HOF – Math Quiz – Why Do You Want To Quit?

I have no intentions to mislead anyone. I am no seasoned quit veteran nor an expert in the human psyche. I am just a 44 year old father of two who decide enough is enough. It was time to face some hard realities. Nicotine was trying to kill me and I was helping it. Every day I was ingesting a substance know to cause cancer and birth defects. How did I know this? It was on the side of the damn can!!

But I didn’t read that when I was 14. Hell it might not have even been on the side of the can back in 1984. At 14, I was not a addict. At 14, I was cool. At 14, I was tough. At 14, I knew I was in control and no one was going to tell me different.

But the truth was my first dip sucked. I was dizzy. I felt like I was going to puke and I think I had it in for about 2 minutes. My buddies laughed at me for not being able to handle it. Not one to let my buddies down, I tried some more a few hours later. Not so bad this time. I think I last about 10 minutes before I got dizzy and felt like puking. I continued this cycle until I got to the point where I could handle it. It took a few months but I could put a dip in before school and go to the first three classes before taking it out. I was getting good at it. The dip also helped me stay in good shape because smoking made me cough when I played high school sports. Dip was healthier. Dip was with me everywhere. Even in the USMC, dip was preferred. Again, no smoke smell. No bright red cherry to be seen just pure nicotine thru the lip. Fast forward a decade or so, and the first of my two kids showed up. I had to quit now, I was a dad. Yeah that BS lasted about as long as the first diaper stayed clean. Ninja dipping skills were perfected for about 2 years until dip finally came back into the house not caring about kids or arguments with Mrs. Crazyvolts. The dip was here to stay and wasn’t leaving. Nothing change and dip owned me.

Then July 2014 at dentist office, they found two black spots on my lower lip so I thought, and I thought, and I thought, good thoughts, bad thoughts, the worse thoughts, and then I decided to do something about it, I googled “quit Chewing tobacco” . KTC was the first website and I read it. I read something on the page and it all became very clear, “you have to quit for you”.

So I quit for me and two tiny black spots that turned out to be nothing more than discolored pigmentation (my dip tattoo I guess)…it wasn’t and still isn’t easy…I still get craves..I still hate the way it makes me feel..I still go into fogs..I still go on ragers..but I still want to quit for me..I quit with a bunch of other addicts who want to stay quit just as bad as I do. Together, we fight this addiction one moment at a time.

At 102 days, I think back to when I was 14 and wonder if I knew how much this would make me so uncool and un-tough when I was quitting or how I would I become a bad addict to Nicotine. I wonder would I have been smart enough to not repeatedly practice and learn how to addict and kill myself to/with nicotine?? So now at 44, I am going thru the process in reverse order that I did at 14. Just this morning, I committed another 100 days to my kick ass quit group November 2014. I did this so at 44 I can be cool. So at 44, I can be tough. So at 44, I am a smarter addict in control of my addiction. I did for me..

Why do you want to quit?

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