Cave Indicators – What To Look For

A great discussion about planned caves, what to look for and how to stop them.

Question

What are the 5 indicators that a quitter is beginning to plan their own cave… we all know that this planning stage does happen, and vets sure as hell can see it coming if they pay attention.

Answers

Smokeyg Says

Ooohhh, this could be a lively discussion. I’ll throw in my two cents, but we need a dollar.

I don’t believe in a planned cave. I have strung together 100+ days in the past and I have caved on an absolute whim. So, I will tell you how I came to buy a 25 cent special Grizzly Long Cut Straight from a 7-11 clerk after he couldn’t give me directions to a swimming pool located less than two blocks from his store….

1) I distanced myself from my support network. My nicotine cessation group had a one month “hoorah for us” Chinese dinner celebration. It was great. We all exchanged contact information and I intentionally gave the wrong phone number because I was ready to do this thing on my own. I was one of only two people who hadn’t caved during the first 30 days in class.

2) I did not have a forum to vent my frustrations. I often found myself blaming my wife (then girlfriend) for things that stemmed from my own behavior. I had no fuse with my students. My rage was pent up and growing.

3) I grew extremely complacent with my quit. I had a little 30 day calendar and 30 stickers that I could place for every day I remained quit. I hung that on my fridge with the same pride JpCrew pinned up his 2.3 miracle semester Junior year in HS. After that, I stopped keeping track with stickers. After two months, I lost track in my head and soon after I just stopped thinking about my quit altogether. Why think about it if you are quit, right? I owned that shit.

4) When my wife asked me how my quit was going, I would start to feel a bit irritated. What does it have to do with her? I came to resent her probing into my personal struggle and eventually convinced myself that she was why I had quit. I forgot the personal moment when I declared, “I choose to control my future” as I tossed my last tin the garbage in front of my quit group. My addiction took over and changed that to “My wife chooses to control my future”.

5) The big shabang. Intense moment of stress piled on top of a craving right in front of a 25 cent special rack and I had no support, tons of pent up frustrations, no pride in my own quit, and a girlfriend constantly telling me what to do. One won’t hurt?

CAVING IS NOT AN OPTION! You can never have just one.

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PbKid Says

Told this story before but I think it’s worth repeating…I quit once for 27 days. This was maybe 13 years ago. My close friends were blown away that I had quit and admitted to me that they had been wrong. I am the chupracabra. The Kid. I rule.

Monday. Had to teach a class in San Diego. I’m not a big fan of public speaking – kinda stresses me out. As I drove down from Ventura I ran out of the fake mint snuff. No big deal, when I got to San Diego I just went to a 7-11 to get some more. They were out. So was the next one. I didn’t know the area. Random convenience stores didn’t carry it. The clock was ticking. One more 7-11. No mint snuff? I’ll take the Copenhagen.

It wasn’t that I planned to cave. It’s that I failed to plan, then caved.

For those that do plan to cave, it’s my belief that the #1 reason is that they forgot why they quit. My reasons are written down in back and white right by the coffee maker.

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cdforecheck Says

i started when i was 14 and ‘tried’ a quit once about 3 years ago and faked a quit two years ago to please the wife. in the failed quit, i tried using nrp and it was useless, simply used the gum more than i did tobacco because my wife let me use the gum in front of her, i think at that time i used more nic in a day than ever before in my addiction. after about 3 weeks i quit spending the money on the gum and went back to the dip, i actually justified it by saying at least i’m not sending anymore money to big pharm. the second was my stealth quit, i figured if i ninjaed(yep, new word in my personal unabridged dictionary volume 3) better the wife would think i was quit and would leave me alone. i guess the details of how that went are just filled with screaming, accusations, and the idea that somehow my wife just didn’t get me. then came the summer of 2009. my boys and i drove to florida and the wife flew down to meet us(not on her broom). wpw, i was in dipping heaven….BUT that’s a big but, i found myself dipping more and more. i was cold busted cans everywhere, spitters everywhere, when the wife got there, she was one pissed spouse but didn’t say anything. well, vacation ended, she flew home, i drove the boys. sitting in the car sucking on a fatty my 10 year old say to me “dad, you are really being a bad influence on me.” hell i’ve heard that about a million times but some how it stuck. we got home i bought what became my last roll. on july 17, i cracked the third can of the day, had started the day with an open can, do the math; fourth can of the day, at around 11:00 pm, looked in the bathroom mirror and said to myself, “Self, this is bullshit.” dumped the can, flushed it, and went to bed. the next day i found this site, actually had to email chewie to sign up, computer problem, and haven’t looked back. i will no longer be a liar to my wife and kids. i will be the role model my kids deserve. i will be my quit and will never look back.

