3 Years of Freedom

April 9 will be my three year anniversary of quitting dip. I find that I am liking the idea that as I get older, my birthday holds less and less appeal to me but my freedom day is becoming more special.

It was about this time three years ago that I realized I had to do something about my chewing habit. I knew that at 27 years of Copenhagen usage I was reducing the number of empty cylinders in my personal little game of Russian Roulette. I had tried to quit for my kids and failed. That did wonders for my self esteem let me tell you.

In the end it, I think this quit worked for two reasons. I wanted it to and I worked at making it stick. And the biggest and brightest thing I did to make it stick was to find QS.

I read a comment the other day, I don’t remember whether it was here or QSII but the person was talking about how he had explained the concept of the site to a friend. When he was done telling the friend how the site worked i.e. roll call and asking and giving help the friend apparently said that the guy could cave, and then go about his time on the site as if nothing happened. No one would know.

The guy said he would know.

That’s what it is all about. You have to get to a point where you respect yourself enough that you want to stop killing yourself with the tobacco AND you refuse to lie to yourself about it. Because that is the only thing between us and a cave. We call it a commitment to the quit brothers and sisters. We say that we want to be true to them but in actuality I think it only works if we want to be true to ourselves. When we decide not to lie to ourselves about our dipping and what it can do to us and what it can take from us then that is when we are really able to lay it down. Throw it away.

Nearly three years ago I hit that point and the past 1069 days have been some of the hardest and most rewarding days of my entire life.

I hope all users get there someday.

Tractor

NOTE: This piece written by KillTheCan.org forum member Tractor