mlzy15 HOF Speech – Don’t Wait Till Your Tin Is Empty

Hi all, here goes. I am now 230+ days clean and finally getting around to writing my speech. It all starts back in high school, a buddy of mine is playing jr. hockey and the cool thing to do on the long bus rides is to chew. So he comes home in the off season and of course I decide I want to be cool like him, so i take my first dip. I got numb and dizzy and just felt really good. At that time a tin of chew was only $4 so we could easily scrounge that money just around the hall ways of the school. Unfortunately I became an addict and that lead to me chewing 2 tins a day for the next 20 years. I used to go to the local variety store and buy 2 sleeves a week at $14 a tin. What a waste!!!

Fast forward a few years I meet an amazing girl and she accepts me for who i am, chew and all. Of course she wants me to quit but is not all that concerned about it. A year later my daughter is born and i am still chewing. Forgot to mention that my girlfriend also had two little boys from a previous marriage. What a role model i was to these children. So we buy a house and move in together. I was such a slave to the can that all i wanted to do was sit in the basement alone and watch sports on tv. It got so ridiculous that if I were to go anywhere people would be surprised i was out and about.

Dark Time For mlzy15

And than a really dark time in my life happened. My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live. Did that slow me down? Hell no, it just made things worse. That is when the battles with depression set in. I ended up going off work to help look after my dying mother. She was in one room lying on her death bed and i was in the next room chewing my face off. What an idiot i was and still am for that. My mother eventually passed away after fighting cancer for 5 years. I would see how sick she was after a round of chemo and that wasn’t enough to slow me down.

A couple of years after, my girlfriend finally had enough of me not wanting to do anything with the family and ended our relationship. She bought me out of our family home and we both went our separate ways. I tried to convince her that i could change and that chewing was the whole problem. She wasn’t buying it, i had promised many times to quit but failed.

I know your not supposed to quit for anyone but yourself but I did, but even though i quit for her I am still very happy for myself to. April 1, 2013 that was my quit date. That’s the date I found this site and the best advice I got from this was not to wait until your tin is empty to quit. I threw 2 and a half tins in the garbage that day and never looked back.

Looking back its kind of weird because I used to love my me time. Now that I am living alone, I absolutely hate it.

Anyways enough of the sob story that is my life, I would like to thank everybody who has helped me accomplish this goal. I especially want to thank Evilginger as he was the one person who I relied on the most.

NOTE: This piece written by KillTheCan.org forum member mlzy15