One Day – For a Lifetime

100 days…that’s a long amount of time to be quit. For me, the last time could say I hadn’t had any form of nicotine for 100 days was either the end of my 11th year or the beginning of my 12th and either age is not factoring second-hand smoke.

Between then and now, I stopped many times. Sometimes for a couple months, sometimes a couple weeks, sometimes a couple days. The more times I ‘quit’ and failed, the easier it was to give up on a quit attempt. I felt like I could quit at any time, and I kept wanting that nic bitch. The insurmountable hurdle in every single one of those quits was the idea that I could never have a dip again; it didn’t seem fair to be parted from something I loved, so I’d have “just one” or consciously give up the attempt.

Adopting the One-Day-At-A-Time mindset here helped me get through the suck of those first few weeks. But when that fog finally cleared, all the bullshit psychology that had kept me returning to the nic bitch on past attempts simply melted away. Sure, I still have cravings, but I hate nicotine and UST far more than I ever loved having a dip.

My quit wasn’t all about transferring a love of chew to a hatred of the addiction, though. I found myself again. Now, I’m sure everyone else here has only the one flaw of being addicted to nicotine. I have a few more. Being out of the fog made me realize how much of my life I had gone through on cruise control.

Think about it: when any part of your attention is on that wad of shit in your life, that part of your mind is missing out on something better. Maybe you missed the new wrinkle forming around your wife’s eye when she gives you that quirky smile. Maybe you missed that your child wouldn’t snuggle up close when you were reading because your breath wreaked. Maybe you chose to stay home and do work or a project instead of spending time with your family or friends. Maybe you missed out on sampling the tasty hors d’oeuvre at the dinner party. Maybe you didn’t truly enjoy appreciate that great IPA or scotch. Maybe you missed the proper taste and smell of…well, every fucking thing.

100 days is a long time. I know the rhetoric of “it’s just the beginning” and the rest—and I believe it—but I am honestly not worried about the future, not after what I learned over the last 3+ months. I learned a lot about myself and life.

Much of what made my quit work through the toughest weeks was learned in the first couple days on this site though. Learning about all those common side effects helped me to prepare for what was to come. Learning about addiction in general helped quite a bit. Unlike many, I always knew I was an addict. I just didn’t truly understand what that meant, not in relation to nicotine. Chew, specifically, is a terrifying beast to battle when you consider all the additives on top of the enormous amounts of nicotine compared to cigarettes. But it can be done.

Gather the information you need.
Make your promise to quit EVERY DAMN DAY.
Connect with the other quitters.
They are here to support you.
They need your support.
Analyze your life.
Make positive changes.
You can do it…if you want to.

I’m going to finish by saying that days 98-101 were some of the most difficult in my personal life. I experienced some extreme pain the first couple days and found out I had pancreatitis on my HoF day. Seems we can’t always run away from decades of bad choices (but the sooner we run, the farther away we get). To top it off, three of those four days involved me waking up from various forms of dip dreams. I had only had one such dream before on this quit.
The only reason I mention these past days is that not one time did I ever entertain the thought of buying a can.

It’s the last fucking thing I’d do.

NOTE: This piece written by KillTheCan.org forum member Team Quitter