About 5 years ago, I realized that I had been biting my nails for close to 30 years. For those 30 years, I had short, stubby, ugly nails. I tried to quit many times over those years, but I always failed. A few times I was able to stop for a week or two, but it never lasted. Pretty soon, I would realize that I was chewing on my nails again.
Over those years I had tried everything that anyone suggested to help me break my habit. I tried bitter tasting coatings that you put on your nails. They are supposed to make your nails taste bad, so that you won’t bite them. In less than a week I would get used to the taste, and go right back to biting.
For a while I tried wearing a rubber band on my wrist and snapping it when I caught myself biting my nails. That didn’t work at all.
I also tried getting expensive manicures. But that was just a waste of my hard earned money, and also a bit embarrassing since I’m a guy. Another thing that I tried was wearing gloves, so that I physically could not bite my nails. But lets be realistic, there is just no way to wear gloves all the time. I also tried chewing gum in order to give my mouth something else to do. But that didn’t slow me down at all. I had no problem chewing on my nails with gum in my mouth.
I even tried getting people around me to help me stop. I asked them to yell at me, kick me, or throw something at me when they saw me biting my nails. The reality is that no one really wanted to do it all the time, and even if they had, a lot of the times that I bit my nails I was alone anyways.