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Skoal Monster Says

Somebody once told me that it’s not enough to not go looking for trouble, you have to actively avoid it. I planned a lot of caves. Before I found KTC I had a fairly serious quit a few years ago. I used NRT’s (improperly) and didn’t chew or Smoke for 6 months. All well and good but I caved out at the duck club during hunting season. I then rationalized my cave with I can control my use. I just would smoke one cig a night after work. That worked for about a week. Then it was two then 20, then I was smoking like a crack head so I decided I better start dipping again because all those cigs couldn’t be good. So I quit again to gain control, I would only chew on a rigid schedule and cut down slowly. Good plan? nope. I started by not dipping for an hour after I woke up, then two then three etc etc. After awhile I would go all day and then start dipping at 6 or so. I would then proceed to chew a can in 6 or 7 hours, staying up late to keep dipping. Hmmmn this planned out cessation program wasn’t working so I changed it again. The new plan was to go a day then two then three etc and after each successful abstinence program I would reward myself with a big fat wedge. That worked for a little while too, I got up to a week before I would gobble down a can or two and then start over. Can you imagine? I made myself go thru the three day withdrawal over and over again. Needless to say I was a dick during this period. I pissed off everybody, or they pissed off me. I rationalized this as I must have chewed to help me not want to kill people. Thing was it was the dip that made me so hostile, or the withdrawals rather. I am still amazed I didn’t get a divorce due to my chronic assholism.

Every quit had some rule where I could chew or smoke if I quit for such and such a time period. The cave was my reward for quitting. Duh no wonder I could never get it under control. That pattern was so ingrained in my pea brain that I actually considered having a dip to celebrate my HOF. I earned it right? FUCK ME RUNNING I am a naughty little addict. I still plan my caves, but the difference is I recognize what I’m doing.

5 Steps to a planned cave, I dunno, prob different for everybody.

On this site I should say it starts with an excuse to not post, My internet, grandma, car, house, bike, girdle, vagina, air conditioning broke so I won’t be around for a few days. Second is a lack of vigilance due to leaving the site. Very easy to forget your addiction when your not forced to confront it everyday thru KTC. 3rd you become over confident in your self control. You don’t post and you hardly ever think about dip so you must be a beacon of self control right? WRONG.

At this point your primed for a cave, planned or not. I guess step five is to stuff that cancer causing dirt flavored puke inducing worm shit into your yap.

SM

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theo3wood Says

Damn! I thought MY logic was toxic back when I was a dipper. Skoalmonster puts me to shame. I mean Da—yuuuum.

I think most caves spring from one of two different fallacies:

THE RECOVERY FALACY: The notion that once we’ve stopped nic usage for some period of time, that we’re somehow “cured” of our addiction. Hell, President Obama his own self said just a couple months ago, regarding his cigarette addiction, “I’m about 95% cured at this point.” Right. If you think you can handle occasional nic use, you’re done. Put a fork in ya.

The successful lifetime quitter is the one who KNOWS, deep down in his bones, that he’s an incurable nicotine addict. He looks in the mirror every morning and sees a junkie. A healthy junkie, but a junkie just the same.

THE STRESS FALACY: The notion that we’ll be able to cope with some bad turn of events more easily if we are using tobacco.

Of course, the only thing that nicotine does for us mentally is reduce the nicotine withdrawals that come from not using nicotine. You want to see a situation go from bad to worse? Throw all the guilt and shame of a ruined quit right on top of your real-life problems and see how that feels. Better? Well…ummm…no. Worse.

Bottom line…what’s the best ‘leading indicator’ for a cave? It’s when you start believing the lies the nic bitch tells you. You know how to tell when she’s lying? When her lips are moving.