Why Should You Continue to Post After HOF?
Here it comes!! Can you hear it? That train is coming down the tracks. It’s about to make a stop in your town to gather up any of you bad ass quitters hitting 100 days quit. “Hall of Fame” or HOF is a special, month long, celebration welcoming those hitting their 100 days of quit. Why 100 days, well it is a huge accomplishment for everyone. Most guys and gals can’t even remember when the last time was that they were 100 days stopped from using nicotine. We celebrate this milestone because it is such an accomplishment and you should be proud of yourself. But…
…THIS IS NOT THE END OF THE LINE
The “end of the line” will come eventually. I hope it waits many years for all of us, but for some it has come too soon (R.I.P. Concharde, NoMore4Me, JoeC, Air Force ADDICT, Teray, Bommer44, SuccessThisTime, Traumagent, Tstahr, WarE2013, BuddyBoy, CLIFF and all those who’s lives have been cut short).
We are addicts. We will always be addicts. There is NO CURE. There will come a time in your quit that you will say to yourself, “self, I feel great, I have no craving for a dip, my life is all peaches and cream and the only thing that ever makes me think about nicotine is posting my promise on KTC everyday”. This is where you need to wake up, because the “self” I referred to in that last sentence is not your normal, everyday brain, it is your addict brain. Your addict brain is all of the the thoughts and feeling you have that tell you that dipping is not bad, nicotine is not bad and just one wont hurt. Your addict brain NEVER rests. It is constantly testing the wall you have put up looking for weaknesses it can exploit.
Complacency is your addict brains best friend and the cause of countless caves. We start to feel comfortable in our quits, even a little smug and our guard begins to drop just enough for our addict brain to get a toe in the door. Now our addict brain is telling us to, “go to the c-store and buy a can. It’s okay, no one will know. Who cares if you made a promise to a bunch of strangers on the internet?” Now you have a choice to make. Do you listen to your addict brain or does your normal brain wake up and call a brother up for help. All too often, there are no calls made, no texts sent and one less quitter posting their promise not to use today.
Back to the question at hand, “Why should you continue to post after HOF?” I think a better question is, “Why shouldn’t you continue to post? It has worked for the last 100 days. That old saying comes to mind, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Why would you put everything you have worked so hard to accomplish here at jeopardy by not doing what got you here in the first place. That is just plain stupid, addict brain mentality. Posting your promise everyday along with exchanging digits with other quitters and getting to know them over the last 3 plus months has built a wall of accountability and brotherhood. That wall is what is keeping your addict brain out of your life. But it is never gone, it lurks in the shadows waiting for its opportunity to get back in. If you stop posting your promise everyday, your wall begins to develop weak areas. Pretty soon, pieces of your wall begin to break away and eventually your wall develops full on breaches.
There was a quitter that drifted away from KTC after posting pretty regularly for over 1100 days. Three years later he was back at KTC posting Day 1. Why do you think that is? I can tell you it is not because of the lame ass excuses he tried to pass off as his answer to the three caver questions. The reason he caved is because he did not have that daily reminder that, “oh yeah, I promised not to use nicotine today. I will not be buying that can at 7-11. I am going to call one of my brothers instead and fortify my quit for today”. Had that quitter have continued posting his promise everyday, he would be well over 2,000 days right now.
I understand that posting everyday is a hassle and inconvenient and it sucks on your phone and all those other excuses that you use, but that’s all that they are, excuses. Being here is a choice that we all made. No one stood behind us with a gun pointed at our head forcing us to join. We chose to join because we were sick and tired of slowly killing ourselves each and everyday. Now that you have made it past HOF, do you honestly think leaving is the wisest of decisions? How long do you think it will take before your addict brain wins the fight and you are standing there at the counter buying a tin of cancer? For a few, it may never come to the that, for most, you will be back up to two cans a day in matter of a couple of weeks and your normal brain will have been shoved in the dungeon while your addict brain sits on the throne ruling (and ruining) your life. Eventually a few of you may come crawling back to KTC to post another Day 1 but for most, we will never hear from them again.
Is it not worth a few minutes of your day to come in here and post your promise to stay free from your addiction for one more day? You’ve already undergone the hardest part of quitting, do you want to go through it again? There is one guy who apparently loves self-inflicted misery because he keeps trying to quit over and over again. I for one never want to go through that hell again for as long as I live, so you will find me here everyday, posting my promise to remain nicotine free for the day. I hope to see you all here as well.
Cheers to a long, nicotine free life.
Chris
NOTE: This piece written by KillTheCan.org forum member chris2alaska
