Hey Everyone,
I stumbled upon this website from Reddit after reading some articles about the harsh reality of mouth and throat cancer.
Anyway, my name is Will and I’ve decided to finally quit for good. As I type this I can literally think of a list of reasons not to, but I know that this is important to do and having a place to come to talk about it is pretty important to me.
I started chewing when I was about 11 after trying some of my older friends camel snus pouches. I remember it tasting pretty good, the buzz was unreal and I like the fixation. From there I started red man cans, and used to get together with my buddy and buzz out.
Then I discovered Grizzly Wintergreen when I was about 15 and the rest was history.
About a year ago, I went to the dentist and he was on me (as he always was) about quitting. He said the long cut is destroying my gums and he told me (which I did not know) is that Grizzly is actually one of the worst if not THE worst chew to use. I said okay, I would quit pouched and try to quit. He said okay and to work on alternatives, as there’s many options.
I’m a little ahead of myself. When I was 17, I was just about to graduate high school and my grandfather who lived with us, passed away. He was very important to me and I miss him dearly. I had quit chewing for about 3 months before this happened and my dad quit smoking. We quit together. That day we both went back to our vices and started again. And there is no excuse, but I think that’s at least the most acceptable one.
Anyway, I was off to college and with college came parties, with parties came drugs and I started smoking cigarettes. I had cottonmouth most of the time which made chewing impossible so I started smoking cigarettes to get me that nicotine and tobacco addiction I strongly craved. After about a year, I ended up leaving college and got a job. Started chewing again as I didn’t ever really like smoking cigarettes. Very stinky, sticks to clothes and just was a habit I didn’t like.
Fast forward to now, I chew a can per day and sometimes (more often than not) crack tomorrow’s can, tonight. I just took a chew out as I was reading the article I was reading and decided “yanno what? It’s time”.
I used to be an athlete pretty aggressively and one thing I was always hearing from coaches was “what’s your why?” You have to know your why or you’ll never follow through.
Here’s my “why”:
I want a full set of clean, white teeth when I’m old and gray. I want to work on smiling more as I always avoided it because of my yellow tinted teeth no matter how many times I brush. I was a clean palette so I could really taste my food and enjoy a good glass of wine. I have GERD (for those who don’t know it’s gastroesophogeal reflux disease: basically heart burn but times a thousand) and chewing always gives me horrible heartburn. Quitting could help that condition improve. Also aesthetically, it would be nice to never see a spitter around again or accidentally spilling one or even the worst: drinking one.
I’m sorry if this is too long, but it’s important to be transparent with not only myself, but this community and be honest.
I’d love to hear from some of you. It’s easy to downplay a nicotine addiction because it seems less severe than drug/alcohol/sex addictions, but in reality it’s up to about the same thing.
Thanks for reading if you got this far. Looking forward to tomorrow...Day 1.
