12 août 2009
Freedom Starts with Admitting Addiction
It was not easy looking in the mirror and at last seeing a true drug addict looking back. I felt like I was surrendering, that after all those failed attempts I’d lost, that I was a total and complete failure. But as horrible as that moment felt, doing so was the most liberating event in my life. It was then and there I no longer needed the long list of lies I’d invented to try and explain my captivity, my need for that next fix. Yes, there were countless times during my 30 years of bondage where I’d told myself that I was hooked or addicted.
But not until early 1999 did it hit me that, like alcoholism, it was for real. It was then that it hit me that I was no different from the methamphetamine or heroin addict. Dr. M.A.H. Russell, a psychiatrist and addiction researcher at London’s Institute of Psychiatry had me pegged all along. “There is little doubt that if it were not for nicotine in tobacco smoke, people would be little more inclined to smoke than they are to blow bubbles or to light sparklers, ” he wrote. “Cigarette-smoking is probably the most addictive and dependence-producing form of object-specific self-administered gratification known to man.” These now famous quotes by Dr. Russell date back to 1974.
Over the years, millions of nicotine addicts have tried proving Dr. Russell wrong. In January 2003, a Miami based company, the Vector Group Ltd., began marketing a nicotine-free cigarette called Quest in seven northeastern U.S. states. A novelty item, thousands of smokers rushed out to purchase their first pack of nicotine-free cigarettes but locating any smoker who returned to purchase a second pack has proven near impossible.
We would no more smoke nicotine-free cigarettes than we’d smoke dried leaves from the backyard. Hello! My name is John and I’m a comfortably recovered nicotine addict. It is not normal for humans to light things they place between their lips on fire and then intentionally suck the fire’s smoke deep into their lungs. Nor is it normal to chew or suck a highly toxic non-edible plant, hour after hour, day after day, year after year. We rationalize such irrational behavior because of the neuro-chemical reward we can steal by performing the act; a nicotine induced dopamine explosion.
Cuddling up to the warm, cozy rationalization that, at worst, all we have is some “nasty little habit” serves the tobacco industry well. While habits can be manipulated, modified, toyed with and controlled, nicotine addiction is an all or nothing proposition. The industry knows that so long as its marketing continues to sell nicotine addicts on the idea that they’re in full control, that they will likely continue to hand the industry their money until the day they die. Regardless of the delivery device or method used to introduce nicotine into the bloodstream, fully accepting that nicotine dependency has permanently altered our brain not only simplifies the rules of recovery, it provides the key to staying free. Thousands of words but only one guiding principle for keeping our dependency permanently under arrest ... No nicotine today! 67