on relapsing
if you spend any time reading messages on the various quit smoking support sites, you're going to see posts titled, "slipped", "blew it", "lost my quit", etc., etc., etc...
if you read those posts, you'll find a whole host of reasons - i mean excuses - for the relapse: "i was under a lot of pressure", "my (husband, wife, kid, parent, boss, coworker, etc.) did something that upset me", "i just couldn't handle the pain of withdrawal", blah, blah, blah, etc, etc., etc... yadda, yadda, yadda...
BULLSHIT!
these people relapsed for one reason and one reason only: they chose to smoke. anything else you read is an excuse. nonsense. pure, unadulterated b.s.
they might as well come on here and title their posts "my dog ate it". it would be just as valid as any of the lame-ass excuses they give.
if you're going to relapse, at least be honest with yourself. it doesn't really matter if you're honest with us or not; we've seen all the excuses there are. chances are you're not inventive enough to come up with one that's truly idiotic enough to give us all a good laugh. and, as i said, it doesn't really matter to us.
but it matters to you.
if you can't face the fact that you made a stupid choice and delivered yourself back into bondage to your addiction, if you can't be honest enough with yourself to stop trying to place the blame on someone or something somewhere outside of yourself, you'll just continue to shoot yourself in the foot.
i relapsed multiple times before this quit. and every single time, it was because i chose to smoke. period. if there are any recently relapsed addicts out there that would like to respond to this and refute it, please be my guest; i'm sure we'll all find it enlightening.
chances are you won't. because, deep down, you know that your excuses are nothing more than that; excuses. take any one of them, and add the phrase "so i chose to smoke" and you'll be a lot closer to recovery:
"i was under a lot of pressure, so i chose to smoke", "my (husband, wife, kid, parent, boss, coworker, etc.) did something to upset me, so i chose to smoke", "i couldn't handle the pain of withdrawal, so i chose to smoke", etc.
be aware that the real reason (not excuse) why 100% of the people who went back to smoking relapsed is that they chose to smoke.
period.
how can you avoid relapsing? choose not to smoke. there are plenty of good programs out there that can help you figure out how to quit smoking, but the choice of whether to smoke again or not is always yours.
and today, you can choose life.
kevin - day 55
Thank you! I feel like a great burden was lifted from my shoulders. This makes so much sense. Perhaps we should remember that when we are speaking about the "will" power to quit(usually we are speaking about our LACK of will power), that if we just do nothing we ARE quit. It takes an act of "will" to pick up a ciagette and smoke it.
I am avoiding reading any of the posts about slips because I am using my AA program with my addiction to nicotine too. In meetings, I share lately about wanting to pick up (I don't have to specify which drug but in an AA meeting if I were to say nicotine, I would get a BUNCH of shit)and like you said, if we pick up/light up, IT IS A CHOICE, A CONSCIOUS PLANNED CHOICE!!!
There are no slips.
still on day 60. Looking forward to tomarrow.
Colleen.