Tom's Diary

Yep, I used to chew snuff, as well as the so-called “side chew” tobacco.  Here are just some of the tid bits I remember regarding that horribly expensive and disgusting habit.

• 1974-04: I started chewing, and kept at it though it sickened me every time I tried it for the first couple weeks.  The first brand I rubbed was Copenhagen.  But that burned my lower lip so much that it became raw quite often.  So eventually, I switched over to Happy Days Mint, Happy Days Raspberry, and then, to Skoal brands. 
• 1974-05: Those of us who did it used to hang out in dorm room 307 at WPSBC, spitting out the windows onto the roof.  When it got too cold to have the windows open, we’d use Pringles Potato Crisps cans as spittoons.  They fit nicely underneath the beds of the day, making them, and our habit, easy to conceal from the house parents; or, so we thought.
• 1974-05: I got caught chewing on the Altoona bus one Friday afternoon.  In those days, the buses had ash compartments, located in the arm rests of each seat. By this time, just over a month after my first chew, I was highly addicted to the brown and moist granules, each about the size of a carpenter ant.  Maybe there were some ants in the snuff cans.  But I was too inexperienced to recognize them if they were there, and too young to care.
• 1974-05: We bought the snuff at various places near WPSBC.  But the usual store we visited was an establishment called  the Briar Bowl, located in lower Oakland, on the south west corner of Oakland and Forbes avenues, right across the street from the Gus Miller news stand. 
• 1974-06 –1974-08: I don’t remember chewing much during this summer.  I don’t know where I would have gotten the money to buy the stuff.  Back then, it cost around $0.27 cents a can.  However, the boys that hung out across the street at the North Side School playground in Bellwood, chewed it as well.  So for this whole summer, they didn’t mind me bumming chews off of them.  I think they were happy to see me hooked, right along side them.
• 1974-09: When my eighth grade year began, I graduated from Pringles cans as spittoons to Pepsi bottle.  The 64-Oz. Boss bottles made of glass, a predecessor to the 2-liter plastic bottles found today, was nice and big, and took at least a few weeks to fill up.  But the drawbacks were that it stunk as far away as the moon when finally emptied.  Plus, as a glass bottle, one had to be careful not to sit it down too hard, as it could, and in fact, did break, especially on the concrete floors found in the WPSBC main building basement as well as in the instruction building.
• 1975-06: My parents learned of my vice.  Mom grumbled over it relentlessly, and Dad took me to the basement sometime in this summer for a man-to-man, heart-to-heart.  He explained how gross it appeared, and smelled, to others, who observed someone chewing.  I didn’t listen though.  I kept it up, for it was cool, and it provided a sort of rite of passage, into the social circles at home and at WPSBC, to which I so wanted to belong.  Perhaps Mom and Dad got this, and perhaps this is why they never, ever grounded me for doing it, and never insisted that I stop.  Occasionally, Mom even sprung for a few cans for me, and so did Dad.  She hated the habit, but liked seeing me gratified more strongly. Dad was a heavy smoker.  So I believe he kept quiet about it so as to avoid falling into the old, do-as-I-say-but-not-as-I-do quagmire.  Plus, being a veteran tobacco user himself, he must have appreciated how strongly the cravings for it, as experienced by someone addicted to it, can be.  So he never said much to me about it after this.
• 1975-08: Throughout this entire summer, a bunch of us chewers hung out across the street at the school playground, including   the now-deceased David Middleton and others.  If not for Dave, I likely would have rubbed far less.  He was quite generous with his stash and back then, I thought of him as a sort of hero because he always provided me my tobacco fixes any time when he was nearby.
• 1975-10: I returned to school late this year, because I had hurt my leg a couple month ago.  But when I finally set foot there to properly start my ninth grade year, I found that several other guys besides [Mentat] and [Tad] had picked up the habit.  So, I now had more in common with more people.  Yep, in these early years, I firmly believe that my interest in tobacco was largely motivated by peer pressure.  Now no one ever made me do it outright.  But they did think me “cooler” after I began rubbing snuff than before.  At this time, fitting in was my number one objective, and I wasn’t nearly as critical then as I am today, over what I had to do to fit in. 
• 1975-11: I discovered side chew; a more coarse-cut, and sweetly flavored tobacco.  They called it    side chew   because guys generally put it between their cheek and gum near the back of the mouth, and so, could “munch” on it with their k9, incisor, and molar teeth.  You literally chewed it, in the side of your mouth.  Favorite brands were Beech Nut, Conwood, Apple Jack, and Union Workman. 
