The Final Truth

A twenty year smoker who averaged a pack a day and took eight puffs per cigarette lit 146,000 cigarettes and sucked warm nicotine laden smoke into crying and decaying lungs 1,168,000 times. Over one million puffs!

Where do the memories of those one million puffs go after we quit smoking? Where are they now? How many of those one million puffs made our mind say "aaah" as they immediately helped restore our falling blood-serum nicotine level? Where did all of our "aaah" memories go when we quit? Were they true? Did new nicotine bring us a sense of replenishment and stimulation thousands upon thousands of times? Absolutely!

Unless replenished, the amount of nicotine remaining in our blood streaimagem would be reduced by half within two hours. Although most of us hated our bondage, there is no denying that each of those 146,000 nicotine fixes helped - to some degree - bring relief from constantly falling blood serum nicotine levels that were carrying each of us closer to experiencing those first sign of early chemical withdrawal.

Yes, each and every fix played a vital role in restoring our minds to a level of comfort upon which we had come to depend. We created our own artificial sense of nicotine/dopamine normalcy, our own addiction comfort level that each year may have required a bit more nicotine to sustain. Yes, each fix brought the addict in us a true sense of comfort -- from the pains of our own addiction -- and yes all those memories still remain, but one important thing has changed, our mind's chemical need for more nicotine ended within 2 weeks. Within 3 weeks our brain and restored a4b2-type acetylcholine receptor counts in at least 13 different brain regions to those seen in non-smokers.

If you could go back through old Freedom's 1999 and 2000 relapse threads (before our relapse policy began evolving) and read all of the descriptions of relapses that occurred beyond week two, they sound strikingly similar. They read like this:

"I tasted a mouth full of warm smoke, I remembered the smell, I felt dizzy and wanted to cough but I didn't get the sense of satisfaction, that sense of relief, that I'd expected. It just didn't come!"

Those thousands of enticing memories in the relapsor's mind told them to expect a sense of relief and satisfaction" but their body had adjusted to life without nicotine. Although nicotine did stimulate their brain's dopamine pathways, their brain wasn't in a state of dopamine deprivation, they were feeling no early anxieties that needed quieting and the expected sense of relief wasn't there. It didn't arrive. Unlike when the thousands of replenishment aaah memories in their mind were created, there was nothing missing and there was nothing that needed replenishing. So what happened next?

Well, sadly, most of us couldn't help but continue believing in those thousands of memories created by an actively feeding drug addict. We kept searching inside that cigarette or the next. Soon we borrowed another or bought our own pack and it wasn't long before we again had our addiction churning in all its full-blown destructive and deadly glory. We could then look in the mirror and say to themselves, "see, I was right, smoking did bring me a sense of relief!"

Until we fully appreciate that our memories of our "perfect aaah smokes" were created during a cycle of our chemical dependency and that we must once again be active addicts in order to experience that same sense of relief, the memories of prior fixes elevating our sagging blood serum nicotine level will continue inviting us home. Yes, the memories are true but only for active addicts in need a fix.

Regardless of whether the next few minutes are your most comfortable yet or in the end prove to have been the most challenging of this entire temporary journey of readjustment, they will be doable! There is only one rule - no nicotine from any source - Never Take Another Puff, Dip or Chew!

Breathe deep, hug hard, live long Freedom!

John


Edited 1 time by FreedomNicotine Feb 15 09 10:36 PM.