Ruthless Love

As the fog of nicotine and the daze of nicotine withdrawal both begin to clear, I'm starting to notice just how much I lied when I smoked.

As I smoked hour after hour, and at the same time didn't want to smoke, I was effectively living the paradox of continually doing something I didn't want to do. Each time I smoked, there was a lie to cover the paradox: "It's just one", "I deserve this", "I'll be lest stressed", "I need time to think", "I'm so angry right now", "God! I'm bored", etc. etc.

And out of habit, I became a habitual liar. The lies spread throughout my life. It starts with small untruths told so that I can get out and have a cigarette, and it continues with living a life of slavery to a drug pretending that this isn't the case. For others it is the man on his deathbed with lung cancer, who still has the craving and can't match up the craving with his decaying lungs.

Of course, deep down, I knew that I was a liar, but "luckily" I had the skills to lie about that to me too.

Being nicotine free has increased my capacity to live in truth, to be in integrity, to face facts and to change what needs to change.

I remember when I first relapsed, I made an initial choice not to reset my quit date. I remember the ruthlessness with which that proposal was treated in this forum. Eventually I went with the truth. I have been grateful for that ruthlessness ever since.

Ruthless love is what keeps me from the "just one" junkie thinking. Like the poisonous snake of smoke from the tip of a cigarette, junkie thinking is insiduous and cannot be held at bay: Somehow it seeps into your skin and hides in the crevaces of your clothes and in the wrinkles on your skin.

To stop junkie thinking, I must stop smoking. There is no other way. To stop the craving, I must stop smoking. There is no other way. One cigarette will always lead to another. This is not weakness, it is simply the truth of who I am.

It's my belief that ultimately every recovering addict has to face the truth that he or she chose to avoid by smoking. Some people in this forum speak about that moment, perhaps 100 or so days into their quit, when they finally hit the truth. Others like me struggle with it on a daily basis.

Whatever your path to truth, I encourage you to be ruthless with yourself about your addiction until truth itself becomes your habit, truth itself becomes your addiction.