It ended today and not in a good way

I quit quitting.

Yesterday I surrendered in my bid to kick the can. Tuesday night I bought a can of Copenhagen, and Wednesday morning I opened it and dipped into it.

Today was scheduled to be my last day on the gum, but in recent days I had fallen off the wagon. Saturday I had done so well. I think I had only 3 pieces of nicotine gum all day, with 6 hours in between pieces. I had planned to try to go 8 hours on Sunday. But Sunday my head was somewhere else and my will to continue was all but gone. I picked up a pack of cigarettes and worked my way through half a pack that day. The pack was gone by Monday and I got another pack.

I'm not sure how to explain why this happened. I'm not sure I even know. But I did make a conscious decision to give up on this bid to quit tobacco. I suppose I could try to justify my decision, explain my reasons, but the only thing I can really say is that when it was getting down to the wire I just couldn't visualize myself without some sort of nicotine crutch. At least not now. Not this week. Not today. My head just wasn't in the right place. My confidence in this, and so many other things, was/is gone.

I'm not proud of it. But I take responsibility for it.

This doesn't mean I'm giving up on wanting to quit. This effort when much smoother, overall, than my last major quitting attempt. And I had done much better at weaning myself off the gum this time. Last time I was smacking nicotine gum for about 6 months and never really followed a program or reduced my usage. So at least this time I got my overall nicotine use down.

I will try again. And I won't wait so long to make the attempt next time. Maybe a month or two. But one thing I realized in all of this is I definitely need something else to focus some of my mental energy on to have a better chance at success. I need something to fill that hole.

Now if I only had a clue what that might be.

Quitting nicotine
Chewing tobacco