Hello everyone,
In life we face a lot of stress. Sometimes this stress manifests itself as anger. Other times it can manifest as fear. But stress is always uncomfortable, and in reality it’s a big reason why so many lose their quits. Because they end up believing that they were stressed to the point that a cigarette would help. There’s a good reason for this. As addicts, we always feel calmer after we smoke and over time I think we begin to believe that the cigarette is a kind of safety valve in our lives when we feel stress. When the addict flies off the handle or when one of life’s stressors hit us square in the face as can happen so often, the first thought is that calming cigarette.
Of course, anyone who’s read anything about addiction understands that the only calming factor of this insidious addiction is the relief we feel when we feed it. I have to say that this release is false. It really doesn’t exist except in the life of an addict who chooses to base their entire belief system on the fact that if we don’t smoke, our stress will be ten times harder to deal with. I think this is how a modified plant becomes our crutch. Our friend. And in reality, our slave master.
I know all of this because at one time, that was me. My belief system stated to me that the only way to find peace in this world filled with stress is to feed my addiction. Over time, this thinking becomes such a foundation of our lives that we find ourselves believing that we can never beat it, or in other words we decide that the slavery of addiction is the easiest option that we can find to live this life of stress, even as the cigarette makes our lives more stressful.
When the thought of quitting first popped into my head, I didn’t believe that I could. It was just so foriegn of a concept to me that I could survive without them. That’s why I prepped for so long. Because I had to change my entire belief system to be successful. The number one thing that carried me through my entire fight with this addiction was my belief that I could tear down my entire belief system and replace it with a new one.
Thing is, this takes time. It takes commitment and the ability to see through the lies that we created for ourselves in order to smoke. I never went to whyquit because I had my own smoking example in my father, who died from complications of throat cancer after having half of his face removed along with the jaw bone because of - you guessed it - a horrible addiction that just makes no sense, and one that I also carried through my entire life.
But what really matters is now. You see, a bit over eight years ago, I made the choice to become free. To rid myself of this baggage that I knew was slowly killing me. And as I approach my ninth year smoke free, I have to say that I don’t miss smoking a bit. This is because I kept my focus on freedom and let life’s stresses be what they really are. Normal stress that can be controlled simply by using our minds and to be honest, we do a much better job of managing it after we quit simply because we quit relying on the crutch to carry us through.
We can all become free. All it takes is first a belief in our future and secondly a burning desire to lift ourselves out of the bonds of addiction because when we do that, the world becomes a happier place and one that we can again be confident in. Never give up on your quest. Never believe that it never ends, because it does. Even with everything that’s happened in my life as of late, I never lost touch with my belief in a better future. I’ve always believed I’d get there and now I’m living it. I can’t wait to hear of your own success in discovering freedom.
ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!
Chuck
