What is the inner source that allows us to end once mandatory nicotine feedings? Strength, willpower, or desire?
It's natural to think that it's some combination. However, none of us are stronger than nicotine's influence upon brain dopamine pathways, as clearly shown by our inability to live the active addict's greatest desire, to control the uncontrollable.
Yes, we can temporarily muster mountains of willpower. But can willpower make any of us endure a challenge that we lack the desire to complete?
Once nicotine gets inside, all the strength and willpower on earth cannot stop it from traveling to the brain and activating acetylcholine receptors.
We cannot beat our dependency into submission. Nor can we handle one hit of nicotine without stimulating brain circuitry designed to make activating events nearly impossible to forget, pathways engineered to generate wanting for more.
If incapable of using strength to control our addiction and we cannot "will" it into hibernation or submission, what remains?
As simple as it may sound, dreams and desires have always been the fuel of human accomplishment. Born of the honest recognition of nicotine's negative impact upon our life, desire is the fuel for change.
But it takes keeping those motivations vibrant and on center-stage so that they can both consciously and unconsciously stimulate, motivate, and fuel our journey home.
Those successful in navigating recovery found creative ways to protect and safeguard their dreams and desires. They somehow kept them robust, invigorated, and available at a moment's notice.
Our core motivations aid in fostering the patience needed to navigate an up to 5 minute subconsciously triggered crave episode. They provide resistance to the nicotine addict's romantic use fixations. Desire's energy stands up to junkie thinking that at times may linger inside the recovering mind.
This temporary period of re-adjustment is about fulfilling recovery's dreams and desires. We enhance our chances by protecting desire's juices. Those juices are accurate and vivid memories of the daily nightmare of living life as nicotine's slave.
Success is about well-protected and remembered recovery motivations. It's about uniting the realities of use with an understanding of the Law of Addiction (Chapter 2).
What will you do during the heat of battle (if there is any - as cakewalk recoveries can and do occur) to remind yourself of the importance of victory? Which desires will control?
Will you be able to vividly recall the full price of life as nicotine's slave? What will aid you in recalling dependency's prison cell, your lost pride and self-esteem, and the increasing sense of feeling like a social outcast?
What will help you remember standing at the counter and handing over your money to buy a chemical that you knew would force you to return to buy more? During moments of challenge, how do we bring honesty and the desire flowing from it, to the forefront of our mind?
Dreams and desires are freedom's stepping-stones. Consider allowing honest dependency memories to keep desire excited and stimulated. Let honesty transport you home. Allow it to gift you the inner quiet and calm that arrives once addiction's daily chatter goes silent.
When packing, bring along the thousands of negative nicotine use memories that motivated you to begin reading FFN-TJH. Doing so will provide all the wind your dream's wings will need.
One way to do so is to sit down and write yourself a caring (or even loving) letter in which you list your reasons for wanting to be free. Then, carry it with you, pull it out during challenge, and use it as a front-line defense.
I admit, it sounds rather silly for a fully grown man or woman to write a letter to themselves, carry it, and then reach for it when feeling threatened. But when your greatest moment of challenge arrives, and an anxiety-riddled mind is seriously considering throwing it all away, it won't seem so silly then.
You'll reach for a powerful resource -- "you" -- to remind yourself why victory here and now is oh so important.
Fear and panic may at times suggest that you flee toward your dependency's grasp; that you leave recovery behind. Failure to document and recall dependency's bad and ugly makes saying "no" to it more challenging.
Why allow your core recovery motivations and the dreams they fuel to erode, to be missing in action, or die?
The human mind suppresses negative memories. While daily chemical dependency kept dependency's memories vivid and alive, it's amazing how quickly they begin to erode once nicotine use ends. As impossible as this may be to believe, it won't be long before you'll find it extremely difficult to picture yourself having ever used nicotine.
Why allow time, challenge, and memory suppression to destroy freedom's dreams? Why run out of gas? Tank up with enough fuel to make it home. Consider spending a few minutes now to document life as an addict. While your list will never grow shorter, consider adding to it the benefits noticed during recovery.
Take a glance now at the sample recovery journal/diary at the end of FFN-TJH. It can be a single piece of paper that you copy/print, complete, and carry with you. Or, make your own!
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Published in the USA