I was feeling bad about not being on the site as much lately, and decided to get on yesterday and post something. I saw the Slip or Relapse? post by roller831 and thought that would be a good one to weigh in on. Except nothing ever came to me. I started to reply several times throughout the day, but finally gave up realizing I just didn’t have any strong feelings about it one way or another. I could see both sides of the issue. I tried one more time before bed. I started to wonder how many puffs it would take to feel like you were addicted again. Just one? Several? Maybe an entire cigarette or two?
I fell asleep thinking about this. Soon after, my smokemare began. I was pondering this question of when the addiction kicks back in. I thought, if we knew the answer to that, then we would know whether it is appropriate to re-set our Quit Date or not. And then I decided I just had to find out for sure. So I walked out to my car to get my cigarettes and start smoking. Because this was a dream, it didn’t even occur to me that I had not been in possession of any cigarettes in 5 months. And sure enough, there was a pack in my car. So I lit up and had one. After each puff, I waited to see if I could somehow sense that I was now addicted again. I didn’t feel like it, so I had another puff. I finally finished, didn’t feel anything, and wondered if I should light up another. Then I realized, I won’t know if I’m hooked again unless I start craving a cigarette. And I don’t usually crave a cigarette until an hour or two after my last one. And this whole experiment is flawed! What if I am addicted again?! What have I done?! I started screaming and running into the house… and woke up. It was so real, it took me several minutes to decide if I had really done that, and had just come in to bed and fallen asleep. I literally held my hand up to my mouth and breathed out to see if I could smell cigarette smoke.
