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Share your quitting journey

Active Addicts Tend To Support Each Other's Addiction

JonesCarpeDiem
0 4 5

Over the years I've seen people try to kick many addictions. I've learned the worst thing you can do when you are trying to release yourself from an addiction is to hang out with people who are still actively doing it. Why would anyone  go hang out with a bunch of people who were snorting cocaine right in front of you if you were trying to stop snorting cocaine?

Everyone wants to be accepted.

Addictions bring people with the same addiction together to justify what they do.

If you are concerned about losing your smoking buddies take a close look and see if smoking may have been what drew you and the only glue that held you together.

Be honest. We all know that drinking and smoking go hand in hand. If you did other social things with smokers, examine what you did together. Chances are it was smoking and drinking in tandem. That was your socialization, the justification to keep damaging yourself.

One of the biggest parts of succeeding is looking at smoking for what it was, and I mean REALLY was.

Smoking manipulated us into it's way of thinking and we let it.

This is just another reason we make it difficult to quit.

You need to put a light on reality and keep it there to understand what smoking really was and understand what freedom from smoking really is.

I drive by an organization that helps the homeless on my way to the grocery store. The organization is on one side of the street and 30-40 smokers are on the other side. Picture that. These people have nothing and smoking is still their top priority.

I understand many of you have family who smoke and aren't intending to quit under their own power.or by their choice. I can almost guarantee you will not enjoy being in a confined space with them smoking after a while.

You can't dump your family but YOU CAN SAVE YOURSELF.

Be bold. Tell them you can't be in a confined space while they are smoking. If they offer resistance, tell them you would do it for them.

if they have to start thinking before they smoke, they just may realize they could do it too.

4 Comments
About the Author
Hello, My name is Dale. I was quit 18 months before joining this site and had participated on another site during that time. I learned a lot there and brought it with me. I joined this site the first week of August 2008. I didn't pressure myself to quit. HOW I QUIT I didn't count, I didn't deny myself to get started. When I considered quitting (at a friends request to influence his brother to quit), I simply told myself to wait a little longer. No denial, nothing painful. After 4 weeks I was down to 5 cigarettes from a pack a day. The strength came from proving to myself, I didn't need to smoke because I normally would have smoked. Simple yes? I bought the patch. I forgot to put one on on the 4th day. I needed it the next day but the following week I forgot two days in a row I put one in my wallet with a promise to myself that I would slap it on and wait an hour rather than smoke. It rode in my wallet my first year.There's nothing keeping any of you from doing this. It doesn't cost a dime. This is about unlearning something you've done for a long time. The nicotine isn't the hard part. Disconnecting from the psychological pull, the memories and connected emotions is. :-) Time is the healer.