I’ve been thinking about this for a while, trying to figure out what to say. Who to say it for.
The truth is, all our stories are different, but I’ve read enough to realize now that they’re all the same. We were all addicts, were all liars, were all disgusting. Weak, betrayed our families, wasted thousands of dollars, pissed away opportunities in life…just to dip. Got scared, got threatened, got embarrassed, got found out. Started, stopped, started.
The specifics might differ slightly, but what can I say that everyone else hasn’t lived themselves?
I’ve learned MANY things here…all the greatest hits that changed everyone else’s life as well…
- Accountability x Brotherhood = Quit
- One problem + dip = two problems
- Dip doesn’t force itself into your lip, its your choice to use
- The effort you put into dipping is way greater than you let yourself believe before you quit
- And so many others.
But there is something else I think I’ve learned, that I don’t know if people talk about as much.
Stopping dipping is easy. There, I said it. For all the agonizing for years (decades) about not being ready or able to give it up…it’s easy. A few days of physical discomfort. Maybe a couple or few weeks of mental fog, cravings or sleep issues. That’s basically it. Once you’ve done it, after fearing it so long, it’s almost embarrassing how easy it was.
It’s not carrying a child to term and giving birth through your vagina to an 8lb baby. It’s not learning to walk with two prosthetics after an IUD blows your legs off. It’s not caring for a special needs sibling all your life who will never be able to dress or wash themselves. It’s not burying your child.
And that, my brothers, is kind of the problem. It’s not fucking hard enough for most people to take their quit seriously.
It’s free to stop. It doesn’t take that long to get over withdrawal. We probably don’t tell anyone we’re stopping, because we didn’t tell anyone we were dipping - so there’s no embarrassment in stopping, or skin in the game.
That’s why most of us have stopped multiple times, and started again. I never stopped longer than it took to beat withdrawals, have my gums freshen up a little, and I was right back at it…because I knew I “could always stop”. I wasn’t even stopping really, just proving to myself that i COULD stop. I spent 20 years being able to “stop when I want.”
That’s why most of us resist putting the requisite time and engagement here when we first start QD. It doesn’t seem necessary, after all…we’re five days, ten days, 20 days into it and doing great! This is EASY!
And that’s the devil of nicotine. This thing that will eventually kill us, that has taken so much from us…just isn’t that hard to walk away from. Which makes us keep walking back to it. Or saying we will walk away next week. No big deal.
That’s the difference between quit and stopping. Especially, the QD way of quit.
Stopping is easy. Quit is hard. QD is hard.
When you quit here, you ARE making an investment, a commitment. You are putting VALUE on your quit. You’re making a personal pledge, you’re committing time, you are making bonds, and you are being brutally honest (eventually) with yourself and others. You are putting your honor as a man on your quit.
And yes, you are getting kicked in the fucking teeth a whole lot by other members. Sometimes with love, sometimes less so, but it’s fucking hard to hear some of that.
It is hard to know the brotherhood will look the other way and never think of you again the second you backslide.
QD is very simple…but it is not easy. After learning how to think about dip…after learning how to talk about nicotine…rewiring your thought process…after being humiliated by other members…after making connections with other members that you simply don’t want to let down…after helping others quit…the idea of starting again is just never going to be on the radar.
Quitting nicotine will literally save your life. Save you untold amounts of money. Drastically improve your relationships, and potentially your career even. It’s literally one of a small handful of the most important decisions you will make in your life. And QD has the formula that gives that decision, that action, the gravitas and weight and investment it actually warrants. It’s simple. But it’s not easy, which is why there are so few who start here, and so few still who make it. But its why those that do make it will never, can never go back.
QD isn’t something that works “even though it’s hard.” It works better than any other approach ever, BECAUSE it’s sometimes hard. Those that make it through it are those that I believe understand that on some level.
Obviously, 100 days is nothing. I have to keep building this little shack of quit into a house, a mansion, then a city of quit, one that will forever be impossible to walk away from. Thank you to everyone who has supported me, and criticized me, and reached out privately to me so far on this journey. Like all of you were, I am a much different and better person after 100 days of quit.
