Jeffw’s HOF Speech – No Longer a Slave
When I think back to day 1, 100 days felt like 10 years, as that first couple of weeks were unbelievably painful, but here I am at the HOF milestone. Today marks day 119 for me which means it is just another 24 hours at a time. That is how it is done at KTC, 1 promise, 1 day at a time, every damn day.
My addiction began as a freshman in college. I grew up with a drug addict for a parent so I had always shied away from opportunities to drink, do drugs, or put any other poison in my body. When I got to college, it took about a month for me to cave to the booze. My first dip of Kodiak came during one of those initial drunk experiences and I remember puking immediately after putting the dip in. A day or two later I would try another dip while sober and again was puking my guts out. You would think this would be enough to deter me from doing it again but the nic bitch had already latched on. I continued to experiment with the Kodiak until I figured out how to dip it without making myself puke and could enjoy the buzz. I dipped Kodiak to start, then migrated to Skoal Wintergreen, and finally settled on Grizzly Wintergreen long cut and pouches.
Dip was fully integrated in my daily life and I was pretty much a can a day user for the majority of my adult life. I met my future wife back in 2007 and she was a smoker so the dipping kept rolling on until she got pregnant with our first back in 2009. She quit smoking cold turkey the day she found out and told me I should quit before our daughter was born. I promised that I would, but like many others on here I broke that promise and turned into a ninja dipper. I would use the pouches at home and in the office and throw in a big wad of the long cut whenever I had the opportunity. I continued to ninja dip through our second child and was caught in 2012 when she found one of my pouches on the ground. She asked me if I was chewing again and of course I lied and told her no. She pulls out the pouch and called me out on my bullshit. I attempted a stop at that moment and made it a month or so but selfishly planned to cave on a fishing trip to Alaska. I went back to ninja dipping until 1/1/17 when I had traveled back to Atlanta to watch the college football playoff game. On this day I had drank a couple of monster energy drinks, along with booze, and lots of chew and developed heart palpitations which scared the shit out me so I decided to stop dipping again and even signed up with KTC, but never posted anything. I made it six weeks but again selfishly planned a cave on another fishing trip and back to fucking ninja dipping I went. In July, I received a call from my life insurance broker and he said I needed to renew as my current policy was running out. I lied to my broker and told him that I had been quit since 2013, but had smoke cigars periodically since. I knew that they would be screening for tobacco so I would need to quit now. Like many others, I went online looking for replacements and found KTC again. This time I found the chat room and the vets in there told me to dump my crap so I did and posted a day 1 on 8/2/17. Initially my quit intentions were to save money on my life insurance but spending weeks reading the materials on this site and listening to the vets pushed me to quit for myself so that I could truly be free.
The first 100 days have been eventful, as my wife caught me on KTC during the first week and I had to come clean (that fucking sucked), I have had a biopsy for a white patch (negative), I have been screened by an ENT (negative), and I went thru the life insurance exam. I have learned so much about the addiction aspect of things which was really hard to accept. I am so disappointed in the time I have wasted using and look at this as an opportunity to take my life back and enjoy every second of it. The only reason that I am still quit today is the support of KTC and the fact that I post a promise to a bunch of internet strangers daily. I just spent 11 days in Jamaica, and had zero cravings, and spent the entire time playing with my kids and hanging with my wife without worrying about when I would get my nic fix in. I am done being a “slave to a dead plant”. For all the people thinking about quitting, it’s not easy but it is so worth it. You need to realize that this shit controls every aspect of your life and once you taste the freedom without it you will be amazed. Like many others, I have tried quitting on my own several times and failed. KTC and the support system here works. I would like to thank all my November quit buddies for the support, in particular Swilson and 69franx for holding everyone accountable. I would also like to give a shout out to vets, JeffW, net gain, and Samrs, for reaching out early and staying in contact throughout.
NOTE: This piece written by KillTheCan.org forum member jeffw
