THE TIME HAS COME!
on giving up nicotine
Sometimes I feel ridiculous.
I’m getting honest here.
It’s not that I ever intend to lie.
Especially to myself.
Addictions live because the addict ‘needs’ to lie or fail to admit that there could be a ‘big’ problem.
To tell the truth is to admit weakness, vulnerability, and gullibility.
For 50 years I’ve smoked. I’ve stopped a few times, once for about four years. But the addiction is always there waiting for the right opportunity to reclaim the addict. And, some of us are addicted to being ‘cool’ and ‘dangerous’ which is the perfect opening for whatever evil is lurking on the fringes.
SO Cooolll and Dangerous!
Yeah, well… There is no ‘cool and dangerous’ in being a smoker or any of the other addictions that make us weak and manipulatable.
So, now I’m 70 and I’ve had to look at some realities that I have resisted.
- The body ages. There is no magic diet or formula that stops change. But there are things that will influence the change.
- Even the brain is vulnerable. Neuroplasticity seems to work both ways, we can change our thinking for the better or the worse by the way we think and the substances we ingest.
- The spirit becomes weak when I succumb to irrational demands of substance.
- The world around us (society) changes also. There are very real stressors — some physical, some emotional, some psychological, et cetera — that seem everpresent these days. Stressors, even if they only feel imminent, take a toll on our attention and subsequently our wellbeing.
I have smoked to ‘be cool’, to subdue emotions and anxieties, and because ‘that was who I was’.
Self-image is powerful — for good or bad. I have to be different from ‘smoker me’ without dropping the annoying, nonconformist parts that I am proud of.
So I called the quit-line. Yeah, I’m gonna need help with this. Publishing here is part of my public announcement that I intend to stop one bad habit…NO. One Addiction that is destroying my life, my future, and supporting companies that are distributing poison for a profit.
WISH ME LUCK. :-)
Dana Sanford
2019
