I am a nicotine addict.
I started choosing not to feed that addiction any more on November 19th, 2001. Since then, I’ve worked with hundreds of people who started making that same choice, and then, a day, a week, or a month or more later, started choosing to feed their addiction again.
It always used to make me wonder how I was able to maintain my quit when people that had quit before I had, or around the same time as I had, or even after I had, had started choosing to feed their addiction again?
How Did I Do It?
I came to believe that, more than any other reason, it’s because I finally recognized that I am an addict. Because after smoking for over thirty years and quitting so many times I couldn’t even begin to count them, it finally registered: I am a nicotine addict.
Once I realized this, I had to admit that I was subject to the laws of addiction, the first of which states that “administration of a drug to an addict will cause reestablishment of the dependence on that substance.” (excerpted from “The Law of Addiction, by Joel Spitzer).
This is why alcoholics who want to remain sober can never take that first drink. And the same rule applies to nicotine addicts: in a recent study, it was determined that 95% of ex-smokers who smoked just one cigarette experienced total relapse and resumed smoking at their previous level of consumption (and, in many cases, at a higher level of consumption than before they quit).
A Lesson from My Brother Bob
My brother Bob was an alcoholic (I say “was” because he died — of colon cancer — on December 4th, 1997). He knew that he was addicted to alcohol and that he was subject to the laws of addiction, and so, for the last ten years of his life, he chose, every day, not to feed that addiction.
Bob was also a nicotine addict. We started smoking around the same time, and he finally quit for the last time about 7 or 8 years before he died. Once again, it was his daily recognition of his addiction, his daily realization that he was subject to the laws of addiction, and his daily choice not to feed that addiction that kept him nicotine-free for the rest of his life.
The last time I remember seeing Bob angry at me was some time during his last months; I had just come back in from smoking a cigarette and he was lying there in the hospital bed where he would die just a few months later. He said, “Get off those god-damned cigarettes before you end up here!” I told him I would.
And I finally have. By following his example.
Establishing New Habits
Every morning for the first two years or so of this quit, as soon as I got out of bed, I would stand in front of the mirror, look myself in the eye, and tell myself:
I am a nicotine addict.
I cannot afford to feed that addiction.
Not even one time.
So, today, I choose not to smoke.
And, as soon as I got my first pot of coffee brewing, I would sit at my desk, open my quit journal, and write something like the following entry (written on June 9th, 2002):
6/9/02 (Day 203)
I am a nicotine addict.
I cannot afford to feed that addiction.
Not even one time.— so —
Today, I choose life!
Today, I choose health!
Today, I choose strength!
Today, I choose self-control!
Today, I choose freedom!
Today, I choose not to smoke!
For a long time after I quit, I would find myself reaching for a cigarette: not because I actually wanted one, or had even consciously thought about having one; purely out of habit or reflex. They were just the echoes of thirty-plus years of habitually feeding my addiction, and even though it’s been a long time since it’s happened, I’m not sure I’ll ever be totally free of that kind of unconscious reflex action.
This is why eternal vigilance is so important.
Thomas Jefferson said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance,” and the daily routine I just described was my way of establishing the habit of maintaining eternal vigilance against my enemy. I highly recommend that you find a way to do this that works for you. Because once an addict, always an addict, and the only real choice you have is whether you’re going to continue to feed the addiction or not.
What new habits will you establish to help you maintain eternal vigilance?