Life's not always been peaches and cream since I escaped from active nicotine addiction over 15 years ago. Take the current global economic anxiety, for instance; although I've currently experienced concerns and outright momentary visceral fears, these negative feelings haven't been tied to temptations of cigarette "relief." I credit my cognitive/visceral or head/gut passionate rejection of pain-causing carcinogens and my choosing life instead - warts and all - as my saving grace. The new brain-change science shows that one can teach an old dog new tricks. For the past 15 years I've been strengthening neurons in my brain that reflect my life-affirming head/gut decision to stop smoking and to stay stopped. As a senior without savings to speak of, I, like many others, get anxious when world and local economic affairs appear unstable.
I revolutionarily discovered for myself, over 30 years ago when I successfully stopped drinking alcohol, that one can do this as one's primary and separate issue from everything else. Economic crisis, loss of loved ones, unresolved childhood issues, violation by criminals, hurtfully felt cruelties inflected by individuals, by institutions, or via circumstances are all separate issues from my new life personal core primary reality: I simply can't drink or smoke cigarettes (or use other mind-bending drugs) and get away with it. Perhaps others can. I can't. This long ago acknowledgment, acceptance and prioritization of my primary separate-issue reality worked perfectly when I later stopped smoking.
Smoking addiction, addiction to alcohol/drugs eventually become one's primary need, separate from all else, i.e., these addictions tear into all else - slashing ever forward, eventually capturing priority-one position in one's life - although life goes on - these addictions can't be supplanted by other issues in life; these addictions, however, can be supplanted by one's cognitive/visceral awareness, acceptance and action to change these behaviors, arrest these life-sapping disorders.
So, when one has a powerful primary separate-issue nicotine (alcohol/drugs) arrest in place, all other issues - including one's fear of the prospect of financial ruin - don't trigger a knee-jerk reaction for a cigarette, drink/drug.
Thoughts and feelings can be challenged, confronted, and changed. Even when I give in - as I often do - to negative (perhaps exaggerated) thoughts/fears, none of this has anything to do with smoking a cigarette.
I don't want to lose my income, my home, my health, my loved ones. None of us do. And, even when bad stuff happens in our lives, a cigarette (drink/drug) - if one has a history of having had an addiction experience regarding these substances - science and personal experience informs us - both cognitively and viscerally - that our woes would only be exacerbated by reaching for a cigarette, drink/drug. May we all be solvent.
Visit me at Quitnicotinenow.net. I look forward to being with you again next week.
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