So here I am. Officially Day 1 is tomorrow (Monday, December 19). For the past several months I have been seriously struggling with how to quit. Cold turkey or gradual? Patches until I can break the hand to mouth fixation? Substitute product to ease into it? A few weeks ago I found this site when searching Google for the best way to quit dipping. For about the last two or three weeks I have been coming to this site more and more regularly to read stories about quitting, words of wisdom, advice, avoiding pitfalls, etc. I registered a few days ago. I even started a quit a few days ago and failed after less than 24 hours. Well, tomorrow is Q-Day.
A bit about myself. I'm 41, happily married (other than when I get caught dipping), and have three boys aged 9, 6, and 4. I started becoming an addict when I was about 15 or 16 years old. Red Man or something similar that a buddy swiped from his dad before we went camping out in the woods. I dipped pretty regularly and chewed less frequently through high school. When I got to college I dipped, chewed, and smoked. When I went to law school I smoked and dipped. When I got out of law school, being the brilliant new attorney that I was, I stopped smoking being that it was "much worse" than dipping.
I've stopped before but never quit. Sure, I could quit for a week or so to pass an insurance physical or something similar, or to show my wife that I wasn't an addict, or because I was somewhere that I didn't have access (note that in the last several years I always traveled with my Skoal so that I didn't run into that problem again). But those short stoppages were few and far between and I can't honestly remember if I have even had one of those in the last five or six years.
Five years ago, within a week or two of today's date, we found out that we were having a third child. My wife hates dipping. She hates it like nothing else. She loves me, of that I am sure, but she hates dip. I promised her then that I would quit dipping because one night, in tears, she begged me to please quit. Five years later, I am hoping that I can make that promise a reality. I know now that at that point I wasn't ready to quit. I wanted to for her, but I didn't want to for me and I didn't want to badly enough to do what I knew that it would take.
For pretty much all of my dipping career, I've been a douche (to borrow a phrase from a post I saw here at KTC). I never knew how to put it so succinctly, but a douche I have been. Everyone in my family, from my wife and kids to my parents to my sister's family to my in-laws knew I did it - of that I am sure - but it was always done on the down low and never out in the open. Lying about it, sneaking around so that I could do it, the ten minute dip just for the taste while feigning an extended bathroom break because of something I ate, etc. I've done most of it. Going around the block an extra couple of times. Taking the long way home. Staying up a few minutes later than my wife to "finish something" so that I could hopefully steal a few minutes with the Nic Mistress. Closing the door to my office at work to "take a call" so that I could dip in my office without the chance of any of my colleagues or employees seeing it. Delaying doing something with my kids for that few minutes of peace to take a pinch. As I have said, I've done lots of things to get the fix with the Mistress.
Looking back over the past few years in particular, I think that being a douche and allowing the Mistress to be in such control of my life is my biggest regret. I call her the Mistress because she has been my secret love for so long. At the same time, she has robbed me of time with my family, taken away from my relationships with others, and been that dirty little secret that I didn't want any of my colleagues, family members, or friends to know about.
I'm finally sick of it all enough that I want to end it. Aside from the extra vacation I am planning for my wife and I in 2012 paid for solely from funds NOT spent dipping a couple of cans a day, I want to be rid of the douche baggery and lies and cheats and sneaks. I want to be over the whole fucking thing of smelling it, seeing my fingers stained a little bit brown and a little residue in my finger nail and wondering if the client sitting across the table noticed, knowing that my wife is probably gagging and holding her breath to kiss me, hearing my youngest ask what the smell in the car is when I open a new tin, and on and on and on. A few years ago I reasoned that at this point it probably didn't matter much because after twenty or more years I was likely going to wind up with cancer anyway. Honestly, I still pretty much know that in all likelihood I will wind up with cancer because of the years of dipping - but I have finally come to that point where I can at least say that I beat the bitch and I want to be able to look at my sons honestly and tell them why they can't ever get started.
You might say that with the stress of the holidays, the stress of work at the end of the year (mine gets way worse the last few weeks of the year), and the stress of my in-laws coming on Tuesday for five days that this might not be the best time to start a quit. I've come to the realization that after years worth of excuses, lies to myself, and reasoning that there just won't ever be a perfect or even good time to quit if I am waiting for there to be no outside stresses on my life to compound the difficulty of quitting this nasty habit. The thought of a holiday without dipping is kind of an inspiration quite honestly.
