They tried to make me go to rehab.

Hello, my name is Meg X. And I am an addict.

A nail-biting addict, that is.

I remember clearly the day it all started. I was sitting in my third-grade homeroom, bored and looking down at my fingers. I'd heard my mother talking about someone who was a nail biter the day before and wondered... What did it taste like? Did it hurt? Would they grow back? Curiosity got the best of me - I took a nibble.

That one moment spiraled into 26 years of emotional highs and lows, denial, numerous interventions, fake nails, pointless manicures, and bribes from just about everyone I know. I can't say I ever missed work, lost a relationship or ran out of money due to my addiction, but I definitely missed out on a potential career as a hand model.

I tried all of the detox cures. No Bite was a recurring remedy - eh, it didn't taste so bad. I became desensitized to the burn. My grandmother, God rest her soul, offered me monetary compensation if I could quit chowing down on my digits. Didn't work. My 33-year-old self is kicking my 10-year-old self on that one. The fake nails fell off too fast and, to this day, the smell of a low-end nail salon/chop shop sends me into dry heaves, anyway.

I went cold turkey a few times.

My first stab at it was after college. Working my first job, I was interviewing rednecks at the truck stop down the road from Beavers (use your imagination) for an article about Super Bowl Sunday (yeah, my dream assignment). I took a look at my fingers and realized they looked just like Buddy Joe's, the big rig operator I was interviewing as he scarfed down fried chicken between dips of chaw: short, stubby and disgusting (not Buddy Joe, the nails, although poor Buddy sure had seen a few miles of rough road).

I ran from the truck stop screaming (but not just over the nails; also over my career as a journalist dying a slow death in the Texas Panhandle) and decided I needed to make a change. Buddy was a nice guy, but you couldn't tell us apart by looking at phalanges. I didn't want to move forward in my life on any level being mistaken for a middle-age truck driver from Clovis, New Mexico.

I made it four months that time. Then I got engaged to be married to Dr. X. Anyone who has suffered through wedding planning with a mother who believes carnations are the ultimate bridal flower can understand why I started gnawing again.

The second time I quit, without the aid of anything but my own willpower, I was pregnant. "Why would I bite my fingernails and possibly pass anything disgusting on to the baby?" I wondered. Because it's totally OK to infect myself that way any other time. My body - not a temple.

I am now on my third attempt at quitting for good. See, as one who is afflicted with only the most grotesque of common illnesses, I came down with Shingles after the Fourth of July. I'm not going to talk about that because I still itch even thinking about it, but I came to the realization that I needed a little less stress in my life. Anxious? Me?!?! Well, my hands told the story. It was time to get the nibbling down to nil.

I am thrilled to say that I am now a proud recovering nail biter again, three months in. It hasn't been an easy road. I'm probably developing cancer by chewing loads of Orbit. I've had a few weak moments I blame on the presidential election, the economy and Stephenie Meyer (if you've read Breaking Dawn, you know what I mean). Hangnails are a temptation, too. But each and every time I reward myself with a manicure, can pick open a knotted shoelace on my own, or actually use my very own cuticle board, I realize that this is the dawning of an excellent new era for my hands and myself.

And then I wonder if Palmolive is looking for new cover (I mean, hand) girls.