Hall of Fame Speech Of sucker_catcher

Just Another Quitter

There is nothing very unique or special about me, but I suppose I can rattle off my nicotine credentials. I started smoking cigarettes prior to entering high school. I started with Salem Lights (just when I drink though, right?)….then Marlborough Lights, and on to Camel Lights and Marlborough Reds. I only toyed with snuff until college, where circumstances (a guy in my dorm could hook us up with free Skoal samples) and a botched attempt to quit smoking (chewing has got to be better than smoking, right?) got me settled into a steady chew habit. The only problem was the nasty spitting, which I eventually solved by learning to “gut” the spit. By the time I graduated college, I was smoking and chewing (when drunk, I did both at the same time).

Since nobody in my family smoked or used snuff (aside from a grandfather), I was under constant pressure to quit. And so started the lies: I’ll quit when I am (insert age here), I’ll quit when I finish graduate school, I’ll quit when I land a good job. I met my future wife while in college, and she made clear that she would never marry someone that smoked/chewed. Then she made clear there would be no children until I quit. And so on….as I said earlier, the story is familiar, and you can probably fill in the blanks from here. My repeated quit attempts are also familiar to the average nicotine addict. I threw out chew and packs of cigs…only to retrieve them later. I once threw a pack of cigs out my car window and went back a day later to get the run-over, broken ones. I used scotch tape to repair them, and then smoked up (smoking scotch tape…yummy). I had similar experiences with dip. I “tried” to quit after the first child was born, and again (though with less enthusiasm) after the second.

So here I am. After 20 years of daily ingesting nicotine of some sort, I reached 100 days of being nicotine free (my previous quit record was probably one week, and that always involved nic gum). How the hell did I get here? I’ve known chewing might kill me and have wanted to quit for ages. Despite this, I’ve broken promise after promise to my wife, family, and friends. What changed? My wife wanted me to up our life-insurance, and so I was doing an internet search trying to figure out how long it takes nicotine to get out of your system (if I only had to quit for a week or two, maybe I could do that) in case the insurance company tested. I stumbled onto QS.org and spent the next 3 hours reading every article and HOF speech I could find. My wife came home from work late that night and I told her that I quit (again). I got the well deserved “sure you are” look.

My take on why qs.org works well, and things I have learned
1. People on this site (and dippers generally) come from all walks of life. I am a college professor, and on the site I found an opera singer, lawyers, a dentist, doctors….. As I said early, my biggest “AH-HA” moment, and what sucked me into the site was the realization that we’re all pretty much the same. See Bluesman's article on the qs.org homepage.

2. Your quit brothers are the best source of support. Your non-dipping family/friends do not know what you are going through (unless they are addicts of some sort themselves). Also, they are not responsible for your addiction, and have probably been lied to enough to be jaded. That is what makes this site work. We are all former lying, cheating, dip-hiding, shameless bastards. We also know how difficult it is to quit, and we know that it is a BIG deal to make it past one week, three weeks, etc. We know all the mind-traps and mental gymnastics (“nobody will know if I have just one dip”) that await the quitter. I don’t know why, but pledging to quit for today, each day (doing roll call) to a bunch of internet avtars helped the quit tremendously. It goes without saying that I owe my quit and my life to those anonymous (many of whom are no longer just avtars, but friends) quitters in my quit group and beyond.

3. I think quitting cold turkey (e.g., no nic gum or other nic products) is the way to go. The nic-replacement simply draws out the pain of nicotine withdrawal. If you need the nic-gum to quit, that is still better than not quitting, but as a veteran of 1am trips to Walgreens for the 100 piece nic-gum kit, I found could turkey much better. A related point is that when you go cold turkey, you realize just how difficult quitting is, and many come to “embrace the suck,” or “enjoy the struggle.” Taking the “scorched earth” approach (do anything possible to stay quit) also helped, and there is plenty of practical advice on the site (e.g., drinking water, working out….). I think trying to make quitting painless contributes to the “I can quit anytime I want” BS and subsequently feeling like a spineless idiot when you cave. You are in for a battle: sack up, suck it up and bring everything you have to the fight.

4. Somewhere along the line, it dawned on me that nicotine alone never really made me feel “good.” The first cigarettes made me sick and the first dips made me want to puke. It starts to feel “good” because you ingested the crap consistently and your body got used to the chemical. It is like hitting your toes with a hammer, and then talking about how “good” ice feels on you toes. I mean, the reason why nic was so good after a big greasy supper is because that supper soaked up the nic in you bloodstream and your body is craving more. That is pretty fucking demented.

5. I always felt like a major league jackass because when I looked into the future, because I couldn’t imagine my self as a non-dipper. In part, I defined myself based on dipping (a bit more reckless and on the edge than any of my co-workers). Rationally, I know this is complete bullshit, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was thinking about those issues. On this site, I realized again that I am not unique—almost everyone has the same problem, and it causes folks to get depressed about “life without dip.” The thing that helped me most in this regard was to quit for today and worry about tomorrow when it comes. Hell, quit for this hour or minute and worry about the next hour or minute later. Eventually, you will start to thing about yourself as a non-dipper and turn your back completely on dipping.

There is no magic bullet for quitting, and nothing makes the process of quitting painless. Take what helps from this site and use it, (most of this speech comes straight from others’ posts and speeches) and leave behind the rest. If you made it to this site and are reading the HOF speeches and articles, you have enough drive to quit. Recognize that you are just like the rest of us—you are just another dipper. Sack up, suck it up, bare your teeth and fight the addiction with everything you’ve got. Join a quit group and post roll every day until you become just another quitter.

Sucker Catcher -- Day 127 -- Jan 10, 2007