Notwithstanding the bravado above, don't get me wrong. I can feel my heart racing a bit now. I flushed everything that I had and could find before I posted this. The thought of getting up in the morning and not having a pinch is pretty fucking frightening. Hell, the idea of going to bed tonight without knowing that there is that dip in the secret reserve hiding spot gives me cold sweats and makes me anxious as shit. As several people have mentioned in other posts, words of wisdom, etc., I have been thinking about triggers. Unfortunately damn near everything I can think of in my life is a trigger. Morning. Driving to work. About 10:00 AM. About 2:00 PM. Driving home. After kids go to sleep. Weekends watching football. Weekends having a few beers with friends. Hunting. Fishing. And on and on. Some of it I can figure out, some of it - like work - I can't avoid and will just have to fight through. In the end, I'll have to learn to love doing certain things without dipping (or I'll find out that I don't love doing certain things at all without dipping - which is fine too).
So if you have read this far down, you are probably saying to yourself "why am I wasting my time reading this when in the first three lines he said that he tried to quit a few days ago and failed". This is going to sound really hokey. In early 2009 I got the bug to try P90X. It wasn't new at that point, but it also wasn't nearly as big as it is now. I've never been someone that exercises diligently. I would do it for two, three, or four (maybe six on a good stretch) weeks and then stop. So the thought of me doing P90X, to people like my family and friends, was almost laughable. I don't know why, but I was determined. I was determined that not only was I going to finish, but that I was going to finish without missing a workout, without bailing on a workout part of the way through, and without half-assing a workout. It is supposed to be 13 weeks. About five days into it, my wife decided that she wanted to do it with me. So I started over after going a full first week (and in the end then I would be doing fourteen weeks). I was four or five weeks into it and notwithstanding considerable pain and suffering, I was loving it. About a week or two later though I was hitting some serious tough patches. I hurt. I really hurt. I was hungry as hell (I was doing the nutrition plan as well). I continued to drag my ass out of bed every morning at 5:00 AM to do it, but I could see that if I kept going on the same path I was going to wind up quitting. I went to the online forum and starting chatting with people. Coincidentally, I found a group of people that posted roll everyday that they had not only done the workout but that they hadn't dogged it. That inspired me. That kept me going. That is what got me through that middle four or five week period when I could have just as easily quit. By the end of my first round of P90X, and then on into my second, I went to that board and I helped other people. I coached them, I gave encouragement and I told them that they TOO could do it just like I had. I told them how when I was in their position and thought that I couldn't go on that I did and that I continued coming to the boards every day. I tell that stupid little story not to impress everyone, but to say that between my "quit" of a few days ago and tonight I thought about my first foray into P90X for the first time in a long time (and for all the quitters, I am by no means comparing finishing 90 days of working out with quitting something so addictive for the rest of your life - keep reading). Some people are wired differently I guess, but I needed that group of people that I went to every day and said "I did it today and I didn't cheat". Sure, some of them probably cheated and lied about it. But I know that without question I never cheated or lied. I had bad days and I said so. But I never didn't give it 100% and I never lied about what I had done. Point is that I realize that probably I need this site and the roll posting more than most people because I need that accountability to others to succeed.
I've had one hell of a love/hate relationship with the Mistress. The love end of it was over a long time ago. The hate part has finally gotten to the point that I can't tolerate any relationship whatsoever. I certainly love my wife more today than I did fifteen years ago, ten years ago, five years ago, or one year ago. Maybe I love myself more than I did just five years ago. Who knows? I just know that I want whatever I had with the bitch to end. Anxiousness and worry aside, I still know that I want to be quit.
So tomorrow I will go and find the group that has a March end date and I'll post roll for Day 1. My immediate goal is be able to post roll on Tuesday for Day 2 and my immediate goal for every day thereafter will be to post roll for the next day. My medium term goal is to be able to surprise my wife on Christmas Day and tell her that I'm quit for 7 days (and maybe let her read this post - haven't thought that through yet). My long term goal is to be able to tell my wife on New Year's Eve that my NY resolution is to STAY quit for 2012. I know that 100 days is the goal on this site, and perhaps I'm selling myself short thinking about my long term goal being only less than two weeks from now, but after about twenty-five years of the Mistress twelve days seems like a long damn time and a monumental success for me. When I get through New Year's, I'll reassess and come up with new goals. Super Bowl Sunday, annual ski trip out west in February, etc.
To those that started the site, I thank you for helping me to get this far. To those that are quitters, I hope to be like you soon. To those that are just recently quit, I hope that we can get there together. And for those that are reading this and considering a quit, I hope that something I have said strikes a chord with you and that you too make a determined effort to quit forever.
