Quitters Inc.

Content Warning: This section refers to addiction.

“Quitters, Inc.” is a story about recovery from addiction that notably eschews any sense of optimism or triumph. For Morrison and the people like him who need Quitters, Inc. to kick their habits, recovery isn’t about stepping into a new world of self-actualization but moving from one mode of Learned Helplessness to another. Thematically, the story’s interest isn’t in the conquest of addiction so much as in drawing parallels between the pain of addiction and the harm caused by recovery itself. Whatever apparent happy ending at which the story might arrive, that end is only earned through collective suffering. For Quitters, Inc., freedom from addiction is achieved through the scattershot application of dehumanizing and disempowering psychological and physical abuse. When a person with an addiction decides to get better, everyone around them suffers.

This isn’t to say that addiction is preferable, but in the world of “Quitters, Inc.,” the messy cost of addictive behavior is as much a part of shedding an addiction as living with it. After all, it’s not as though everything is fine at the story’s inciting incident. Through the third-person limited perspective, the reader is given a front-row seat to Morrison’s internal world, an obsessive and largely unhappy place. Most of the story’s exposition and rising action are centered around Morrison’s dissatisfaction with his life and his inability to go even five minutes or engage with the smallest of life’s stresses without needing a cigarette. King’s repetition of the word “cigarette” emphasizes the nature of addiction as Morrison reaches for, thinks about, and yearns for his next cigarette over and over again. It’s clear from the start that this addiction is killing him from the inside out, and it is not something Morrison can escape on his own.

Into this pessimistic state of affairs comes the story’s antagonist, monster character, and antihero: Vic Donatti. A grotesque caricature of behavioral psychology, Donatti ironically represents both the main external threat in the story and Morrison’s only chance at living an addiction-free life. Through Donatti, the reader is given a view into the story’s other main thematic concern: satirical ridicule of the addiction treatment industry and behavioral psychologists who enact their most sadistic impulses. More mob boss than addiction counselor, Donatti and the rest of the staff at Quitters, Inc. are characterized in equal parts by allusions to mafia tropes and a façade of respectable professionalism that euphemizes the organization’s violence. These mafia tropes include the secrecy surrounding the organization and its methods, character names like Junk and Mort “Three-Fingers” Minelli, and the use of torture to get a desired result. Likewise, by constantly smiling and being unapologetic about their methods, the Quitters, Inc. staff embodies The Horror of Pragmatism. It’s not just that their violent methods are effective; the effectiveness is a transparent excuse for them to do the violence in the first place. They enjoy it.

Though Quitters, Inc. represents a very real threat to Morrison and his family, the primary conflict of the text is not an external conflict with the organization but an internal one. Though initially resistant to the program’s methods, Morrison is never anything more than “mulish” when it comes to his relationship with Quitters, Inc. The rising action instead focuses on Morrison’s attempts to accept the new reality Donatti has imposed upon him and kick the habit. Morrison is a passive character, reacting to the story’s action rather than driving it. Just as he was mastered by his addiction at the start of the text, he is mastered by Quitters, Inc., which leverages the one force stronger than his need to smoke: his love for his family. In what might be the closest thing the text comes to as a positive thesis statement on the nature of recovery, Morrison realizes some weeks into his treatment “what Donatti and his colleagues had so cynically realized before him: love is the most pernicious drug of all. Let the romantics debate its existence. Pragmatists accept it and use it” (347). Thematically, in the world of “Quitters, Inc.,” the only thing that can overcome addiction is love.

The climax of the story sees the marriage of these two thematic threads as both Morrison’s failure to overcome his internal demons and Quitters, Inc.’s methods lead to very real and very violent ends. Morrison’s wife is abducted and tortured, but this moment of cruelty ends up being ironic. Morrison is offered a moment of true grace as his wife not only forgives him for the pain he’s caused her but also outright dismisses it as a worthwhile part of his recovery process: “‘It was worth it,’ she said. ‘God bless these people. They’ve let you out of prison’” (351). Morrison’s wife as the recipient of Donatti’s violence symbolizes the way addiction can harm families, as they often deal with negative consequences of their loved one’s behavior. While Morrison’s wife has nothing to do with his addiction, she is the one who suffers acutely in this passage. Alongside Mrs. McCann’s missing pinkie, the text also foregrounds a gendered aspect of addiction and violence, as wives in particular suffer because of their husbands’ actions. Still, this scene shows that love is not only a cynical driving force that can compel someone to overcome an addiction but also a net that can catch them when they fall.

Morrison does ultimately overcome his addiction. Exchanging one mode of learned helplessness for another, he sticks to the program, thanks in large part to his wife’s support, and kicks the habit. Despite the pain inflicted by Quitters, Inc. and its recovery process, in a few short months, he is not only holding steady in his cigarette sobriety but also referring others to the program. He takes the same plain white business card that he cursed Jimmy McCann for passing along to him and hands it to a former colleague in a bar, parroting McCann’s words: “You know […] these guys changed my life” (353). Continuing the mafia imagery, Morrison has joined the family, not only participating in his own treatment but also recruiting new victims to Quitters, Inc. While Morrison has changed, Quitters, Inc. has not, and his actions here foreshadow the grim reveal in the story’s final paragraph.

The falling action asserts that Morrison and his wife have never been happier. Morrison is at “what Cindy proudly calls his ‘fighting weight’” (353), a term that carries a sense of foreboding; wrestlers and boxers often go to extreme lengths to cut weight before a match and place in a lower weight class. This is temporary weight loss, alluding to the fact that Morrison might not stay at this weight forever. At this moment, though, he happily pays the invoice for his treatment—electricity used to torment Cindy included—relegating that pain to the past.

The lingering final image of Mrs. McCann’s missing pinkie is a pessimistic and ambiguous concluding moment. On the one hand, the story seems to suggest that the real horror of pragmatism is that the scars its methods leave are necessary—the McCanns appear to be just as happy as the Morrisons. On the other hand, the story implies that this happiness is only a brief waystation before the next slip. At its most optimistic, the symbol reminds the reader that Quitters, Inc. isn’t just a year of recovery: It’s forever. They are still out there, watching, waiting for the next weigh-in, and keeping tabs. One’s addiction may be under control, but it’s never really gone, and neither are the wounds it causes.