The Last Time

THE LAST TIME I went 100 days without chewing was when I was 19. It was 100 days before I started chewing. Back then I had a buddy that I hung out with a lot. We worked together and would hang out on weekends. One other guy we worked with chewed so we thought we would try it. It wasn’t anything special until one day after work we were having some beers and we threw a chew in and it hit me. What a head rush, what a buzz, it felt great. As time went on that feeling went away but the need to chew never did. When I was 25 I started dating a girl. I hid my habit for a while until softball season started then it was kind of out in the open. A couple weeks later for Easter my now girlfriend gave me an Easter Basket with a 6 pack of beer and 3 tins of Copenhagen. It was really out there now and my girlfriend was fine with it. As the years went on I kept chewing & chewing with no reason to stop. When I got married I don’t remember wanting to quit and my now wife was not pushing me too. When we had our daughters in 99, 03 & 05 I didn’t quit. When my mom died of cancer in 2005 I didn’t quit. As years went on I would try to quit and that would last a day or 2. As my oldest daughter started getting older she would ask questions of “what’s in your mouth” or “why do you do that” and I would tell her it’s grown up stuff. Over the last 2 years my now 13 year old daughter would hammer me anytime she saw a tin, saw a spitter or if I had a dip in. My wife would always tell me to stop over this same time period. I kept telling both of them that I was trying. I didn’t know the term at the time but I had become a ninja dipper. I work in the construction field so as soon as I was out of the house in the morning I was chewing and on the way home I would throw out my spitter and hide my tin in my truck until everyone went to bed so I could have 1 more. Somehow my daughter would occasionally catch me and get mad at me. She would tell me I going to die and then tell her mother I was still chewing. After all of this I still had no intensions of quitting, I just had to hide it better. This was my stress reliever. Stress at work, argument with the wife or numerous other things that a chew would make better. Then there was watching sporting events, bowing or golfing. Chew made everything better. On February 6th my wife and I got in a fight which was probably my fault. The next morning I vowed to start making some changes in my life. When I got to work I Googled “Quit Chewing” and Kill the Can popped up. I started reading what the site was about and some of the stories. At 12:41pm I spit out my last dip and threw my tin in the garbage and signed up. This was THE LAST TIME I went 100 days without chewing and that number is just going to keep going up.

• I would first like to thank my wife and girls for their support.
• Pacertom – We quit the same day and as you said in your 1st PM to me, “we’re bonded forever”, I thank you for your support and will cover your post when ever needed.
• DJR2 – Thanks for the support & good luck with the baseball
• CoachDoc – Thanks for being there early in my quit and listening to me vent.
• All my 2012 May Brothers- I quit with all of you!!!
• KTC – Without this site I would still be chewing, Thank You. I quit today.

For those of you reading this who are early on in your quit or thinking about quitting read everything you can about this site. If you are like me you will relate in some way to almost every story on this site. I chewed for 27 years and this is the only thing that ever got me to quit for this length of time. I never said it or thought it before but I am addicted to nicotine.

NOTE: This piece written by KillTheCan.org forum member CMH17