Hi guys. I am 53 years old and started chewing 33 years ago. I was in a dorm in college and was offered a dip of Skoal. I was almost immediately hooked. A year later, I changed colleges and went to the University of Arkansas. Chew was really popular there and I was a can a day user. After college, I moved back to Seattle and started chewing Copenhagen. I was a computer programer and I'd have a garbage can right beside me at work that I would spit in. No one there cared that I chewed almost constantly at work. I always hid my habit from the girls I dated. Same for the one I married almost 24 years ago. About 10 years ago, I switched to Skoal Bandits because I became a VP at work and needed to be more discrete. This worked really well for me. About the same time, I started to worry even more about getting mouth cancer so I worked really hard to reduce my amount of tobacco use. I got down to just 5 Skoal Bandits per day and remained steady with that amount for about 10 years up until I finally quit on March 5th of this year.
So it's been 60 days and I still crave the stuff! The cravings come on hard around the times that I normally put in a chew. It's been tough, but I think I'll make it.
Caveat: Over the 33 years discussed above, there were many times when I'd chew much more or buy a pack of cigarettes. These were when I took a fishing trip or went camping or when my wife was out of town. Any time I was away from my wife, I'd be a heavy user. Really, the only thing that kept me from chewing a can a day of Copenhagen was the fact that I was hiding it from my wife. One day in 2010 my wife got into the drivers side of my car and she noticed that the floor mat was raised up. She looked under it and saw a can of Skoal Bandits. After she confronted me, I confessed that I had been lying to her for over 20 years. She has forgiven me, but it was a really rough time and the damage is permanent. She will never fully trust me again.
