Breaking the Chokehold of Addiction

Recently I have given up cigarettes, again, and I am really getting a first hand view of addiction and what it entails. The dictionary defines addiction as “being physically and mentally dependent on a particular substance, and unable to stop taking it without incurring adverse side effects.”  I have found this to be true. In looking at my addiction to cigarettes I have surely felt a physical and mental desire. To me, however, I find it much more difficult to deal with the mental traps. In my experience, the times when my mind plays a large role in urging me to have a smoke, are the times when my mind is reflecting on similar past experiences. For example, when I am at a bar enjoying a beer. Somewhere after two beers a voice in my head tells me how buzzed I will get from drinking and smoking, and the body wants to follow.The mind is king of memory and association making. Because of its unrelenting search for comfort, it is always seeking ways to make the present situation more enjoyable. And in cigarettes, the mind has an easy tool to enhance a variety of experiences. That cigarette was a perfect end to that filling lunch. That cigarette made the morning’s coffee, invigorating. I needed a cigarette to cap off that amazing sex.

We can see that there is also a pattern developing. A cigarette comes at the end of a stimulating activity. It is used to make the feeling last, to settle more deeply into the enjoyment of the moment. But in practice it becomes more like a reward. It is something we look forward to after the activity. And soon smoking becomes intimately paired with the activity, almost as if the two cannot go without each other. From there on, every time we do our favorite activities, there is smoking.

We instill in ourselves, patterns and habits that fly under the radar of consciousness. And because of these unconscious patterns, the habit of smoking becomes very difficult to break. We are only conscious of our enslavement to cigarettes when we try to stop. And only when we try to stop, when we give our deliberate attention to the cessation of smoking, we see how tied in smoking is with the majority of events during the day.

I have come to the opinion that this is why people have such difficulty in quitting cigarettes. Because it is not a mere giving up of tobacco, but a re-organization of how we experience much of our day. Not having cigarettes plunges us deep into the sensation of a given experience. Boredom, stress, restlessness, loneliness, and anger all become intensified when we do not have our normal, habitual, outlet for relief. We are forced to sit with our unpleasant emotions and thoughts as they are. When smoking is not an option, we cannot use our normal means of pacifying ourselves.

The good news is when we give up cigarettes we are given more presence to actually see the causes and conditions of what initially caused us stress. We are forced to see our discomfort for what it is and we can either try to eliminate it, by discovering and eliminating its causes and conditions. Or we can let the suffering continue into its limit: infinity.

And this is the difficulty in quitting; attempting to change the very pattern of one’s life while at the same time fighting the extreme mental and physical cravings. When faced with the unimaginable task of re-inventing one’s life it is always easier to fall back into old patterns; especially when those old patterns involve strong drugs.

So here we are. Stuck with a decision so profound it literally embodies the choice of life or death. And the right choice is as simple as doing nothing. Yet, there is still a world of struggle. Everything is pointing to one solution and the patterns fight tooth and nail to perpetuate themselves.

For now, I will act as I always do, in true wu-wei style, and do nothing.

 Nick Reguero