Time is a funny thing. We have all experienced how fast time goes by when having fun and, obviously the same is true of the opposite. Just so you know, time distortion when you stop dipping snuff happens to almost all quitters. When you first stop dipping snuff time distortion gets taken to a whole different level. For example, a true physical crave typically only lasts for three minutes. Tell that to someone in the throws of an actual crave and you might get your ears boxed. Those minutes can seem like hours. This is the harshest moments while going through nicotine withdrawal. It amazes me that there are people out there who do not have the ability to be honest about how addicted they are to snuff.
I remember the first days when I quit, and yes I had some major time distortion as well. The first few days were not that bad, but after about ten days things started getting very hard. I remember just hanging on and being damn determined not to put nicotine back in my bloodstream. Of course things get much easier eventually and your time distortion goes away, mostly.
Time distortion for the not so new tobacco quitter
The Hall of Fame is when you hit 100 days tobacco free. When you are at day one, day 100 seems almost impossibly far off. However, when you hit 100 days you may be thinking to yourself that you cant possibly have made it 100 days. You feel great, but you still think about using snuff often. It’s weird. I personally think that this is one of the tactics nicotine uses to get back in your system. You start hearing little whispers that the withdrawal wasn’t that bad. You get amnesia regarding those moments where time stood still and one of the only things keeping you from buying a can is that you gave your promise that day on roll call to another fellow quitter. Forgetting how bad those first few weeks or months were has been the cause of a cave for many quitters.
And then, time just goes into hyperdrive with regards to your tobacco free life. The next 100 days to 200 days fly by. You have almost no craves at all by this point and if you do have a crave it lasts for seconds only. This is the timeframe when lots of quitters fall away from the community and stop posting their daily promise. Not surprisingly this is also a time for many quitters to cave and start dipping again.
Time distortion when you stop dipping snuff gets faster and faster from there. I’m over 800 days since I quit dipping snuff now and the 100 day marks just seem to tick on by quickly. I’m thankful I have fellow ex dippers to post with on roll call each day. We don’t come here every day because we are craving tobacco, but we do still come to post a daily promise. We do a brief 5 minute check in each day to make sure each other is doing all right.
The nic bitch is always hiding, waiting for the right opportunity to come out and “make things better”. People have bad days, lose jobs, lose loved ones and all the myriad of other BS that goes on in day to day life. So while on the subject of time, for me, taking 5 minutes every day to check in with my boys is a small price to pay to keep me on the right track. Its way cool to see the days stack up with everyone’s day count. Seeing people hit 1 day, 1 week, 10 days, 50 days, 1 months, 100 days hall of fame and then see years pile up is just cool. It is neat to see that number next to each other’s names because all of these people have figured out how to kick big tobacco to the curb.
5 minutes a day is all it costs for long term success
I also have to laugh when a new person says they don’t have 5 minutes a day to check in. Really? How many times did you drive to the store in the middle of the night because you ran out of your dip. How many hours a day did you spend cramming snuff in your mouth until it became raw on the inside and your jaw ached. If you cant spend 5 minutes checking in each day with people who want to support you and want you to succeed then I put your future success rate pretty low on the scale. Maybe I am wrong, it would not be the first time.
For 800 days I check in with the same people. We have fun, we like helping new people who want to stop dipping and we like watching all that time pile up on roll call. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, if I was having a tough time today that I could call anyone of these people up and they would help me out. I, in turn would do the same thing in a heartbeat.
Time is a funny thing when you stop dipping snuff for good. It drags in the beginning and flies by after the first few weeks. For me, taking a little time in the morning to post my daily promise has worked for over 800 days, and I’m not stopping. I finally woke up and realize just how powerful nicotine addiction is and I’m not feeding that addiction anymore. Almost 20 years of dipping and 800 days tobacco free.
Great article! Who wrote it? And when? And let me back whomever this is by saying, yes, you can end up back on nicotine after decades being clean. THAT’S ME!
I don’t know if this is everyone or just me, but quitting in my 20’s was, like, about 100X easier. Quitting in my 50s (and nearing my 60’s) is like pulling teeth by comparison.