Hi brothers and sisters, I'm Bill from Milwaukee, WI. I've been on the site and posting roll for a while now, but, I promised myself that no matter how busy I was or how bad I am at writing these things, I'd write one before day 99 in my quit. Well, today is day 98 so it's time to write or time to break a promise to myself. I've been doing pretty good in the keeping my word to myself department lately, so...
It's been a long road getting here. Wow, day 98. I started dipped Cope about 30 years ago. I remember the first time I used the stuff: it was at a movie with a friend. He offered me my first dip and, being young, stupid and 16, I tried it. The two things I remember are that it was a big "high" and that it felt like every ounce of liquid in my body rushed to my mouth. I don't think at the time I intended to dip more as I wasn't big on trying other things, but, for some reason, I kept on dipping. And here I am, 30 years later having finally taken control of my life back from a dead plant in a can.
I have a lot of stressful things I'm dealing with right now. My wife passed away two years ago unexpectedly from a heart attack. My daughter was diagnosed last year as a type one diabetic which means she'll be on insulin the rest of her life. I work in a very stressful (yet still rewarding job) for a government agency in downtown Chicago. Add in a dash of the cold stark reality that is life and I'm one pretty stressed guy. Add to all this the breaking of a 30 year addictive habit and, well, "ugh" is about the right word to describe things.
As I've lurked here on the site, and compared to some of my brothers and sisters, I consider myself lucky on my quit. I really only tried once before about 10 years ago but I caved after 30 days. My father had passed away and I caved on the drive to his house the day I found out. But this quit has been so much easier than that quit was and seems easier than what most folks on here experience. Not to make it sound like it is no effort because it is, just that it doesn't feel "impossible" this time. Besides the support and information I've received from KTC, I think there are three things that made this quit successful so far.
First, I decided that I was going to quit for me. There are a bunch of reasons that make up that statement like living for my daughter and having a woman in my world who might be right person to finish my life with. At the end of the day though, this quit is for me so I can feel good about giving them a person to be in their life who isn't sneaking around dipping and trying to kill myself most waking moments of the day.
Second, I only used about half a can of Cope a day. In really stressful times if I tried to dip more than that it made me sick. I am very thankful that I never really went past a can every two days or so.
Last, I planned this quit out. My quit day was 2/8 but I planned this out with my doctor starting in December of 2015. My doctor consulted with a quit specialist and together we make up a plan. Starting on 1/3 I began my quit and for the first month I started quitting with a combination of NRT, Wellbutrin and Atavan. Because the job I have can affect people, physically and otherwise, we planned out that my first two weeks I would take vacation from work and thank goodness I did. I constantly felt like someone was bashing in my face with a hammer or had the mother of all sinus infections. The fog was bad, bad, oh so bad. My jaw hurt, everything tasted funny but nothing said to me was particularly funny. I pretty much locked myself away from everyone and everything and either slept, played games on the xbox or watched the entire catalogue of Netflix. By the end of two weeks, I was actually a little ahead of our plan, most of the "hard" symptoms had started to fade and I was starting seriously reducing my NRT. Soon the constipation stopped, my jaw didn't hurt as much and I was exercising regularly again. By the first week in February, I was almost completely done with NRT and was fighting mostly oral cravings with sugar free lemon drops, chewing gum and sunflower seeds. The Ativan helped immensely with the stress. I remember my last piece of NRT gum on Sunday, February 7th, 2016. I chewed it about 10 o'clock at night. By this time the nic fits were so minor that, for some dumb reason (maybe fear), made myself chew it because I almost forgot it was time to use it. From that point, I haven't looked back.
Now, my quit is mostly about the physical habit and dealing with triggers. I do not have any desire to give my life back to nicotine. None at all. That is a huge victory for me. I may feel the triggers in life push me to put something in my mouth, but, I don't respond with chew. Many times, I simply do nothing and the urge passes. Right now I've been typing this entire post with nothing in my mouth. To go from thinking "how can I get along without something in my mouth - how the hell do other people do this?" to where I am now is simply amazing to me. I've learned so much about what habits are and how they can be changed. I actually recognize these urges for what they are now: just simple force of habit, nothing more. One strange (to me) thing did happen on this trip the other day. I've read on here about quitters having "dip dreams" when they sleep but, far as I can tell, I have only had one and that happened last week. I remember it so clearly it was like it really happened. In my dream I thought "holy shit! How did I cave, I didn't even realize it!" and it pretty much jolted me awake with such a force of guilt that I thought it was true. I swear I could smell the Cope when I woke up! I was completely unprepared for how real it seemed.
Second to processing the death of my wife or the birth of my daughter, this has been the strangest, hardest, most wonderful and most rewarding experience that I've ever had. I thought quitting was going to be impossible but it is not. True, I will always have triggers to deal with but I think if I deal with them using something other than chew, I'll be okay. I just don't care or think about nicotine any more. If something does happen that makes me consider using nicotine in any form again, I'll have three things to help stop me: 1) I'd be letting the folks on KTC down. The volunteers give for no material benefit and the quitters probably went through a rougher time that I did (from what I read) and I'd be a wimp to cave if they don't - I can always reach out to someone here to help if I absolutely need, 2) I remember how crappy I felt when I started this and I have no desire to go through this again, evah, and 3) I don't want to disappoint myself and my family.
Whew! That was enough I think!
-B
