I Wasn’t Hurting Anyone But Myself

July 8, 2025

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Testimonial - I Wasn't Hurting Anyone But Myself

KillTheCan.org follower Jimmy reached out with this testimonial:

So here it goes,

I’m not sure where I should have shared this or how I was supposed to but I figured this would be it out and hopefully it would find its way to who needs to hear it. I chewed for the past 11 years sometimes a can and sometimes two just depended on what was going on in my life.

After the first year I knew it wasn’t something I should be doing but I really just enjoyed it, and I figured it wasn’t hurting anyone but myself so who cares. All of that changed when I met my wife, she didn’t like that I chewed but she also didn’t make a big deal out of it, so I told myself when we get married I’m going to quit.

Well that day came and went without me quitting, so fast forward a year and we find out we are expecting our first child and I tell myself that I’m going to quit before the baby is born, well you guessed it that didn’t happen either. Jump forward 5 years and two more kids and I still hadn’t quit, and I realized that it wasn’t something I could do on my own I just enjoyed it to much.

Realizing this I decided that I would start praying about it in my morning prayers on my drive to work, I would ask the lord for the power and desire to quit, and let me tell you the Lord works in mysterious ways. After a few days of this being in my prayers I notice a sore spot on the back of my tongue, so I look in the mirror and I see something that at the time I could only describe as cancer, and it shakes me bad. I’m almost in tears in shaking all I can think about it is how dumb I am and how I’m not going to be there to walk my daughters down the isle, I throw all the chew I have in a dumpster and I drive home all worked up give my wife and kids big hugs and don’t tell them a thing because I was too embarrassed and didn’t want to scare anyone.

Well this feeling goes on for a few days and I’m really worked up until I find the exact picture of what is going on and it turns out that it was completely normal just something I had never noticed before in my mouth. That really lessened the fear I was having and I figured I had already quit for a few days why go back to it, my wife didn’t like it and it wasn’t healthy. I then noticed a sore throat so I instantly knew I had throat cancer and when the sore throat cleared up I found a weird bump in my mouth which had to be oral cancer and so on and so on, I became exhausted from all the fears of cancer that I couldn’t even fathom putting a dip in.

Every time I would get concerned about a new symptom I would check the kill the can website to make sure I wasn’t alone in the symptoms. I even went to the doctor to get a check up and had him look around to see if he saw anything and he said I looked fine didn’t even see any pre cancerous stuff and I would be fine just stay away from the dip. After a while I realized that God had been using these fears of cancer to keep me from even wanting to put a dip in, sure sometimes I will crave one but the thought of me not being there for my daughters scares me enough to keep me dip free. I wish that I could take the credit for the will power to stop, but I can’t I have to give all the credit to God. Jesus looked at them and said “ with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” Matthew 19:26

So if your going through a hard time say a prayer ask the lord for help, check out this website (KillTheCan.org) and know your not the only one going through it. Thanks for reading.