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We're glad you found QuitSmokeless.org^TM. You will discover that with a little help from your fellow quitters, life without the tin or pouch is very possible. Read as much as you can and become involved in the Quit Smokeless Community. You can get back to a normal life without tobacco. We are proving it here, every single day.

I'm Dave and like you I have battled with the Bear and about every other kind of smokeless tobacco that exists. It's now been almost 10 years since I've had any tobacco. I chewed for 8 years (I'm 34) and probably tried quitting for the last 5 of those years. I tried acupunture, the patch, gum, etc... To tell you the truth I don't know how the hell I quit! It wasn't any one thing, but the combination of motivation with circumstances made it happen.

"So how does this help me?", you may be saying. Basically, I started this page because 1) There isn't jack on the Web (or anywhere really) supporting those trying to quit this kind of tobacco addiction, and 2) I think about how much friggin' money and time I wasted on the crap and I wish someone who had been there would have told me what was up! I guess I wouldn't have listened anyway. How many times have you made bullsh-t excuses to leave your girlfriend just to slap in a wedge and sit around filling up a pop can with spit? No less than a hundred for me. But, that's just one of the problems I had. I don't think I'll get oral cancer, but they (the medical community) say it can show up even years after quitting. Fun.

Oh yeah, I haven't really stated my point. If you want to quit, eventually you will, provided you never quit trying to quit. That's a mouthful. I don't know the answer to what works best for quitting, but I think having people care about your well-being is a good start. I was fortunate that I had guy friends who wanted to see me quit as well as my girlfriend, now wife. Also, replacing that craving energy with physical activity really helped me through the withdrawal. I started running and weight lifting. Oh, and I ate sunflower seeds like a freak. I'll take a little more Sodium over cancer.

Why would we want to quit using smokeless tobacco? There are obvious reasons, and not so obvious ones. Let's review the obvious ones first:

• It can cause cancer.
• It has you under it's thumb. Why else would you drive to the gas n' sip at 3 a.m. for a tin?
• It costs too much money.
• Other people don't like it as much as you do.
(Some people don't think that thick chocolately spit is cool, like I do?)

Okay we all know that it's not healthy, and that's ultimately why most of us even think about quitting. But what about the other stuff that nags at us? I'm talking about the friends, family, wife, girlfriend, partner, whoever, who keep hassling you to quit. Do we care? I guess it's hard not to. After all, the quitting thought crosses your mind a lot anyway, so their concern isn't a surprise. Unfortunately, that concern can make you retreat to the tin or pouch to contemplate the whole situation over a big fatty in your cheek or lip.

Guilt sucks. From others AND yourself. Feeling guilty is one of the less obvious reasons to quit, but it certainly is one of the strongest. On the other hand, those guilty feelings become a good thing. They keep reminding you of what you're working toward. Basically, you're here because you want to quit, and that's good.

You will quit. Not necessarily today, tomorrow, or even this year. The fact that quitting is on your mind at all indicates you have some common sense. Guilt will hassle you every so often, you'll try to quit again, and you'll succeed or you'll fail. If you're successful, you're done. If you fail, you'll try again. Someday, you will quit.

The bottom line, as I said before, is keep quitting until it works. I've seen some Web sites from guys who are really into their Kodiak or Copenhagen, or whatever and they proudly display pyramids of tins that they've dipped. That's fine, I did the same thing. But now, it just seems odd to be all fired up about a product that costs you over $1000 a year AND is hell to quit. Anyway, I have rambled on enough for now. Thanks for reading this and I hope you keep up the effort.