When the Monster Was Awakened

sM’s Road to Quit

Some years ago I got a call from a frantic daughter explaining that she had not heard from her father for a few weeks which was out of character for him. She asked I check on him. He was a retired police officer, overweight, with bad circulation from years of chewing tobacco. A good guy.

I found him on his couch, sitting up. He had been there for weeks. All around him were spit cups and spent dips that had been left everywhere. It was like a giant dip shitting rabbit had left pellets of skoal all over his apartment. A rancid spitter had spilled at his feet when the heart attack took him. He died dipping, covered in brown spit, surrounded by stinking cups of cancerous ooze. The damage nicotine had done to his circulatory system was determined to be a major contributor to his death. He never even had time to say goodbye to his daughter.

I walked out and packed a dip. The irony of that bothered me. The memory of it sickens me.

Weeks later another resident came in to pay her rent. She was going through her second round of chemo, and was swollen like Verucca Sault after eating the unperfected blueberry gum from Willy Wonka. She’d lost all her hair and had black rings under eyes. I met her at my desk with a wedge in my mouth. She looked at me and started to weep. She said ” but you have babies!!” She asked me why I hadn’t quit. Lamely I stammered about it being difficult and said” you know how it is” she said, ” NO, I DID NOT know how it is” and became angry with me. She was dead in a week.

Before the lung cancer took its toll, she was beautiful. She was from Europe somewhere and had that cosmopolitan flare. She smoked with the grace of an old school silver screen beauty like Bacall. She had class. In the end cancer stripped it all bare, left her a wheezing shell of herself. I can’t shake the vision of her looking hard into my eyes with tears falling from her ashen cheeks and asking me why I hadn’t quit yet. How ridiculous my answer. I can see her husband standing at the window smoking as I type this. I’m embarrassed that I understand it. He is an addict just like me. Not even holding his wives hand as she died due to smoking could flip the switch in his head. I’m ashamed that I was once as lost as him.

Another month went by and I sat in a duck blind by myself knuckles deep into a log of chew during a week long duck hunt. I began to ponder the stupidity of my addiction. I felt horrible most days. My heart beat jumped like a jackrabbit on meth. I was tired, I needed at least 2 cans a day to feel ” normal” . Thing was is my use had gotten to the level that I was unable to remove the withdrawal symptoms. I was spending the entire day in a state of nicotine withdrawal. I could chew nic gum, smoke, and dip, but really never got any relief from the cravings. I see now that this is how drug addicts eventually overdose and die. If it was heroin or coke and not nicotine, I’d be dead. In any case I had a moment of clarity and realized if I was going to live in a constant state of withdrawal, I might as well quit and stop killing myself. I wasn’t going to feel anymore shitty so what was the difference. I set my last can on the ledge of the blind and never used nicotine again.

This is nicotine’s end game. At some point you reach the level of addiction that you’re never “not” using. It’s why there are chain smokers. It’s why you replaced one dip after another after another. It is why you hide your habit from your family and coworkers. It is why I would buy my chew from different gas stations because I was actually embarrassed by how much I used. It is also why nicotine will never get me back. I know what is there at the end. She either kills you outright with cancer, kills you slowly with related disease, or just stops “working” . It is a no win game from all angles. a neurotoxic romance where the only outcomes are death or quit.

three years into my quit, my wife who is a health nut of epic proportions, slim as a rail and almost vegetarian was diagnosed with cancer. No cause, just random luck. The fear, anguish, hurt of that diagnosis and treatment that followed was unbelievable. Cancer is a mother fucker my friends. Thank God she has made it through that and is one year clean today. There is no earthly way any human being would place himself in that position on purpose, and yet we do. We use a substance that we know will kill us eventually. We take comfort in the so called odds that we won’t be the one that gets it. We try to believe the stories about the grandparent that smokes and dipped until he was 103. We lie to ourselves. Jenny Kern once said ” the odds don’t matter when you’re the one who gets it” She is right. Moreover, there are no odds you could give me that would make me risk hurting my family to such a huge extent. Purposefully killing ourselves by choosing nicotine over our family? stupid.

I’m so relieved I quit. I’m comforted now by the fact that I am approaching 4 years quit and that each passing day brings me closer to reducing my risk of cancer back to the level of a non tobacco user. It was so easy in hindsight. I just had to make up my mind to do it. To accept the consequences of quitting. To pay the price of the suck and the funks. It was so worth all of that shit, it was easier than I thought, and the rewards far greater.

Stay quit , it IS literally life and death

sM

NOTE: This piece written by KillTheCan.org forum member Skoal Monster