Good afternoon EXer’s!
Just checking in again. As far as my quit goes, everything is fine. Still closing in on eight years!! Unfortunately, I had a major computer crash some time ago, and was to busy to fix it. So now I’m on an old laptop that I finally got upgraded enough to use, but unfortunately, the keyboard is shot, so it takes me awhile to type
Mainly, I wanted to let you all know that I’m still doing well!
There was a time when I believed that I could never reach this point in my life. A time when I believed that addiction WAS my life. You see, I’d allowed the addiction to consume me completely. To the point where I believed that there was no other life, or perhaps that I would never perceive it.
I was stuck in the dark world of addiction, and to be honest, for the longest time I really wasn’t all that interested in finding a way out of it. I felt entitled to smoke, and no one was ever going to tell me otherwise. And this to me was the root of the problem. I ignored those who tried to tell me of the horrible things I was doing to my body. For that matter, I ignored my own inner voice that sometimes would try to make me see through the cloud of smoke to reality. To the reality that I was slowly killing myself.
But over time, my body had symptoms that broke the barrier of my own making. Every morning, I would cough for hours on end as I smoked, and still I would ignore what I was doing to myself. For some reason, feeding my addiction was more important to me than facing the reality of addiction. It took a lot of reflection and self understanding to reach the point where I could even admit to myself that I was an addict.
And that was only the beginning! I allowed myself to see through my addiction and finally decided to turn these thoughts that were at first more of a fear into an actual reality. At last I had torn just enough of the tentacles of addiction from my body to see the reality of what I was doing to myself and you know what? For the first time, I was terrified!
I already had symptoms from my smoking. I began wondering if it was too late to even try to quit. I mean, why bother if it’s already over. But again, that was just the addiction talking, and at that time for some reason, I could see through my addiction. I think it was because I’d decided that the addiction wasn’t the number one driving force in my life. I’d already screwed up all those years ago when I started smoking and now I figured it was time to pick up the pieces of my life, rearrange those pieces and turn what was left into something amazing!!
That was almost eight years ago and you know what? All of those fears of the past began to melt away the moment I quit trying to harm myself. Suddenly I could see other things that were so much more important for me than smoking! The world just looked so much brighter and cleaner that I just couldn’t think of a single reason why I’d want to go back to the slavery of addiction.
My heart was filled with the thoughts of life rather than thoughts of when I was going to have that next cigarette. Don’t get me wrong. Quitting is never easy, but I learned that I was blinded by my addiction, and I knew this the moment I put out that last cigarette.
I remember that moment well. Standing on my deck and staring up at the beauty of Mt. Princeton. I only smoked about half of that cigarette. I thought that I’d think, “goodbye old friend.”
But that’s not how it was at all! In fact, I was smiling! Sure it was going to be tough, but I’d prepped and I was ready and not only that, I KNEW I was ready.
I think we create barriers for ourselves when we become addicted. It’s the only way we can cope with the reality of what we’re doing to ourselves. And then as we continue to feed that addiction, we reinforce those barriers, because really if we could see the reality of what we’re doing to ourselves. If we could see past the addiction, we’d never have started.
So when that day arrives where you can see through your barriers. When you can see through the lies that we told ourselves in order to stay addicted, then my friends it’s time to forgive your past and move onto that brighter future that we all know is there for the taking and never look back!! It’s your life and your future that you’re fighting for and trust me, it’s a fight well worth fighting!!
I look forward to the day that each and every one of you feels the freedom that I and so many others feel now. It’s an amazing reality that’s just over the horizon. All you have to do is fight for it!
ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!
Chuck
