I quite smoking 166 days ago!

It aint easy but its doable!

Just curious...
 

Lan, what kind of mental issues did you attribute to chewing? If this is too probing or personal to ask i understand and ill delete this post or if you prefer i can PM you if that is more appropriate.

Copenhagen wintergreen has been my poison of choice for 5 years now and its time to be done. I have found on occasion that i become slightly irritable if i dont have a dip in while i work. Is this along the lines of what you mentioned as mental issues? Im a college kid/ forklift jockey up in northern MN and having a dip in whilst i study or am working helps pass the time. I have tried the smokey mountain alternative stuff but, like bandycpa said, the real thing is better.

My resolution this year is to kick the habit and when you resurrected this thread today, i got a feeling of serendipity. Thanks for that ;)

I have gone cold turkey for 4 days now, you were spot on with the 36 hour time table for the physical addiction to disipate.
Good luck with your quitting endeavors too. :lifter

Smoking's in a different class, with the monoxide and tar. I quit smoking because it affected my running.

I've heard that since I started dipping, and that was when Cope was 17 cents a can.

Everthing is "pre-cancerous". If those white spots were cancer, why don't you still have it? Did it go away when you quit? Nah.

I don't put smoking and dipping in the same boat.

I have had severe anxiety, panic attacks and depression since about 2005. I attribute them more to my personal life choices than anything else. I've done everything I could to fight this disease from working out, to becoming a full blown drug addict. The happiest time in my adult life was when I was smoking 1/8 of weed a day, drinking redbull all day, chewing a can of grizzly wintergreen a day, and taking 150mg of Zoloft a day. I did that for a year after the doctor stopped prescribing Ativan to me for the panic attacks because it's addictive (though it's effective).

I had the ultimate 'DON'T GIVE A FUCK' attitude and it worked for me. Life was all about me and no one else and I didn't mind until my wife threatened to divorce me and take our daughter away. I was a big piece of shit. We also had twins on the way. 3 kids in less than 2 years if you can believe it.

The hardest thing I ever had to do was quit the Zoloft believe it or not. One day, after seeing a psychiatrist I decided to quit everything. I stopped smoking weed cold turkey, no more redbull, no more Zoloft and I went through serious withdrawals for about a month. The only thing I couldn't stop doing was the chew. It's been a staple of mine since I was 16-18 (I'm 31 now). So here I am, still suffering with anxiety, one thing left to kick before I can rule out any physical ailment attributing to my anxiety and trying to do it.

Life's a bitch, and easy things are rarely worth doing. Sorry if I went too OT, but that's me in a nutshell. Good luck to you too theis223 and SF18C.

No Bushmaster for you!. :D

I don't miss dipping one bit.

I really don't. It was hard to quit, and I'll chew a piece of nicotine gum once in a while, but I truly have no desire to start again.

If anyone wants to quit, I'll introduce you to the oral surgeon who did my mouth biopsies.

Well, Hell, man, quit running and start smoking again!

I have buddies who rotted out their lower gums in front, so they started packing their upper lip instead.

I figure, just fill an empty can with worm dirt, and put a little of that in your mouth every time you want to take a dip. That should either break the habit, or make a real man out of you.

My Dad used to put his used chewing tobacco back in the pouch. I asked him if he planned to use it again, he said nope, but it sure cuts back on people hitting you up for a chew.

Hey, Dustmeister, if you can't actually see the cancer, is it really there?

TR

I got the white patch on the inside of my lip once. Stopped for a few days and it went away. I don't buy the "precancerous" stuff either.

For the record, I decided to stop 4 months ago while I train. I did notice a pretty quick improvement in my stamina, but nothing drastic. Regardless, looking forward to my next pinch down the road. :D

Gracias Lan
 

Thanks Lan for the response. The lifestyle you described parallels that of most of my peers in college today. Sounds like you were burning the candle at both ends for a time.

Reaper, what you described oddly enough, is what my grandpa used on all of his kids. (Dirt in the lip) Unfortunatly he passed before he could do the same to me. However i do have to commend my dad and uncles (grandpas's kids) for getting all of the younger generations to never smoke. They did that by taking all of us kids when we were about 3-4 years old and lit a cigarett for us and told us to take the biggest puff we could.... after many tears and a few trips to the toilet to puke, not one of Grandpa Bob's grand kids are smokers today.

Just for laughs, what are some other novel ways that could be used to teach youngins about avoiding nicotine?

:munchin

I have no idea. I may have had 9 types of cancer in 6 decades that came and went. I got chunks cut and/or frozen out of my mug a couple times, but it was evidently not too serious.

I quit one time for over a year, and couldn't focus. I have no idea how anybody could read a map without a dip in his jaw. (Back when I was on a Team, they still used maps to navigate.)

My Dad died of colon cancer about a year after the Doc told him to quit smoking his pipe because he didn't like the way his palate looked. My Dad's sister just died, and she had colon cancer, but the COPD got her first. Apparently the Doc didn't notice the cancer. My cousin Cynthia and her husband Johnny just had a mess of cancer cut out of their bodies. My brother died of carcinogenic melanoma when he was 54.

Cancer's everywhere; you may have it, right now, TR. I don't see any reason to sweat it.

I know one that didn't work for me. My Dad gave me a plug of Bull Durham when I was eight, and I swallowed the juice. May have been the sickest I've ever been.

To anybody who's quitting; why did you start in the first place? Were you aware of the dangers going in, and if you were, what made you go ahead and get yourself addicted?

If quitting helps you train better, then I don't blame you. Smoking, to me, is pretty stupid if you rely on your wind and want to stay off an oxygen tank when you're 70.

I don't want to discourage anybody who has determined to quit from doing so; IMO it's just another thing to fret about, like cholesterol, saturated fats, processed foods, white sugar, starving Ethiopians, walking under a ladder, black cats, et al.

I grew up surrounded by mean horses, water mocassins, rattlers, mesquite thorns, poison ivy, scorpions, yellowjackets, copperheads, red ants, asps-just about everthing in Mesquite, Texas at that time could stick, bite, kick or poison you. What's a little dip? :D

If dipping scares you, by all means, quit. That's not a taunt, either.