Hi i'm Nicole i'm 18 years old and I am addicted to smokeless tobacco. I started when I was 16. I live in Stafford CT. A couple of my friends started using it and offered for me to join along. I tried the drug and immediately fell in love with it. I was lucky enough to get a job at Walmart over the summer but my use of chewing tobacco was a little impact my boss was not happy that at times i would sometimes use it during work. I was told if i did it again i was going to be fired. I also have stopped talking with friends that don’t do it cause they thought it as gross. I usually go behind the dumpster at Walmart because my boss doesn’t like it when i chew.
This was my first drug that wasn’t prescribed to me. My family looks at me differently now. They think i’m gross and depressed. They think i want to be a man because people thought that only men did this drug. But that is a myth. They believe that i am putting my life in danger, they keep warning me this i will get constricted blood vessels, an addiction to nicotine, an increased heart rate now and then later on I will have mouth sores, bleeding in the mouth, lots of pain, and even some types of cancer. When I looked up online some of the symptoms I was surprised by all of these because i assumed only bad symptoms came from smoking tobacco. My parents also say that they don’t want me to change my entire personality because of the drug because of the changes psychologically with things like a nicotine addiction.
So far the only trouble I've gotten into is at school with my principal and my school resource officer telling me it would be best to stop using it. I didn’t even consider stopping using it as nothing seemed to be happening to me. Months passed and I was still using it as frequent as ever but then I just stopped caring I started skipping school and my grades started to drop. I eventually just dropped out of high school all together and was later fired from Walmart because I chewed during my shifts. I was 18 a high school dropout with no job. Now that I had no source of income to help me gain my tobacco i eventually started stealing. First it was just a couple dollars out of my mom's purse but then she started to take notice so I moved on to making robberies first it was just a mugging from an innocent women on the sidewalk but then it escalated to breaking into houses looking for money so i could get smokeless tobacco for my addiction. One of these times though the police were called and I was eventually arrested for breaking and entering.
All the people who i thought were my friends ended up leaving me and never ended up helping me and all of my family was disgusted by what i had turned into. I am now in rehab trying to cope with my addiction. Smokeless tobacco ruined my life and for anyone reading this don’t do drugs it will only hurt you.
Credits:
Created with images by lorentey - "Tobacco" • JeepersMedia - "Walmart" • White77 - "family holiday people" • photogeider - "city new york city nyc" • HolgersFotografie - "stethoscope medical doctor"