Hello!

[EXBEARHAG]

Hey @rwarfield71.  At 315 days quit, I'm still experiencing the symptoms you describe...and then some.  They are not as harsh and do not last as long as they did, but they are still there.  That's why being here and having the opportunity to draw off a guy like Zeus is so important to me.  I failed multiple times in the past without the accountability this site offers and the perspective the members so gracefully supply.  Like Zeus, I caved in the past when times got tough.  Now, I make my promise in the morning and that takes care of 98% of my daily struggles.  For the other 2% (the events that would have caused a cave in the past), I rely on my group mates and other members who I text every day.  They remind me, in no uncertain terms, that I will regret the cave and will never regret staying quit.  They remind me why I stopped in the first place and that nicotine only adds to any problems I may have.  So far, this has been enough for me to make it to the next day.  Next step= REPEAT.

This site works...but you have to want it.  Let us know when you are ready to join the party.  Guys and gals will be lined up to help. 

PTBQWYT my friend

~HAG

[Zeus]

You're welcome.

I wanted to get it all over with as soon as possible too. I've seen plenty of ex-smokers and some ex-dippers say they just stopped one day and never looked back. I wanted to be like that. One time I was forced to stop for a little longer than 6 weeks. The nicotine was out of my system. I kept thinking to myself that I should keep it that way. Then, when the first opportunity arose, I became obsessed until I bought a can so I could get a quick pinch to alleviate the obsession. That quick pinch lasted for 22 years.

When I did toss the can again in 2010, I still wanted to get it all over with ASAP. After about a year of stopping, the obsession returned where I convinced myself that I "needed" nic to get through a rough period in my life. As it turned out, the nic didn't do a damn thing to make anything better. It took an additional 6 years to figure out that dip was just a big lie that I believed. On March 8, 2017, I decided that I was going let the quitting process take the rest of my life. I deal with it by making a promise one day at a time, but I am never going back and I am going to do anything I can to make sure that happens. Now I am not woefully resigned to the process, but I look forward to it. I am using the quitting process to become a better person in all aspects of my life, and there is a lot of room for improvement.

[rwarfield71]

Thanks for the response Zeus,
Thanks for the info. I had read before that nicotine changed the chemical balance in your brain, but have never heard that the Re-wire / repair would take so long. I keep waiting for that time when I don’t think about or want dip. I guess I was really naive to think that after 37 - 38 years of nicotine addiction the “want” would be gone in a few months. And I don’t crave all the time at this point, just every now and then. It is very intense lasts for a day or three and disappears for a week to
10 days.

[Zeus]

Just about everyone who has stopped dip has major craves quite few days into it. Around here, that usually comes around day 100. You're close enough to that. The process of quitting requires your brain to re-wire itself. It is a psychological and an electro-chemical process, intertwined together. The research says it can take up to 3 years to re-wire. I think it can take longer if the addict's mind stays in a rut (meaning you have to do some work to change it).

So yeah, it's normal. Congrats on stopping for 82 days. That's a major achievement, but doesn't mean a damn thing unless you stay quit.  Make one bad decision and take one hit of nic and you're back to the beginning point of the re-wiring process. Best stay off the damn stuff through thick and thin. The people here making a daily promise are doing that.

-Zeus

[rwarfield71]

Good Morning All,
        My tobacco / nicotine usage started at an early age. Between my Dad being an avid softball player, and my older male cousin I was always hanging with the boys. This led to me being a full time dipper when I was in 6th grade at about 11 to 12 years old. I started with a brand of snuff called Hawken which was like candy and within no time I had switched to Skoal Original. I chewed that regularly until I was about 17 years old. The change here was that now I was also smoking. I would chew Skoal Sunday - Friday afternoon. Then Friday it was time to drink and party and I would rather smoke when I was drinking than dip. My parents never had a problem with me dipping. Then one day my mom told me she would rather see me smoke, than dip. So at about 17 I became a full time Marlboro red cigarette smoker. I smoked for the next several years. At one point I was a 3 pack a day smoker. But when I was about 33 - 34 years old cigarettes got to be $4 a pack. At that time I was smoking 1.5 a day and I just wasn’t going to spend $6 a day to smoke.
So after 17 years of smoking, I decided I would quit smoking by sliding back into my smokeless tobacco habit. That transition went pretty smoothly. So here I am now. I am 49 years old pushing 50 and as of today I am 82 days into quitting. And here lately, last couple weeks I am really struggling with it again. I get cravings that hit me in the evenings like a lightening bolt. Does anyone else struggle with this? I know it is purely psychological at this point.