Good morning Exer's!!
I hope this day finds you as calm as you can be under the circumstances. I was thinking about one of those things that can really mess with us during our quits. The little lies that the addiction sends us all of the time. I think the reason for this is that we've already faced the fact that we are really going to quit and just like the day that we decided to quit and found a way to sneak that thought past that addict within, so too does the addiction try to slip thoughts past the armor of our resolve.
I think it's the little thoughts that can become the dangerous ones so long as we listen to them. For me, it seemed like my addiction was almost a living thing though I know now that the only way the addiction can live is through me. Only I can give this nagging part of my brain life. Only I can let this part of my mind influence me. And only I can make that part of my mind disappear.
But yes, those little lies that the addiction always tries to feed us is the very thing that can destroy what was once a confident quit. To me, it seems like the addiction uses emotions to sneak those little lies into the forefront of our minds where we might think them.
At times, it's jealousy as in “How come they can smoke and I can't?”
The reality is that we already know the answer to this one and we always thought that we were prepared for this instance and yet we actually find ourselves not only thinking that thought but also giving it a power that doesn't belong to it. Because of our feeling that we have to go through something when others don't, we can discover that we have a small chink in our armor.
And then as we look at our new and wonderful world of freedom, a thought sneaks past our defenses, one that is attached to a feeling of loss. This is when the thought of “losing the old friend” pops into the mind. Attached to the feeling of loss is the memories of how we would sit there and smoke and for some reason it doesn't seem like such an ugly scenario even though we know that it is.
When we enter a store, a moment of excitement will carry with it the thought that we should buy a pack of cigarettes, even though we know this isn't what we're going to do. And yet because these thoughts are already attached to emotions, we react very strongly to them.
So to me it seems that as we quit and spend each day ripping out those shackles of addiction, that we must first of all be aware of those little lies and secondly be aware of the emotion that is attached to it. By separating the the thought from the emotion, the addicted thought loses most of it's power.
When we separate the thought from our emotions, then the actual thought is once again placed into the correct context and we can see through the mask of addiction to the reality of the thought. When this happens then thoughts of losing the old friend for example just don't make any sense. Stripped of emotion, we see the realities that were there all along. You know, the reality that tells us that we really didn't lose anything but instead were gaining everything!
Fight your best fight my friends. Look not to the thought but instead to the emotion that is attached to that thought and strip it from the thought. In this way perhaps no man's land might be as little easier to navigate. Perhaps using this method the addict within will lose some of it's power.
We still have to fight to the end. We still have to push those addicted thoughts away every day but I think that with understanding comes a little calm. With understanding comes another weapon and means to fight. We've all got what it takes inside of us and the thing is, it's so deep inside of us that even our very addictions cannot throw that part of us out.
For we are freedom fighters! We are the ones who believe that we will win not just the battle but the entire war no matter how long it takes! We are the ones who will walk the walk of a winner because we will not take slavery as an answer. For on that first day when we put out that cigarette and tasted freedom for the first time, we longed for it. We climbed for it and in the end we will all find it!!
ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!
