I’m quitting. Don’t get me wrong — it still gives me a high, but I just can’t do it anymore. You see, I change when I do it; I become a monster. I don’t know how long it’s been this way, but the last few times, I’ve noticed the sideways glances from my friends and the ashamed frowns of my family. So I’m giving it up. Starting today, I’m a clean man.

I’m quitting cold turkey on Trivial Pursuit.

Kicking the habit won’t be easy, like a question about the Beatles, but rather frightfully hard, like a question about Eisenhower’s secretary of state. It will take as much willpower as I can muster, and probably more, to resist that self-indulgent ego trip I feel when I fill in my pies and take it to the middle.

But even harder to overcome will be the history the game and I share. You see, I started using (or abusing) Trivial Pursuit at a young age, well under age 10. I started on Trivial Pursuit Junior, with questions like “what’s heavier — a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers?” Being well versed in primary colors, Mother Goose and integer addition, I breezed through this version, moving on to the classic Trivial Pursuit Genus I — the major leagues of TP — by age 12.

For years I innocently played Genus, unaware that among the Dean Martin and phobia questions lurked a malevolence that violated me, changing me from a mild mannered, minutiae-spewing young man into a raging, pompous, arrogant literati hell-bent not only on winning but also outing and exploiting the general knowledge inferiority of my opponents. Even in those early days, I showed off, adding “the former” to the correct answer “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” and giving unnecessary backstory to my answers — like explaining what an archipelago was or debating whether Kennedy actually wrote “Profiles in Courage.”

I’m not proud of what I’ve done.

In my teenage years, with the advent of a high school education and a steady stream of updated editions, my control over the game tightened, and my arrogance multiplied. For me, hearing Trivial Pursuit in conversation was like blood in water for a shark. I challenged anyone to a game, of any age, whether I knew the person or not. And, when the person wasn’t scared off by the rabid, sociopathic glare in my eyes and accepted my challenge, I usually won. I learned the intricacies of each edition — that the sports edition had a soft spot for Muhammad Ali and Joe Namath, and that the Millennium edition was written by chimps.

Looking back now, I can see the way the game slowly came to dominate my life. I judged people solely on my experiences playing Trivial Pursuit with them. I collected cards, stealing them from decks of successful games. On New Years Eve of 2000, I answered every question right on a card from Genus II, and then carried the card in my wallet for two years. I chose my heroes and role models based on their number of references in the game. It was a tough life sometimes — going through high school idolizing Lesley “Twiggy” Hornby and Henry Kissinger — but I reveled in it.

But that’s all come to an end now. I’ve earned more than my share of pie pieces and paid dearly for them. Trivial Pursuit has taken part of my soul, and I fear if I continue to play, it could take my life. You see, the last time I played, something bad happened. No, I wasn’t playing while driving or told that I’d “had enough” by the board game manager at Target. I was among friends, playing Genus V in a quiet, relaxed gathering. My team was losing, a situation that always put me on edge, when a question about Ukrainian history came up. I’ll spare the details of my actions, but say this: The year was 1240, I was BatuKahn and the game board, pies and card decks were the city of Kiev.

I’m not proud of what I did.

You can see why I need to stop. I don’t want to be a Trivial Pursuit fiend. I don’t want to stand outside the Jischke Honors Building, unshaven, with a gingko-fortified smoothie hidden in a paper bag, challenging passers-by to a game of Trivial Pursuit. That’s no way to live! I must strive to meet and befriend people, not tear them apart mentally and emotionally because of their pathetic quiz game skills.