• 1975-11: [First Love] seemed impressed that I had become a snuff-chewer.  She’d been known to play with recreational drugs, and though, by this time therefore, tobacco use she’d probably have considered tame, my habit apparently went far to convince her that I was not so much an innocent little boy anymore.  Tobacco won me a few brownie points with her, to be sure, and in light of this I never cared, until well into the 80s, if a pretty girl saw me spitting the brown and snotty  juice into a transparent bottle.
• 1975-12: Eventually, the houseparents realized what I was doing. Like my biological parents, the house father said nothing, and the house mother complained incessantly about it.  But they did nothing more to force me into abstinence.  They tolerated my addiction.  But whether they did so out of compassion, or because they knew they couldn’t stop me even if they tried, I’ll never know.  They hated the habit, and today, I feel perhaps more strongly against it than they ever did.    Yet they seemed happy to just complain, without taking any stronger action against me.  They did what they could but knew when to stop.
• 1976-01: On weekend trips home from WPSBC, I’d meet up with a neighbor boy from next door, and we’d go into his cold garage and chew out there; even when the thermometer flirted with sub-zero temps, we both still had to have our snuff fix.
• 1976-03: I got braces on my top, front teeth.  Still though, I kept chewing, even though it was impossible to get the little pieces of tobacco out of the hooks and wires without meticulous teeth-brushing. 
• 1976-10: I tried for the first time to stop chewing snuff.  Details  here. 
• 1977-06: The two oldest boys next store were chewing Skoal snuff by this point, and the three of us started a snuff can collection in their garage.  Throughout this and the previous summer, we’d managed to save some two-hundred empty cans, which we stacked into a pyramid.  Later, after we got tired of picking them back up and re-stacking them after someone knocked them down, we actually glued the cans together.  No, we weren’t at all bored. 
• 1977-12: I pulled a nasty trick on a friend involving tobacco.  Details   here.
• 1983-11-01: I tried again to quit.  This time however, I stopped all at once, and for the next two months, I was moody and just plain miserable. 
• 1984-01-15: However I started yet again, once I beganmy college education.  Believing that, though erroneously, the snuff would lower my academic stresses, ignoring the wintergreen smell of Skoal, that long-time “friend” of mine, I could not resist any longer.  Then, I chewed like crazy for the next two years at a rate of one can per day. 
• 1986-01-01: Finally, I quit.  The third time must indeed have been the charm. 
• 1986-04-01: But the craving only lessened somewhat.  To keep it at bay, I kept very busy with my college studies and for a time, began consuming  significant amounts of alcohol as well as food.  In fact, I’d amassed quite a collection of different flavors of schnapps in my apartment at Moorhead.  100-proof peppermint was my favorite, followed by orange, peach, banana, cola, blueberry, lime, and a host of other flavors.  At one point I think I had twenty bottles around and consumed at least two of them per week. 
• 1986-08-01: Finally, I could sense a softening of the tobacco longings.  Ever since I stopped chewing, I’d have these dreams almost every night about sitting around with [Mentat] and [Tad], chewing, like we used to.  At first, I found these night visions pleasant.  But by the late summer of 1986, the same dream took on a malevolent meaning, and became a nightmare.  I’d often awaken with a start, feeling so angry at myself for having come so far down the road to beating this thing, and then having just through all that struggle away by allowing myself to chew again.  After my two foiled attempts to stop, I knew that when it comes to tobacco, there’s no such thing as moderate addiction; I’m either fully addicted to it, or I want nothing to do with it.
• 1987-04: Though I’d quit more than a year earlier, I’d still get occasional longings for snuff.  But fortunately, the worst of the craving was past by this time.

Today, nearly twenty-four years after my last chew, I’m pleased and proud to report that I never crave snuff, or any tobacco products at all.  Good thing too, as I don’t think I could afford the nearly $4.00 per can that it costs nowadays. 

Indeed, my case proves that on can quit snuff  if you have enough perseverance along with a host of other, more healthy passions to distract you, until the psychological yearnings for the tobacco disappear.  They will fade eventually.  But this can  (and in fact for me, did)   take years.

So my best advice to anyone considering using tobacco, would be to   avoid it,   because once you start, statistically speaking, you’ll probably never be able to stop.  Yes, I got lucky and somehow found the strength to quit.  I give thanks to the universe for that good fortune every day. 

But the sad truth is that most folks who start using nicotine thinking that they can stop whenever they want, quickly find themselves ensnared in a surprisingly potent, expensive, and risky addiction.  So before they realize it, they’re stuck, and they never, ever, get away.  So count your blessings and stay away from tobacco, while you are outside its clutches. Don’t do it.  Please.  Find other, more constructive and less harmful ways to gain acceptance from your peers. 

Tom Hesley

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