OK, I can’t really back that up. But I am attached to 10 agents of brain corruption and propaganda and they are working their magic on me every second of every day. They say the nastiest things to me…

“Come on Luke, I got this flap of skin just hanging off my side. You can feel it right? Ya it’s right there. It’s not a nail, you can bite it, don’t worry. I wont tell anyone about the way you want and WILL suck and nibble on that little dangling nail nipple.”

“Luke, now shut the fuck up and bite me! You just bit number 4 over there so why the fuck won’t you bite me? You think your all high and mighty because you only bite one nail out of the ten and think you are conquering this habit? We ain’t going anywhere you addict bitch! I got nothing to do all day so I am just going to rub up against number 2 on my side and make sure you are reminded of my existence every time you move your arm.”

“Luke! Help!! It hurts!! You gotta fix it just this one time. It wasn’t your fault that potato peeler ripped me in half. I understand. It’s OK. But you gotta help me, it hurts!!!”

To name a few of the horrendous things I hear from these bastard nails. It’s hard, but after 27 years, I have had enough…

Here is the most recent photo I have after one of my many nail clipping sessions. Be sure to compare from images at this blog when I started this whole fandangled thing.

In my previous images I bragged about the nail being long but that was a false hope because with a short nail bed, a long nail is simply going to break and bother you and encourage horrible statements like the ones above. From these images, I hope you can see the growth in the base of the nail which is ultimately what I want. There is still a lot of skin towards the front of the finger, not sure if you call this foreskin or what, but the size is diminishing, albeit slow.

What I found is that there is no visual reward for a very long time. For me the worst thing I can do is let my nails grow long, so I cut them regularly. Don’t be duped.

But I am not without flaw and one nail has consistently tricked me into eating him as if he was a butter covered bacon sandwich coated in fried cheese. The image below shows the comparison between my two pinky nails. Unfortunately for my one retarded finger that is permanently disfigured after a late night cycling crash slightly inebriated, I am also terrorizing it’s nail. But it is not to say that I have given up on pinky McRetard. I have gone to the extreme. I wrap him in clear medical tape at least three times a day. I figure the only way I will stop molesting this pinky finger is to slap a chastity belt on him and would you believe it, it freaking works. The trick is to use a small strip of tape and wrap it so it only covers the nail and first knuckle for minimal annoyance. I can still type and write and go to the bathroom and find things in my nose.

In fact, I found this tape tactic to be the atomic bomb in my arsenal to stop my nail biting. As mentioned in the previous blogs, biting my nails is unstoppable after I bite a little bit and create the “imperfection” in the nail. After that, I will bite until there is no more to try and fix the “imperfection”. So now, when I start down this downward spiral of munching, I quickly run to the tape and cover the nail for a few hours. Most of the time this is enough to let my brain move on to other things. I know the tape thing seems absurd, but do it! It works!

The road is still very long for this bastard of an addiction but I feel as though I have passed the cuming out of my ass while having a naked knife fight phase.

This commenter mentions how you need to be proud of your nails or at least not care about what other people think. I agree with that to a point but to us biters, it doesn’t seem so bad. But imagine yourself walking down the beach and you saw this girl itching her calf to a nub. It owuld gross you out. Its a matter of perspective.

“Luke, as a severe nail-biter who tried everything to stop, I finally learned to accept the habit as part of who I am. I went to a shrink in my 20s who said I fall into a statistical subgroup of men world-wide-about 10%-who are chronic nail biters and not to worry if I can’t stop. When I stopped worrying I felt better about myself. I know it is not a pretty or sanitary habit, but I am not ashamed to bite my nails any time, even in public. I’m also a family and career man. Hope you are successful in your efforts. If not, learn to accept and enjoy the habit. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s not.”

This girl also instructed me on a new method that I have been employing to help the nails grow. One of my complaints before was the fact that my long nails would break easily and get to the point I just had to bite them to straighten thins out. Well this is because the nail bed is so short for me. So the plan is to grow the nail bed out by keeping the nails cliped short all the time, and only leaving a small amount of white nail in front of the skin. My theory is eventually the bed will grow to the end of the nail like most people have. The only problem with this is that you tend to be taking care of your nails a lot to keep them at this length. But all an all, I am happy with the results and my pinky nail is looking superb, I must say.

So when the urge gets strong, I bust out my nail tool set shown here. This has all you need to get the nails going as well as a way to distract yourself from some more biting. Let me give you a run down of how I use this mess.

