Today I was listening to the Dixie Chicks CD "Home." On this CD, they do a great cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" which contains
the following lines:
Well, I've been
afraid of
changing,
cause I've
built my life around you...
afraid of
changing,
cause I've
built my life around you...
While Lindsey Buckingham was surely writing about Stevie Nicks, this same sentiment could apply to any veteran smoker and his cigarettes.
When we were smoking, we "built our lives" around our addiction. Who we dated/married, where we went, how we spent our hard-earned money, etc.
Taking "breaks" every hour to feed our addiction. It was the first thing we did in the morning and the last thing before bed. We planned our
errands to allow us to smoke one or two before we arrived at our destination. Many airports now have outlawed smoking completely inside the terminals, and
those of us who flew a lot for business were forced to leave the secure area to go outside. Once there, we chain-smoked until our throats burned to
"store up" enough nicotine to make the last two-hour leg of our trip. We then had to clear security (a MAJOR hassle after 9/11) to get back to our
gate. If our flight was then delayed, we would quickly calculate if we had
enough time to go back outside to smoke some more! How many flights were missed because we miscalculated how long it would take to clear security a second,
or third, time?
If we were about to run out of smokes, we would drop whatever we were doing and rush to the store to re-stock our supply. We liked places where smoking was
still allowed and tended to avoid those places where it was not.
We smoked alone. We smoked with others. We felt uncomfortable if we didn't have smokes "on us" somewhere.
We would bolt our food during work breaks and lunch so we would have time to go smoke before break or lunch hour was over.
We would make special trips to the Indian reservations to stock up on discount cigarettes because we "saved money" by buying in bulk. However,
what we didn't realize was that when our subconcious knew we had a large supply,we smoked more. Just because we HAD more.
We thought about smoking a lot. If we ever did manage to concentrate on something other than smoking, the first pangs of withdrawl would bring us back into
line.
At the end, I believe we all hated smoking, but we were hooked through the bag with no idea how to stop. We had truly "built our life" around our
addiction. A million memories, and all of them happening with a cigarette in our hand. Only the fact that our drug is legal and readily available allowed
us to lead some semblance of a "normal" life.
We were smokers who constantly thought of quitting with no idea how to make it happen. We just didn't know how we were going to live without cigs
because they seemed so necessary to do just about anything.
Well, I've been
afraid of
quitting,
cause I've
built my life around nicotine...
afraid of
quitting,
cause I've
built my life around nicotine...
That's a true statement.
But some of us broke free. We found this site, we read, we recognized ourselves in the documents, and we finally accepted tha fact that we are true drug
addicts and that our drug was going to cripple and kill us. We learned the law of addiction and we learned NTAP.
So we quit. Just like that, our life radically changed. The thing is, all those changes
were for the better. Those changes improved and enriched our lives. After we made it through the initial withdrawls, it just became a matter of
reconditioning triggers so that all those events that we "built our life around with cigarettes" can now be experienced without tobacco. With each
trigger reconditioning, it becomes clearer and clearer to us; we don't need nicotine to enjoy life. In fact, life is much more enjoyable without it.
It's been over three years since I quit. I no longer worry about what life without
cigarettes is going to be like. I know what it is going to be like. It is, and it is going
to be complicated, messy, joyful, tragic, overwhelming at times, confusing, uplifting, and rewarding. We can't control what life throws at us. All we
can control is how we handle it. And because of this site and the education it provides, we can handle it without nicotine in our bloodstreams.
Bring on the changes. I can take it. And I don't need nicotine to cope.
What a great feeling.
thanks for reading my ramblings...
Beavis
3xgold

