I've been hooked on nicotine since high school when I started smoking. I quit 5 years later replacing camels for skoal. 12 years later and here I am today.
I go through about 2-3 cans of dip a week. Have made numerous attempts to quit before and ultimately failed. The longest I stayed off was 30 days. Dip has been such a routine part of my life. I crave it after eating, my morning ride to work, at the gym, whenever I am doing anything outside, when I am bored at home, watching TV. It is just instinctive to reach for the can.
I want to quit for obvious reasons. It is gross. I'm tired of finding bottles to spit in. My wife hates it. I am tired of thinking about it at inconvenient times. Health reasons above all else.
So with that said, I thought about why my past strategies to quit didn't work out. I would find any excuse to start again, stress and the need to feel "normal". I need to be more accountable and remind myself that I am redefining what normal is. I've used patches in my past attempts to quit. In fact I still have some left over. Yesterday I put on a 21mg patch and only had 3 dips. I put another 21mg patch today and plan to not have any dips (I don't own a can at the moment). Tomorrow I plan on quitting the patch all together and rid myself of nicotine completely. I am craving a dip right now as I type this :(
My will power is high right now. I am leery about what that will be like once I take the patch off tomorrow. I know the cravings will come and chip away at my will power repeatedly. I have to mentally prepare myself before the cravings happen, hence why tried to identify them in the previous paragraph.
Will post my first roll call tomorrow. I WILL get through today without a dip but with the crutch of a patch.
