at the local coffee shop, going home and changing out of my work clothes and walking a half mile to go to a store that didn’t know what I do for work, and the list goes on. I thank you all for your continued support and love throughout this process and look forward to continuing the journey!
Daye
