I'm a Quitter and Proud. Why Giving Up Actually Makes Me Joyfully Happy!
Substances, smoking, animal products, unhelpful friends, unfulfilling jobs, bad decisions. I've quit the lot.
I’m a quitter. There is no shame in quitting when something no longer serves you. My brother once called me a “Master Quitter.” Sometimes, quitting is a brave thing to do.
I quit smoking.
Ten years ago yesterday, I gave up smoking. People say it’s hard, but I found it quite easy. It was so easy that I’d forgotten I ever smoked until Facebook reminded me that I’d quit in one of those memories things.
I decided one day I wanted to quit. So I did.
I had smoked for 25 years, from the age of 9 years old. I still remember my first puff on a cigarette. A passing adult had discarded a still-lit ciggie in the direction of the Spider-shaped climbing frame near our flats, where I was sitting. I decided to pick it up and try it. I was rather stupid back then.
I knew I wouldn’t do it cold turkey, so I bought an e-cigarette, which was totally vile and brought me out in a rash. I would use it to take the edge off the nicotine cravings, then immediately wish I hadn’t bothered as it made me feel grim, and so I naturally used it less and less. Instead of my nicotine intake being reinforcing, as was the case with a cigarette, it was punishing, and I didn’t like it. It was the easiest thing to give up.
Besides, I’d already had practice at quitting by that point.
Giving up something you hate is not that hard when you put your mind to it.
Giving up alcohol
Giving up things you like is much harder, which is why I found alcohol so hard.
I had started drinking heavily after deciding I no longer wanted to take party drugs, way back in 2008. I had been married to a violent addict, from whom I was separating, and I decided I no longer wanted to be a junkie too. Alcohol took the edge off and was legal, far more respectable, surely? I loved the stuff.
I convinced myself that everyone had a drink from time to time and I wasn’t hurting anyone. I couldn’t see that, in actual fact, a litre of vodka plus several bottles of wine each day, just to get through it without hallucinations and fits, was hurting not only me but my children too.
In the end, it made up my entire diet, and I lived on the calories in the drinks I was consuming as I was too sick to eat. My hair began to fall out, and my teeth became brittle from all the vomiting. It took a doctor telling me I was about to cock my toes up to make me see sense. I had three quitting attempts using sleeping pills to get me through the withdrawals, but on the third attempt, I cracked it and have not drank alcohol since fireworks night, 14 years ago.
Giving up something when you have no choice can be hard, but is entirely possible if you decide consciously you want to live without it.
Quitting people
At the end of my second marriage, and also at the end of my substance abuse, I discovered who my real friends were.
People who I thought would care and support me vanished into thin air, and I had very few people left in my world. A lot of my more respectable friends had backed off when I was a mess. I don’t blame them - I had been horrible up until that point, and all the people I had been hanging around with were equally horrid. Who’d want to hang around with a junkie pisshead with mental health issues going on?
I had a boyfriend who I dumped at that point too. Another person who was not right for my world.
So I decided to quit anyone that had much to do with those days at all and instead became a recluse while I sorted myself out. No friends were better than bad friends, leading me astray.
I literally only bothered with my kids, and maybe three friends, for about seven years and sod the rest of the world. It was so very simple!
Real friends would come in the years that followed, quite organically through my more useful, healthy interests, like crochet or dog behaviour. My circle of friends now consists entirely of people who have never seen me rat-arsed and in a state.
Had I been still chasing around after people who no longer mattered, then I would likely have been a drunk again very quickly and, by now, a dead drunk.
So, even now, I ruthlessly quit people who are bad for me, on the rare occasion I meet one. I can’t be bothered with the drama.
I only have good people in my life, and I be a good person for them.
Giving up people is easy. It’s deciding who is actually bad for you, that is the hard part.
Quitting bosses
A few people who I did some work for and whom I thought were friends one day decided that my services were no longer needed, literally a month or two after asking me to take more work on and promoting me.
There had been a whole pile of stuff going on behind the scenes I had not been told about.
I was really hurt as I had been led to believe I was a valued friend and worker, but instead, I had been lied to about all kinds of things and used.
But I’m better than that.
So I strolled on out of that job without even asking “why” or what I had done wrong (I hadn’t) and decided that I had no spare fucks to give over it. My head held high and dignity intact, I went straight into doing extra work for my own businesses and have not looked back.
I quit having a boss. I’ve been self-employed for a very long time and only have myself to please. I love it.
Giving up animal products
I’ve been a vegan for several years and a vegetarian for a long while before that.
It was a video I saw on Facebook of pigs being gassed right as I was about to tuck into a roast pork dinner that did it.
As a natural empath, I really struggle with any living being feeling sadness, pain or fear. It stays with me for weeks.
It came up on my phone just as I was sitting down to eat. I carefully picked around the veggies, feeling more and more ill, and decided I couldn’t eat the pork, as the screams were still ringing in my ears, and I had never eaten a dead body since. Just like that, I went from enjoying meat to not being able to think of anything worse on my plate.
Veganism followed as a natural progression. When you see what goes on in some farms, with dairy and egg production, you no longer want any part of it. Another barbaric video of minks being skinned alive at the side of the road sealed the deal - no more animal products up in here. No thank you, I will pass.
What makes me even sadder is the comment sections of this kind of video, full of people thinking it’s funny to make jokes about eating steak, telling us we all need supplements to survive (we don’t,) or thinking they are clever for telling us how we kill insects during plant production. Durr no shit Sherlock, we are not daft. We know this but feed for animals kills far more insects, and besides, Carnies eat plants, too.
People’s attitudes make me really sad. Plus, I’m not sure how many people know, but it is illegal in the UK to discriminate against us. I am not a judgy vegan - if someone else wants to use animal products, then that is their business. But it’s not for me. I won’t be picked on for it. Blocking trolls is a good option. See “Quitting people” for how easy I find it to discard people.
I quit animal products simply because I can’t bear to use or consume them. The thought leaves me aghast. Eww, gross.
Quitting bad decisions
The result of all my quitting means I rarely get myself in stupid situations any more, and when I do, I quit them without looking back. The more things you quit in life, the easier quitting becomes.
Sometimes quitting is bad. But in my experience, it’s usually a brilliant idea, and we should all quit more often.
I quit relying entirely on my 121 business as a source of income a while back, and since then, I have been growing my income month on month. I could have dug my heels in, kept doing as I had always done and waited for things to pick up, but I quit that. I quit waiting for life to come to me, and now I take it by the balls instead, including my business. Sticking around hoping is a bad decision I don’t want to make.
Just yesterday, I decided to quit a website I had made as it was about to cost me £80, and I’d barely looked at it in a year. I also quit the corresponding Substack I created for it which has been sitting empty for months. I could have left it on the off-chance that I would go back to it, but I decided if I ever did that, I would be just as good to start the whole thing from fresh, not recycle the project I’d already got bored of once. Just that act alone felt like something had been lifted from my shoulders. One less thing to think about. Plus £80 less to pay out next February when I have better things to pay for instead.
As I quit bad decisions a long time ago, I’m getting pretty good at rooting out the clutter and sticking to making good choices.
All decisions I make now either bring me joy, good health or help me progress in some way, and if they do not do those things, then it is a bad decision. Life is too short for being stupid.
What things have you quit in your time?
Today’s Sub Stats:
Well. It’s highly unlikely I will get to 100 Subscribers by the end of the month, but you know what? I’m quitting that idea too. It doesn’t really matter. In all honesty, I was getting swept away by what numbers I thought I should be seeing, according to some super stackers, instead of concentrating on writing and saying, “sod the numbers.”
Vanity metrics, mate. Vanity metrics.