Try Replacing the Word
"Cigarette" with "Nicotine"
We don't live for "cigarettes" any more than an alcoholic lives for an empty bottle or a heroin addict an empty needle. We lived for the drug inside, which in our case was nicotine. The cigarette, needle and bottle are simply drug delivery devices, with the cigarette and its more than 3,500 chemical particles and 500 gases being the dirtiest of all.
For far too long we've romanticized our cigarettes. Slick marketing, artistic packaging and an abundance of peer
training in how to look soooooo cool while ingesting that next fix allowed
our minds to elevate our dirty drug delivery device almost to hero worship status. Only in the past few decades have we come to learn that the intoxication
level of a drug is not how addictiveness is measured. "Dependence" upon a drug is defined as how difficult it is for the user to quit, the
drug's relapse rate, the percentage of people who eventually become addicted, the rating users give their own need for the substance and the degree to
which the substance will be used in the face of evidence that it causes harm. Over the past two decades, study after study have
concluded that nicotine generates greater drug "dependence" than heroin, cocaine or alcohol.
Isn't it time to stop romanticizing the cigarette?
Isn't it time to awaken to the realization that convenience store marketing that pounded home the message that we had not yet lived, experienced real
pleasure, tasted life's best flavor, rebelled, been true to ourselves, acted adult or stirred our senses until we'd smoked was bait? Yes, the
chemically enslaved mind reaches for excuses to explain being hooked. Yes, the tobacco industry is more than happy to supply us with reasons. But there is
one reason you'll never see posted in any store. One reason is missing. The truth. We didn't smoke nicotine because we liked it. We did so
because we didn't like what happened when we didn't smoke it.
Every two hours the amount of nicotine in our 's
bloostream declined by roughly half. Trapped, we were bounced back and forth between insula driven anxieties, urges and craves for having waited too long,
and replenishment dopamine "aaah" sensations while tanking up. An endless cycle of emotional beatings and rewards left us totally convinced that
nicotine use defined who we were, gave us our edge, helped us cope and that life without it would be miserable. We had no choice but to rationalize chemical
captivity.
Isn't it time to be honest with ourselves? Here is a little exercise that will hopefully help remove the emperors pure white wrapper to expose the master of servitude who resides inside. For just the next week, each time that your mind causes you to reach for the word "cigarette" (when thinking, speaking or writing) stop and replace it with the word "nicotine." If you do, I think you'll be shocked at some of the things that you were about to tell yourself. What do you have to lose? Give it a try!
Breathe deep, hug hard, live long,
John (Zep)
accomplishment. The problem is that by happenstance some external
chemicals are able to take this brain circuitry hostage, some more than others. When it happens, the person is often left totally convinced that
continuing use of the chemical is as important as eating. Food craves, nicotine craves. Food "aaah" sensations, nicotine "aaah"
sensations. The enslaved mind becomes convinced that ending nicotine use will be akin to starving ourself to death. It isn't that the brain's
pay-attention priority teaching circuitry isn't working exactly as designed. It did its job well. What went wrong was that the brain was fooled into
activiting these pathways by arrival of an external chemical.
Sal
th]-effective over time. Always more, more, more. I'm glad to be rid of them.
