Welcome To ‘The Good Place’
Holy forking shirtballs! We’re in the Good Place!
I’d like to welcome all of you to (what we consider): The Good Place. I’m wastepanel, and Jim asked me to write a few words for you today. He’s a badass quitter and is really owning this quit now. I’m proud to have him watching my back in this quit.
I stopped using nicotine in 2006 by utilizing the program set forth by an old site (and spawning ground of the KTC) quitsmokeless.org. I knew what it was to be quit and I was very motivated to be quit at the time. My mom was dying of stomach cancer so she asked me to quit for her. How could I not be quit? Well, I made the hall of fame in December 2006. This little offshoot site called killthecan.org sprung up around that time and I joined it too.
Then I faded.
I stopped posting. I stopped thinking about my quit. Hell. I was quit. Why work at it? A subject at quit tends to stay quit, right? Wrong. I was proven wrong a few years later. The dust settled on my stoppage. My mom was gone. I now had a second kid with my beautiful wife. I was no longer employed…but self employed. I had way more things to worry about than being quit…I was quit, right?
Which is why I got drunk one day (at a Browns game) and bummed a chew from my buddy. It was stupid but it revealed something important to me: I wasn’t addicted to this shit anymore. I was proud that I didn’t just buy a can and have it gone that day. Nope. I could just do it whenever I wanted to (not because I had to). Remember…an object that is un-addicted tends to stay un-addicted, right?
Again…wrong.
It was a very short time later that I stopped bumming chew and buying cans. I’d throw them out (because I didn’t chew. Duh.). Then I stopped throwing them away because I’m frugal and it was a waste. Then I stopped hiding that I chewed. Then I chewed. I subconsciously made these decisions while lying to myself. I consciously quit stopping and started using. And I didn’t feel bad. I simply was a product of my environment (my non-quit environment) at worst.
You see, being quit isn’t a one-moment decision and celebration. As all of you have quit for a small period of time, you know that. This quit has not been all sunshine and rainbows. It will beat you down if you let it (Thanks Rocky.). Quit is deciding to be quit and following through with it. Quit is deciding to be quit when you don’t want to be quit. Quit is working at your quit even when your quit is not currently in peril. We all ascertain that “being quit” is like being in heaven with all our problems simply melting away as we enjoy the rewards for the hell we’ve been through.
But what I have found out since returning to this site in 2011 is that quit is more like “The Good Place” than heaven. If you aren’t familiar with “The Good Place”, give it a watch. It’s a humorous, insane television show (currently on Netflix). It also dives deep into all sorts of philosophical conundrums (and I will be pulling deeply from the show for this). The characters are all dead and the show begins with each of them adjusting to being in “The Good Place” despite their reservations and insecurities. As the show begins, we wonder why and how these flawed characters can be here. As we (the audience) are clued in, we know. But then we watch as they make each other better.
That’s what the KTC was and is for me. It makes me better. The KTC taught me to look out for my fellow quitters in order to protect my quit. Yes. I had a template to follow. But we forged a path of our own and freestyled moments as well. I didn’t plan on having a good friend die a week into my quit, but it happened. I didn’t count on making friends with random internet strangers, but it happened. I didn’t count on writing for and being part of a horror movie site and interviewing actors and directors on their movies, but it happened. I didn’t count on one of my bookkeeping clients getting big enough to hire me full time and for that income to help build the house I live in today. I didn’t count on my oldest joining the Marines or watching my youngest develop a possible future career in computers, but it happened (and is happening). I didn’t count on battling major depression throughout the last 13 years either…but it happened. All of that shit (good and bad) went down and I had to deal with it and stay quit. I am not the same me I was back in 2011.
I am better.
I am better because the KTC gave me the tools and friends to understand myself. You can’t quit forever all at once. It is a moment by moment journey. And, throughout all those events I just mentioned, I had to make them happen moment by moment, step by step. Some had moments of culmination. Some are still ongoing. And that’s the dirty secret of being quit: There is no finish line. There is no moment that I am just “forever quit” (until I die that is). There is no moment that I am just rewarded with a magical place fulfilling all of my quit dreams and I am perfect until I have returned back to the universe as some form of energy. That is what the characters in “The Good Place” found out: The good place is accepting your flaws, accepting others’ help, challenging yourself to be better, and following through.
Now, I’m going to dive a little deep into what it means to be quit and I’m going to use some very famous philosophical ideas to do that. Western philosophers have formed 3 theories on how to live an ethical life (and we can use these to view how we should live a quit life). There are virtue ethics (Aristotle). There is consequentialism (Jeremy Bentham). Finally, there is deontology (Kant). Each one of these philosophical “codes” can be used by a person to be “better” but which one is right?
