Late Again – B–rad HOF
Here is my Late HOF speech dedicated to the June Mafia and the assclowns who hounded me to write this for the last 50 something days!!
I was a 30 plus year ninja dipper- no spitter needed/ and smoker- I just threw up after typing that!!!
25 something years ago I was getting out of college so I decided now was the time to quit. I hammered seeds and gum and stopped for what I recall to be somewhere in the 2- 6 month range. I told myself it sucked to quit but I proved to myself that I could do it so I deserved just one!!! Well that one dip turned into an additional 25-year addiction because I am a stubborn addict asshole!
As I reached my mid 40’s heading to old fart can say anything and people won’t care status a close friend who never used nicotine received a stage 4 throat cancer diagnosis. The diagnosis was good and they caught it early but watching him go thru chemo made me start to think. Fast forward a year later another friends father in law whom I knew well received the same diagnosis. He was a smoker and went thru chemo and also beat it. Those two still banged around in the grey space between my ears. Why didn’t I quit- well as I stated above I am a stubborn addict asshole who only cares about himself. About a year later the cancer was back in my friend’s father in law. He passed a few months later of throat cancer. I went to the funeral and the past 30 plus years of nicotine started to flow back to me and I decided I needed to make a huge change and now was the time.
During this time, I had received an opportunity of a lifetime but would require a big change for the entire family which involved moving from Ohio to Florida. The wife would have to leave a 20-year career at a huge fortune 500 company, my nine-year-old daughter would have to start over at a new school and make new friends, and my twin 4-year-old girls would continue to be- well they are all about carpe diem even though they don’t know Latin!
We started planning and coming down to Florida late in the summer of 2016. Had a neighborhood picked out and got our house on the market. Why you ask have I not quit yet? Again, because I am a selfish addict asshole who only cares about himself!! The stress of all this was driving me nuts selling the house buying another and moving from a home we had lived in since 1999!!! Fast forward to January 2017- we accept an offer on our house and push the closing off till April so the nine-year-old can come close to finishing the year. I get to work on packing all our crap and taking a ton to goodwill. Not sure what caused it but on March 19th I had just bought a can and packed a big one sitting in the gas station parking lot. Without thinking I took it out got out of the car and walked to the trash can and threw it all away. I went back in the store and bought 4 bags of sunflower seeds and 4 packs of gum.
So, I’m a couple weeks into my quit and it is really bad so I start searching the interweb for some help. This is where I stumble on to KTC. Hmmmm strange I think to myself but what the hell- I give it a shot. I get on and get thrown into a quit group with a bunch of others with strange names. I quickly find my way around and learn to post roll without jacking it-sometimes. At this point I am still such an asshole all I do is read everything I can find from HOF speeches to other stories. I even go over to chat and stalk it- I never logged on because I was a HUGE asshole and would have been banned quickly! I was a ghost and made it to somewhere north of 50 days when I made my first non-roll related post over it was a fight with a few guys from other groups giving me shit about a late roll post!!! FU, I don’t care- I wanted to reach through the computer and punch some stranger in the face!! Why because if you didn’t read the first few paragraphs I am a stubborn addict asshole!!
Wow 60 something days-my fogginess and anger were finally gone. I started talking more with my group and actually logged into chat frequently since the move gave me some downtime to kill. Day 60 something I actually traded digits with a few in my group- that was strange and still is. By day 100 I was sucking down the Kool-Aid!
So here I am at 150 days I have went through anger, every frigging ache and pain imaginable from sore teeth, gums, tongue, neck, jaw, and sore every other body part and have googled all symptoms!! I can tell you- DON’T GOOGLE SYMPTOMS unless you are really prepared to panic. There were times during my first hundred days when I had huge anxiety attacks from googling crap. I normally got thru those by searching KTC for a similar situation and I always found one. After a while I realized that the symptom would go away eventually and if it didn’t I would deal with that as they came(they didn’t) . As I sit here and reflect on the last 150 days of quit and the pain, anger and other symptoms I went through my quit is stronger. There has been NOTHING in my life I have done in my 47 years that have been harder or better than quitting tobacco. Looking back at the first 100 days and the hell it was makes me stronger in my resolve because I will not put myself, family or friends through that again!
Thank you to all KTC members who have helped me both directly or indirectly in this journey. I am not going to name any as I will forget someone so thank you all!
To all you new quitters- don’t be a dumbass like me- get involved in your group early, trade digits, call each other, get on chat, text, send pictures to Big Red if that helps you! Just get involved it will strengthen your quit and that’s coming from a stubborn addict who now is only sometimes an asshole!
B–rad
QLAMF ODAAT
NOTE: This piece written by KillTheCan.org forum member B–rad
