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Share your quitting journey

The shroud of addiction

Chuck-2-20-2011
1 4 66

 When we quit, for some crazy reason almost everyone considers it to be a negative goal. We look at our lives as they are with addiction and never even notice the positive when we think of becoming non smokers.

 

For some, it’s almost looked at as something similar to an invasive surgery, or getting teeth pulled or some other procedure that we all dread. And as such, we tend to look to the quit day as something horrible on the horizon, rather than a life saving goal. We see what we’re losing and forget to see what we’re gaining. Perhaps it’s just a part of addiction or perhaps it’s something deeper within us.

 

I know that very few ever WANT to quit smoking. Rather, it’s considered a burden that must be gone through. It’s as if our addiction just throws logic out the window! And to an extent it does, I think.

 

To me, the problem is that we spend so much time lying to ourselves in order to convince ourselves that what we’re doing is OK. We create this shroud around the truth and the longer we smoke, the thicker the shroud becomes, blinding us of the realities of what we’re doing to ourselves. And yet we all know that we need to quit the entire time that we smoke!

 

In my days of preparation, I always intentionally kept my focus on the positive side. I worked to remove the shroud of addiction that I’d worked so hard to create. I spent my days learning to create change. To see life without cigarettes as a positive rather than a negative. And I knew I had achieved this when I began looking forward to my quit date, rather than dreading it.

 

I knew when I didn’t even finish that last cigarette and had a smile on my face that I’d found a way to peer through my own shroud of addiction to the reality that I was about to create and that what I saw on that last day was first the benefits of the quit and then the fact that I actually WANTED to quit.

 

And compared to some, it was an easy quit for me. That’s why I know that the answer to every quit lives inside of us. That with enough work, we can find that gem of peace that’s always there, and yet hidden in the background.

 

The reality is always the same. Smoking kills, slowly robbing us of our future. Smoking enslaves us and forces us to live our lives always concerned about when we can smoke the next one. Smoking steals away our pride and makes us feel like a kind of failure every day that we continue to smoke.

 

These are the realities that the addiction doesn’t want us to see. The facts are actually pretty simple. There’s so much freedom waiting for anyone who can walk the path. There’s so much more time to do those things that we love to do without the cigarettes and everything is just so much brighter and - well - clean!

 

It’s after we quit that the shroud of addiction is truly lifted from our minds, but we can peer through that cloud if we really try. We can see the wonders that could be ours so long as we stay on this path. We can see the happiness and feeling of accomplishment that we created by putting out that last cigarette.

 

How we got here isn’t as important as the fact that we’re willing to fix it. That we’re willing to take our lives into our own hands and look to a future filled with freedom and light rather than trudging along as we always have.  

 

The power to quit is within you and it’s a choice. We can either see life as a miserable and dark thing without cigarettes or we can see it as a life filled with freedom and peace. A life that we’d all want if we can see the through the shroud to the reality that is our addiction.

 

I hope you choose life, peace a freedom. The alternative is a choice that’s just too hard to think about . . .

 

ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!

 

Chuck

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