I do not think I have much more to say now than I had to say when I posted my introduction. I am one of the older quitters here, I am 60 years old.
My brother convinced me to start smoking in 6th grade to help with the anxiety caused by my dad yelling and screaming all the time. Fast forward to college where I joined the Towson State Rugby team in 1974 and switched from 2 packs of Marlboro a day to 1 can of Copenhagen a day so I would stop hurting my lungs and be able to run up and down the field without puking.
I have a lovely wife and daughter. I tried quitting many times for them but was never successful. I tried several times before my daughter was born to no avail. I tried after she was born and was still not successful. My wife decided that I would quit when I chose to. She left me alone, no pressure.
Fast forward to 1999. I was a team leader of Johns Hopkins Medical Systems and I decided I would quit once and for all. I went to the medical center and they taught me meditation so I could quit. After 4 weeks of 2 day sessions I was ready to quit and I did. It was great. Every time I felt the urge to dip, I would go to the toilet and instead of dipping I would meditate and tell myself I would not do dip today. It worked for 9 months. My mom got sick. I became quite anxious. I talked to my older brother who told me – you will never quit. I could not quit and neither can you. I allowed myself to be convinced that I would not be successful quitting…….
I own that cave and I gave up trying to quit after that. I did switch to Cherry Skoal because it is supposed to have the lowest amount of nicotine of all the snuff products.
Fast forward 16 years. My brother died last year of kidney failure, my older sister died several years before from M.S. There are 4 of us kids left. My employment as a VP of Systems Development at a Fortune 500 company came to an end. The start-up that all hinged on technology for the print-on-demand world, that I built, that sold to one company, then was spun off to another successful company, which then divorced me after a change in senior management.
Long story short, this was a bad time. Very unusual for a VP to be able to dip without being noticed all of these years. However, the dipping made me erratic. Imagine being in a meeting for 2 hours without a dip. Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!! After the meeting, get the hell out of my way so I can find a place to dipÂ…. . No I cannot talk nowÂ…Â… Same thing with family get togethers. I did not like them much because I could only last an hour or two before I needed a dip. Then I needed some apples to eat to clean my teethÂ….
This year being off from work, I was dipping more than normal. I hired some developers and was ready to give them a hard way to go when I realized that I was going nuts. I was obsessing, micromanaging and the snuff was making me crazier and crazier. My wife was avoiding me, worrying if she said the wrong thing or in the wrong tone I would go off. DidnÂ’t matter what the topic was. I was just highly agitated most of the time.
I thought, what the hell am I doing?. I visited the KTC site for a couple of days, somehow got an email from Chewie and then decided to quit.
This time is different in that I am not sitting back obsessing about dipping all damn day like I did in the past. I just do not think about it. I move on. I really believe when you have decided to quit then you will quit and it ends the internal debate about whether you are going to do it or not. You are just not going to do it.
I know I am considered a poor group member because I do not post much and I do not stay logged in long to assist others. There is a reason for this, I am not obsessing about the quit and I chose not to think about it. I am done with it and that is it.
I hesitated to join the chat rooms because the short two times I was there it appeared to be a bunch of guys trying to act and talk tough and act badass about the quit. I am not into that kind of thing. I grew up in a military family, my dad was a lifer – a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army who acted like a drill instructor for the marine corp. Ever read the great Santini? My dad would make him look like a wimp. Further, my brother who is 4 years older, bench pressed 400 lbs. in high school and did not train with weights (meaning he was naturally strong), was all American football player and wrestler in high school who thought I was a wimp and that I needed my butt kicked every day.
Long story short, I do not need cocky bullshit from anyone.
Since I have stopped for 9 months in the past, I know that stopping is possible but I am always in danger of caving. I also know that once a dipper always a dipper. I cannot let my guard down. That is why I have signed up to continue to post roll call after 100 days.
I thank Chewie for starting this site, he is a real healer and a true hero. I thank all of you who manage and support this site. You truly make a difference and are also healers and heroes.
I thank those of you who reached out to me in the early days including: johnnodip, lwildma2, eyehatecope, nomore1959, tjschu, jb65, pab1964, thumblewort, rawls, and raider. I also would like to thank my lifting buddies of johnnodip (again) and copenhaten.
Most of all I thank my loving wife who said little but nursed me much during the hardest and darkest days of quitting.
