May 3, 2008 21:45:46 (206 days ago)
I’d be posting more and generally taking part here a bit more if I wasn’t a fucking psycho in withdrawal ... I quit smoking 4 years ago, but replaced the habit with ’snuff’ dipping. Makes most people say ’eeeeewww,’ but it was a hell of a lot cheaper than nicotine gum and served the same exact purpose. (My boss has been heavily addicted to nicotine gum for at least 7 years, by the way, so the risk is the same either way.) Now I’ve quit the snuff ... two weeks tonight since my last dip. I am well past the physical addiction part, but the psychological side is driving me up the goddamned wall. I want it. A piece of my life, my soul, is missing. And it’s hard to convince myself, like I could with smoking, that I’ve done such a wonderful thing by quitting. Unlike smoking it doesn’t really have any detrimental health effects except a fairly miniscule chance of mouth cancer. From what I learned researching this several years ago, long-term smokers get lung cancer at least 1:20, and long-term snuff dippers may have a mouth cancer incidence rate of 1:10000. Sure, it happens, but I live in the state with the highest per capita snuff use, I’m 40 yrs old, and I’ve still never met anyone who’s definitely gotten mouth cancer from snuff. I know more than a handful of old farts just in my own family who died of lung cancer, though.
So, why quit? Health insurance and life insurance rates are MUCH cheaper if you use no nicotine products whatsoever. And there’s the additional cost of the actual stuff, although a snuff habit is for most much cheaper than cigarettes. I will use the savings to fund guitar lessons.
I have no idea why the pschological addiction is so strong with the snuff ... I smoked for 17 years and didn’t experience anything like this when I quit, but then again I had a fallback habit. THg psychological addiction/withdrawal of quitting pot some years ago was also harsh and long-lived, but this is worse.
Fuck.