From Ninja Dipper to Quitter

This speech has taken me a little longer than 100 days to write, partly because I just moved, started my first big boy job (all of which took place during my HoF date) and because I wasn’t all that sure about what to write. That being said. I have done some self-reflecting and know what I want to write about. I won’t bore you with my life story, but my tobacco use began in high school, myself and the neighborhood friends having some of the older guys buy us black and milds. Boy did we think we were hot shit. We would smoke them down by the woods chasing that buzz that came along with it. Now that went on and off and we would smoke them every couple of months or week, but oh man do we know what a slippery slope that is, that was it, I was hooked.

For the purposes of my HoF speech, I want to focus on my Ninja dipping and the choice to finally come clean and tell my girlfriend I am an addict and the impact that it has had on my quit. To put a little context into this, literally ZERO people new I dipped, somehow, I never got caught. Of the 7 years I have dipped, 3.5 of them I have been living with my girlfriend, there were a couple scares where I almost was caught, but she never caught on. How the hell I never was caught is beyond me. I really to this day am baffled by that.

Fast forward to the point leading up to my quit. I several times visited the site KTC but never joined, just tried to follow the moto of being completely nic free and getting rid of everything. Yeah, that didn’t last long. I would last 4-7 days and eventually get another tin. Finally, I decided to join and start posting. I joined the live chat where I met my first quitter and the person that has been one of the most influential in my quit. I met the one and only CLEalt. He encouraged me to sign up, throw away my dip and post day one. He immediately sent me his number and checked in on me every single day. That was huge and so incredibly helpful. You’re now probably asking, well how does this all tie into the “ninja dipping” theme. CLE, like myself was a ninja dipper for years (although he got caught a couple times sooo, was he really a ninja dipper?). Talking to him and him telling me about his experiences really inspired me to come clean to my GF. The other person I want to mention that helped me decide to come clean was SRains918. He encouraged me that night to tell her, and I finally did, I still remember the phone call we had right after, he was incredibly proud of what I did and told me how monumental it was to my quit.

Now, to this day, my girlfriend is still the only person (other than KTC obviously) that knows I am addicted to tobacco. It will stay that way and I will take that secret to my grave. Part of it is embarrassment, embarrassed that I became a slave to the plant, part of it is the fear of disappointment, there are a bunch of reasons that I could list off, but what I did do is tell the one person who really needed to know, and that solidified my quit. My hope is to inspire others ninja dippers to come clean to their s/o’s or to someone who can just be that extra little bit of support you need. Not only is it weight off your shoulders, but in doing so, in coming clean to that one person, you are committing yourself to your quit because now, if you fail you don’t just fail yourself, you fail that other person as well, it is part of the accountability I need to stay quit. For me, it is now the disappointment that would come along with failing, disappointing the person I love. IMO there is no worse feeling than disappointment.

Once I came clean, it was like the world was lifted off my shoulders. It was one of the biggest reliefs I had ever felt. I felt whole, I felt new, I felt like I could finally beat this stupid shit of a plant. I felt determined, and for the first time in my attempts to quit, I thought to myself “I actually am going to do this.” It was a different feeling than past attempts. In all my past quit attempts, I knew deep down I was not committed. I knew deep down I was lying to myself and that I wasn’t actually going to survive this attempted quit. How did I know? Well, it’s very easy to lie to others, but the hardest person to lie to is yourself. You can try and try and try, you can come up with every excuse in the book, you can come up with anything that will validate your thoughts, choices, and motivations, but deep down if you’re lying, you’re not committed you DO KNOW that, and you are aware that you are lying to yourself. This time, this quit attempt I did not feel that way. I actually felt like I was ready to kick one of the most addictive substances in the world. I was ready to take on this monster, one… day…. At… a…. time and I am taking this monster one ONE.. DAY.. AT.. A.. TIME.

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