Aristotle believed that, in order to be a more ethical person, one must believe in certain values (courage, generosity, etc) and try to develop yourself in accordance with those virtues through actions. He also believed that virtuous actions do not make one virtuous. In fact, he believed that we should practice the actions until they become second nature. When we are thoughtlessly being virtuous, then we can be truly virtuous. When we first decide to be quit, the first thing we all realize is that we know squat about quitting. We seek out help. We seek out information in others. The KTC provides us with virtuous quit “tasks” (posting roll, supporting others, helping each other, etc) that are a blueprint to a successful quit. We follow this map even when we don’t feel good about being quit or not feeling particularly like quitting sometimes. Quitting is hard and it’s very easy to feel like a fake when you watch the quitters around you thriving while you are stuck in a funk. It’s normal and it’s ok. The key to being a great quitter is to accept that and to realize that you will never be quit. You are simply quitting and each day (each moment) is another step closer to being quit. Quitting means that we are actively pursuing quit. Not using is simply a description of our state at a particular moment.
Consequentialism’s basis is that an action is judged morally right by its consequences. In other words, a morally right act will produce a good outcome. When we quit, the “good outcome” that we are wanting to achieve is “quit”. Therefore, we have to take actions that lead to being quit. Those actions include posting, supporting others, and asking for help. There are like a thousand more actions that we could include from the halls of the KTC. It seems like each group ever has added their own little twist to the formula, but they all have one purpose: to keep us quit. There are many times that we even argue about these rules. Hell, back in the day, we tracked everybody at the KTC on spreadsheets. If a quitter faded and returned with day 1, it was really easy to go back and look at their posting history in order to pass judgement. But this led to a more formulaic response to returning members and added a bit of competitiveness to the quitters in general. This led to quitters not wanting to support returning members as (history showed) the KTC didn’t waste its resources on “stoppers”. Behind the scenes, it also made some quitters question the truly open landscape of quit as they wondered if the magic of the site was in this open format or a more structured program. In other words, the virtuous act of keeping a spreadsheet began to ripple consequences throughout the program that outweighed the good it was doing. Fewer groups tracked its quitters and the site moved on. The point of all of this is that the true virtuous acts that keep us quit here at the KTC are basic but we all have to remember this: Support each other. Don’t tear down. Build up. Hard truths can come with some funny but don’t destroy another quitter for accolades. Be there for them. Walk with them. Ask from them. It makes us all better.
That leads me to deontology. Deontology teaches us that there are strict rules and duties that everyone must adhere to in a functioning society. Being ethical is identifying and obeying those duties and following those rules. Well, there is one rule in quitting that we all follow: DO NOT USE! That’s the long and short of it. For all of us at the KTC, we expand on that: Post roll, keep your word, repeat. The basis of the KTC is that we have a strict duty to promise to ourselves and to each other that we will quit today. It is for us and it is for others. We identify this duty and adhere. It doesn’t matter how we get to the “Repeat” duty. We do everything in our power to keep our word. As a society, it seems like we are breaking down more and more each day (it’s political season, so…). The more that we treat each other without respect and dignity, the less we have a society. Each person deserves to be quit. But each quit person has a duty and responsibility to follow the rules of the KTC if they want to be part of the KTC (or if they want the KTC to succeed).
In the end, we all just need to be there for each other. I personally think that all of these philosophies are important tenants to becoming a better quitter but I don’t think they are the only tenants. The nicotine whore is going to take many forms throughout our lives. When Christopher Columbus brought tobacco back to Europe, he set off a shockwave we feel to this day. As we started to realize how bad smoking tobacco was, the companies began branding us to chewing tobacco again under the guise of “hard reduction”. When a generation began questioning the consequences of using smokeless tobacco, they introduced vaping. First, we had snus. Now we Zyn. All of these products have the same addictive poison in them that we have figured out ruins our lives: Nicotine. They’ll probably come up with a thousand more products too. The world is not different because of Zyn. It is simply the same dried up, vapid, life-sucking whore in a new ride looking for a new sugar daddy to support her lifestyle.
In conclusion, if we want to be “quit”, we have to realize some basic truths. We have to accept ourselves as we are. We have to decide to be quit despite everything. We have to accept the challenge and the bad times that come with being quit. We have to accept the responsibility of being quit. We have to be quit together. Everybody throws out the wisdom of “Do or do not. There is no try.” Like it is some definitive answer to all of our questions and challenges. We do by trying. Try to live a quit life. Plan to live a quit life. The KTC has great blueprint in its program and history but you have to be quit for you. Do that. Quit for you. Quit with us. Be a small piece of quit on the internet that may reach an unexpecting person one day with your words. Be a voice in the darkness when somebody is struggling and unsure of their quit decision. Be you.
We got this.
NOTE: This piece written by KillTheCan.org member wastepanel
