What it really means to “Man up”

I can say after spending many days on KTC I can say this may be one phrase that ranks in the top 5 of use.  I don’t think a quitter who is new to our community doesn’t hear this at least once, “time to man up and get this done.”  I can say with almost 100 % certainty this is done by every quitter on this site on a daily basis.  Every day each one of us begins our quit anew, we promise to not use nicotine today.  Wait, what?  No nicotine says the new quitter.  No nicotine, using a patch, gum, whatever only delays the inevitable pain of getting nicotine out of your system.  We all know we aren’t addicted to tobacco, we are addicted to nicotine.  So to the new quitter, you will hear us say man up and get this done.

The last couple of weeks I have seen a couple of dippers, one sitting outside an exercise facility spitting into a bottle.  While may have done this, the first thought that went through my mind was what a hick.  Do you have no class?  Can you not see how nasty that is and honestly, no one wants to see you spit in a bottle.  I can say with a certainty that I look down on it now, while I hid my addiction I have always thought that those who let the world see them with a fat lip spitting in a bottle, I see a hillbilly.  Right or wrong, it’s how I see dippers.  So I guess at one point we were all wearing that label, like it or not.  And with that all the negative stereotypes with it; classless individuals who could care less about anything.  I hate to say it’s true but it is.

I am going to get away from that for a minute, going far away from it but I will be back.  One of the things I learned about my addiction is the many phases I have been through during my quit, but the one constant is I have always had an avenue for all of that rage, killthecan.org has taken it all.  I have made many friends and a few enemies along the way, but at the end of the day it is the one place I can take all of it and not worry about what I say.  It’s called extreme for a reason, we deal with a lot of shit with quitting something that has had such a powerful hold on us for so long.  It will come to a point for all of us when we say something that will piss someone off.  I have apologized for crossing a line a time or two, and it sucked.  In fact the other day I called someone out for referring to something I find as a father very offensive.  The person was trying to be funny, did not mean to offend anyone.  I sent him a message, told him why it bothered me, he understood, apologized and we moved on.  If this person needed help I would stop what I was doing to help him, it’s what we do here.

If you are looking and scratching your head, what the hell is he talking about?  Let me bring this back around for you.  One part of being able to “Man up” is being able to respect what someone else says and honor it.  There have been some instances recently where someone let their group know some things being posted bothered them.  That is a very hard thing to do in this forum, since we preach extreme.  It’s even harder when that someone is a woman.  We have over 11,000 members on this site and I can count under 10 that are female who come here to do the same as we all do, quit everyday.  Yes they know what they are signing up for, it is pretty crass in many, many groups.  That’s fine, but when someone stands up and says hey can we tone it done in one area, that person should not be attacked.  Remember the hillbilly scenario from before?  Well guess what, this is exactly what we look like to people when we can’t honor someone’s request.  How many times has someone said hey tone it down a little?  Not many, and I challenge anyone to say otherwise.  We say what we like, it’s why we came here.  I know I would have never have the wife I do talking to her like that, why are we doing it here?

I challenge all of us to “MAN UP” and respect someone’s wishes if something really bothers them.  It rarely, if ever, happens so there is no saying stop this or that but show some freaking respect for people.  You can do that and be extreme, I promise it can be done.  For the record, I hope the person who left comes back, we want to help keep you clean from nicotine.  For the rest of us, what will we do?  Will we “man up” and respect the view of someone you may not agree with, or will you keep portraying the image of the guy sitting on a bench spitting in a bottle like a hick?  I know what I choose, how about you make the choice to man up and show the world you can be extreme and quit with class.

klark – Day 951