1) Use the moisturizer and rub it into your nails well over the back of the nail and let sit.
2) Take the little blunt edged poker thing and start pushing against the back of the nails where it turns into skin. With soft hands you can actually see the movement very clearly.
3) Lotion again.
4) Take that same prodder thing and try to scrape up anything on the nail that is not part of the nail surface like some thin clear strip or white stip. These wills tart to peel up if you are doing it right.
5) Now take the thing that has a two pronged spoon at the end which is very sharp. This can be used to cut off any loose skin that you have pulled back, its obvious the skin that will come off. Learn the hardway. Also remove any of that clear/white stuff.
6) Use the nail clippers to cut to a good length. I find this hard when i got to cut the nails on my right hand, but it just takes practice. Be sure to not cut to short and if you have sharp parts dont worry, the next step helps that.
7) use the file and dont get carried away. You normally only need a little bit to get the nail smooth.
8) Apply the nail strengthening stuff on in two layers. This stuff is cool but once you have some sharp nails, it is kind of fun to pick at the little rubbery layer it leaves on your nails. Good incentive to get to this point.

The other comment I thought was rather interesting but it goes against my general attitude toward life right now. There should be nothing you just cannot do even for physiological or psychological reasons. For that, I must endeavour to conquer this beast, if anything, to prove I can beat the statistics.

“Luke, as a severe nail-biter who tried everything to stop, I finally learned to accept the habit as part of who I am. I went to a shrink in my 20s who said I fall into a statistical subgroup of men world-wide-about 10%-who are chronic nail biters and not to worry if I can’t stop. When I stopped worrying I felt better about myself. I know it is not a pretty or sanitary habit, but I am not ashamed to bite my nails any time, even in public. I’m also a family and career man. Hope you are successful in your efforts. If not, learn to accept and enjoy the habit. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s not.”

I recently took down right pointer finger. Terrible writing session on the computer. I have determined it is on the computer that I get away with complete nail destruction. The rest of the time I just take tiny skin nibbles but never ruin the integrity of the burgeoning nail. Not sure what I do about that since I am on the computer a lot. Maybe I need to start chewing gum or something.

Fotos on the next post…

I have always had success not biting my nails when I was traveling. Not sure if it was due to the dirty conditions I was living in or the fact that I had other things to keep me occupied. I never really could figure out when I bite my nails. From what I can gather it is a matter of imperfections. I feel the slightest thing sticking out and then I need to smooth the nail down. Which then causes another imperfection. And eventually I get to this point where I have somehow destroyed my nail bed and I have these large pieces of regular skin in fornt of my nail before the end of my finger. I use these as grippy points to be able to pick up things. Dimes have always been my worst enemy as far as picking them up and I will often just leave a dime on the ground or need to slide it all the way over to a crack.

Here is a picture of them as they have always been prior to this cold turkey effort.

The history of my attempts have gone somethin like this… First attempt was to by the “No bite” stuff which I eventually began to grow fond of and would go through bottles daily and asking my dad to keep buying more. The next was to buy this stuff which was to stop horses from chewing on the wooden posts in their corrals. This was extremely effective and worked into my college days. However this tactic came to an end when my neighbor and good friend played the best practical joke of all time on me. He and I were both playing sports at school, he swam and I played soccer. He would have early morning practice and then come back and want to sleep. I would just be waking up when he was sleeping so I would sneak into his room and spray this shit into his mouth while he was sleeping. I would get such a rise out of watching him first lick his lips, and then start to wriggle and squirm, and then eventually leap up spitting and gagging. I always wondered what that did to his dreams at that point. So Geoff, being the smart guy that he is, dumped out the entire bottle one day and filled it with water. When I would subsequently spray this stuff into his mouth, he would act out his reaction enough to make me feel satisfied, and then go back to sleep. Meanwhile I was biting my nails more and more and thought I had built up a tolerance even to the horse repellant.Since then there have been small bursts of weeks of no biting but never anything to write about.

A week after that last picture, they look like this.

And now almost a month later they look like this.Look at that pinky!

So the problems I am and will run into are these. I cant help but get large amounts of dirt underneath the nails. I am just a dirty boy. So I then use my other nails to pick the dirt out from underneath them. Which in turn weakens the nails. So I just wash my hands more. Another problem is that they grow really long but are not that thick so they can brake easy creating these imperfections that taunt me oh so much. Not sure how to solve this one other than to cut them and then file them to be short again but allowing the underneath part to slowly grow until the end. The next is just maintenance. The skin around the outsides needs to be taken care of all the time it seems. What a fuckin hassle! I also find myself flicking the nails probably weakening them as well.

I will admit that I do not really have the urge to bite them anymore so maybe I have crossed the hump. But if I were to bite them, oh man what a feast that would be.

If you are wondering if I bite my toenails the answer is I used to when I was little. But now I cannot reach them anymore so I dont have that problem.

Click here for part two…