imageWelcome Sue and congratulations on 16 days of the most tremendous period of healing your mind and body have ever known.  It is normal and expected for family and friends to have little or no appreciation for what it takes for any drug addict to navigate recovery to the point where the addiction chatter ends and quiet arrives. It's normal for them to think that bringing it up will only make us think about smoking and that's the last thing they want to do. It's normal for them to believe that by day 17 we should be all better.

It's also normal to blur the lines between encountering a subconsciously conditioned use cue which triggers a crave episode, and the urges, wants and desires self inflicted by the conscious mind by fixating on a thought of wanting.   And then there's the 3rd possiblity during recovery.  It's that what is happening now isn't us encoutering an unextinguished subconsious cue or consciously romanticizing our now arrested dependency, but our simply being here at a nicotine cessation forum and thinking about various aspects of recovery.

For example, you're here with us now at a forum exclusively devoted to the topic of nicotine dependency recovery and while "thinking" and reading about the topic I'll bet a carrot (less fattening than donuts) that you are not in the middle of a full blown crave episode or feeling self inflicted anxieties brought on by conscious thought fixation.  If so, don't you find that amazing??  You've come a long long way these past 17 days, Sue!  While entirely normal to want it to be over and done, while normal to want the addiction chatter to end,  while normal to no longer be able to see the rose bud opening and feeling like things have ground to a standstill, that it'll never get better than it is now, that if so, the way you feel today isn't worth continuing, it's the same path home that most of us traveled.

imageClearly you've navigated the bulk of physical withdrawal and extinguished most use cues.  While you may be in the final stages of brain nicotinic receptor re-sensitization and down-regulation, and still have a few remote, infrequent, or seasonal use cues to meet, greet and extinguish, for the most part you're now engaged in allowing your conscious mind the time needed to move beyond the long laundry list of lies we each fed ourselves as to why we needed that next fix.   While physiology and conditioning can quickly heal, now it's simply a matter of developing the patience needed to either allow new nicotine-free memories to become so abundant that they become the mind's new sense of normal, or that you accelerate your rose bud's opening by using your intelligence to more quickly let go and move on.

Sue, when that next urge to use finds its way into your mind don't try to run or hide but instead reach out and grab it by the horns.  Focus on the fact that some time, place, person, emotion or situation caused you to think about smoking nicotine.  What thought next entered your mind?  For example, if looking at a smoker smoking did you feel teased, tormented or jealous?   The cigarette you are waching being smoked by them is probably being inhaled while on auto pilot.   They may have no idea you're watching.  Jealous?  Of what?  Seventy perecent of all smokers surveyed say the want to quit and among daily smokers the desire to be free is even higher.  This year 40% of all smokers will make a serious recovery effort of at least 24 hours. 

Jealous?  It's likely that the smoker you're looking at now dreams of someday being where you are now.  Are you jealous of the money they spend, their loss of self esteem, their being compelled to endlessly replenish constantly falling blood serum nicotine reserves?  Clearly you're not jealous of the fear they live with about each puff building larger and larger carcinogen bombs throughout their tissues, or destroying more of their body's ability to receive and transport life giving oxygen.  Truth is they're likely far more jealous of you.

Maybe seeing them causes you to dream of smoking "just one."   But you're smarter than to tease yourself with such nonsense.   You know that for a recovering drug addict, one is too many and a thousand never enough.   Until our intelligence or the passage of time allow us abandon "just one," "just once" thinking, the conscious mind cannot join our physiology and conditioning in claiming to be free.  Why tease and torment ourselves with the belief that we can somehow control our mind's priorities teacher, that just one puff and up to 50% of our brain's nicotinic type acetylcholine receptors will not become occupied by nicotine, that our brain will not soon be begging for more.   

Maybe seeing that smoker gets juices flowing about loving the taste.   Is that why we really smoked, Sue, for taste?  How many taste buds are inside our lungs, the place we sucked and briefly held each puff?   Name one other taste that we suck into our lungs.  That's the wrong pipe!  Yes, our addiction had flavor but will thousands of great non-addictive flavors at our fingertips is that really why we smoked?  If so then why do we never have the urge to light chocolate on fire and suck it into our lungs too?

Sue, I eimagencourage you to not run from your thoughts but to grab each and expose it to honest analysis under the brightest light you can find.  The sooner we let go of romantic drug addiction fixations the sooner the chatter ends and quiet arrives.  In large part, it's our decision how long nicotine use rationalizations continue to fill and occupy our mind.  Like ending any relationship, in large part we're in the drivers seat as to the amount of time it takes to move on.  

But let's not kid ourselves.   Let's not pretend that we can undo years or decades of dependency thinking overnight.  We're not machines.  But what we can do is rapidly accelerate letting go.  

Embrace recovery, Sue, don't fight it!  This is the best gift you've ever allowed yourself.  Hold it close and allow that rose bud to fully unfold.   It won't be long before you're here with us residing on Easy Street and going entire days without once thinking about wanting to use nicotine.  After the first such day they become more and more common, until they grow into our new sense of normal. 




Still just one rule if we want to continue to watch recovery's challenges grow fewer, less intense and further apart ...  no nicotine today!!!  We're each with you in spirit, Sue!  Yes you can, yes you have, yes you are!!

Breathe deep, hug hard, live long,

John (Gold x10)

Edited 2 times by JohnPolito Mar 6 10 11:15 AM.