Accountability Is a Scary Word

Accountability is a scary word because it means people are watching you if you fail. Failure, when being held accountable, is scary. Quitting dip and killing the dependence of nicotine is one of the hardest things an individual can do in his or her lifetime. Who wants an audience when they are working on the toughest obstacle of their life?

I did not.  Which is why I’ve quit multiple times before without joining the KTC group. Those quits have lasted anywhere from 8 hours to my personal best of 281 days – alone. It’s the same reason I spent my first 32 days of this quit quietly lurking on the KTC website. Watching. Reading. Suffering through the fog and the bursts of anger alone. I had my wife’s support, but – bless her heart – she’s never been addicted and could only offer so much support.

I spent a great deal of time thinking about accountability and my fear of joining KTC.  I came to realize there are scarier words than accountability: dependency; sickness; cancer; death; widow; fatherless.

I’m 35 years old with 3 young children.  I made the decision on day 32 that it was time for me to get my shit together, shun the chance that I fail in front of an audience, and make this quit my final quit.

And here I am at 100 days nicotine free.  I won’t pretend like getting here was peaches and crème.  The path to the HOF isn’t full of rainbows and unicorns. You sludge through the shit some days.  Bedtime comes early sometimes because you are just done with everything.  Some days you can’t remember your own name, let alone how to do your job. Some days you need to just get in your truck and shout at the world a little.  Over time, the good days start to show up.  Little by little they start showing up more often.  Eventually the odds turn in your favor and you start to see the sun more than the clouds.

As I sit at this HOF rest stop (because this never-ending journey continues) I’ve taken the opportunity to look back at the first 100 and I realize that my definition of accountability was incorrect. The accountability found on KTC is based in camaraderie. It’s a family, cheering each other on.  It’s conductors like eauge and zav3nd.  It’s the Noisy November Nutt N Butts paving the month before mine with humor and taco binging.  It’s my own group of the Quiet December Degenerates made up with likes of jmhoke23, Wild_Man, Leviruff1, 6YearsandReady, Mts10912, and sschumann (who I share my HOF date with) who methodically posted roll and helped each other get to this point. It’s the veterans like Chewie, Samrs, and so many others that helped answer questions and lead the way for us newbies.

This is not a group of individuals WATCHING to see if you fail on your journey; it’s a group of individuals who are JOINING you on your journey.  They don’t want you to fail because they don’t want to fail.  There are veterans on this site that help lead the way.  There are newbies on this site trying to figure out where the path is.  But each and every one of us is fighting everyday to stay quit for just one more day.

I wish I had joined this group of fantastic individuals on Day 1 of my quit. They have been helpful.  They have been funny.  They have been coaches.  They have been cheerleaders. They have been inspiring.  But most of all they have been supportive through accountability.

Accountability is no longer a scary word.

NOTE: This piece written by KillTheCan community member guth21