I Found My Eureka Moment

I always knew I wasn’t looking for magical solution to break my addiction to nicotine and tobacco, but I was searching for my “eureka moment”. Merriam-Webster defines a eureka moment as “a moment of sudden, triumphant discovery, inspiration, or insight”. For each of us, we had to have had our “eureka moment” somewhere along the line when we’d finally realized, enough was enough. Mine hit me like a ton of bricks on January 9^th, 2024. We were three days removed from my youngest daughter’s first birthday. It was a really happy time at our house, yet I was miserable. My wife shared an online photo album of her birthday party, and every single picture I was in, there was my 3-finger wad of Grizzly tucked on the lower left portion of my jawline. I couldn’t stare at my happy girl, or her beaming mommy. All I could see was a death sentence staring back at me. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. Deep down, I obviously known for years I needed to be Quit. But now that I’d found the inspiration from within to quit once and for all, I needed to act and act fast.

My Eureka Moment

I am honest when I say I “lurked” around KTC (Twitter, mainly) for years. Could never pull the trigger. Not when I got married, not when my girls were born. Promises were made to quit around each of those major life events. Hell, I could not even pull the trigger when I watched my grandma die from Oral Cancer. Because I never “wanted” to do it for me. Always for someone else. When I learned early from KTC members (KodiakDeath, Aquaman, BrianBrianBrian, amongst others) was I had to do it for myself. Well, that clicked. If I did it for me, I didn’t have anyone to blame or make a scape goat for failure. It was me, my word, and my community of quit sisters and brothers. I’ve taken what I’ve learned and molded my own saying. A lot of new quitters along the way have seen me say something like this: You have to do it for yourself, and those closest to you will benefit from your decision to be done. Simple, effective, and to the point.

I really am thankful for our KTC community. I’ve had the opportunity to gain some friendships along the way that keep me grounded in my quit. Thanks to MattyB, Harry, Mitchy42 and the dozens of others that have impacted me this year. I hope that I am able to repay the community and be of help to new quitters, or someone struggling. And finally, to our April 2024 Quit Dip Posse group, I’m grateful we’re still 16 quitters deep (as of 10/30/2024) and has us the largest remaining 2024 group at KTC. What we may lack in banter, we make up in commitment. I hope if you’ve read this far, you find your eureka moment soon.

NOTE: This piece written by Kill The Can community member Ole7431