tobacco

In some ways the hardest, but in many, the easiest to defeat

Tobacco is the beginning and the end of addiction for many. Most of us started in our early years, for who knows why. Was it an act of rebellion? Be cool? Trying to fit in? Maybe someone we looked up to was a smoker.

For me it may of been a combination of those. However, honestly, I also simply liked the idea of blowing smoke out of my mouth. Can’t really figure out why. I hated smoking in the wind, and loved smoking in cold weather, when we were like dragons breathing long deep smoke puffs into the air.

Maybe I just wanted to be a dragon

It probably was emotionally reassuring, the psychological comfort of ‘feeling relaxed’, despite the completely opposite effect occuring within my body.

I smoked at parties. I smoked with friends, while we drank. At cafes, with coffee, at a bus stop while we waited. At the park when we jigged school. It was something to do. Like, I wasn’t doing nothing while I was standing around, I was smoking. I wasn’t bored on my break at work, I was smoking.

An adult, making adult choices. It helped me pretend that I was brave and strong.

And unafraid. You’re not afraid of anything if you’re a smoker. You’re dangerous. You’re defying what every body says, that it’ll kill you. You’re untouchable.

Many years of smoking, I enjoyed it most thoroughly when I was drunk or enjoying some other substance, because I could smoke deeply and constantly, I used to love the Peter Jackson ad ‘a thinking man smokes’ .. missing the actual concept of this ad, I just liked to consider myself as a thinking man.

If I was a thinking man, why was I smoking?

Some time in my mid twenties, I began to feel shit when I smoked. I couldn’t breathe properly, the entire act of smoking was becoming unpleasant. At odds with my own existence, I knew I needed to give this shit the flick. But I failed to follow that observation with any kind of action, and I continued to smoke. I’ll change to rollies. They’re healthier, the tobacco is more natural, they taste better. It must be better for you. [it has been confirmed that roll-your-own tobacco is cured approximately twice as much and with many more chemicals than most tailor-made cigarettes in an effort to keep it from drying out].

I’ll smoke less. But I didn’t. I’m not entirely sure when I first quit, but for some two weeks, I didn’t smoke anything, constantly wanting one whenever I saw somebody smoking in a movie or an ad, or on the street. The thought of smoking was hard to avoid, and it wouldn’t be long before I gave into the craving. But, I didn’t really want to quit – I just kind’ve thought I should – this is the crux of why addiction to smoking is a difficult one to beat. Most don’t really want to. I would prove, the better part of a decade later, that when I did want to, it was one of the simplest things I ever did.

My health I would think. My lungs… my breathing… But man smoking a cigarette was go good with that morning coffee. As it was effecting my breathing and the act of smoking was uncomfortable, and the taste… these things were alleviated with a beverage of some kind. Particularly coffee. Or coca-cola. Or something stronger. Even a piece of chewing gum if necessary, anything to get that horrible taste out of my mouth, to help me “enjoy” my smoke.

It must be said that smoking tobacco intertwined with my gambling addiction. Because at some stage in Sydney many venues no longer offered smoking indoors unless you were in the pokies room.

NSW, doing it for the every day person.

Over the years it dawned on me more and more, that this was something I needed to stop. And I began to come around to the idea of actually wanting to. I began to hate whenever I smoked, I began to reduce when I did so, maybe just with the morning coffee or with the afternoon beer. Maybe at night when I got home after work, with a nightcap beverage.

I quit smoking a handful of times. At longest for 9 months*. A couple of times for a couple of months each. But usually at some stage, I would have a smoke while out with people, maybe go on a binge-drinking night or some kind of bender, decide to smoke, buy some, be left with some, begin slowly over the following week again, just because they were around.

It was throughout this period that my revelations began.

Everybody asks how I was trying to quit. What was I using. Patches? The gum? Some kind of anti-smoking drug which affected the nicotine receptors in my brain. It slowly dawned on me, that if nicotine-based ‘quitting’ tools are owned by powerful companies, didn’t it make sense that all the talk about smoking was that it’s hard, it’s ok if you can’t. These things will help. Sombody, was profiteering off the idea that it is hard. The language needed to change. Why wasn’t the language, you can. It’s not ok if you can’t, it’s just a simple action.

If you follow a decision with the correct action, you’re going to succeed. Why would I continue to feed my brain a drug that I was trying to avoid, simply because it was being delivered in another method? Just don’t smoke, if you don’t want to.

I couldn’t really understand the idea that I was somehow compelled to do something that I didn’t want to do. After all, wasn’t I making a choice to do this? There was no uncontrollable force powering me on. There were no robotics, no out of body remote control. I just chose to. What was addiction? What is this thing they’re calling addiction? I had to admit, that there was no compulsive act which was somehow, at odds to my actual thought patterns. I wanted to smoke. Even when I hated it, I made the conscious decision to give in when I did.

I guess some of the weight behind these statements was lost, since I did go back to smoking many times. In the last 4 years, I’ve smoked for approximately 18 months, quitting for some 4 month period 3 years ago, and finally, lastly, quitting for good just over 2 years ago (*now longest duration of non-smoking since I began some 17 years earlier). I’ll never go back to smoking, the taste repulses me.

My own mentality finally cemented the things I’ve said time and time again, that if you don’t want to smoke, just don’t, until it no longer becomes a habit.

Tying back into what I learnt about decisions, there is only now. The past is gone and it bares nothing down on you right now. The future is not yet written. You write it now with the choice you make.

Do you want to be a smoker? Choose now. And revel in the power to be in control of your life, whatever you do choose.

breaking the habit

This is the most important aspect of changing lifestyle addictions.

The habitual motion of using hands for smoking. The timing of when you smoke, or when you play out any other habitual action in life. The ritual of when you drink. When you smoke. How you drink, and how you drink. Maybe how the two interplay together. You need to change up the situation.

When I first broke up the habit of smoking tobacco, I found myself fidgeting a lot… or drinking quickly. Essentially, it sped up whatever else I was normally doing with my hands.

Try to forget that silly shit about tobacco smoking actually playing a certain part in your psychology like ‘I needed it to calm down’ or ‘I was anxious without it’ … All the physiological evidence with tobacco and nicotine is the opposite – it doesn’t calm you down, and it doesn’t quell anxiety. It is a psychological trick nicotine plays on the brain. So, forget that shit. Just try to find something else to do with your hands – this is the bi-product of quitting, your dopamine levels are all fucked up and you feel slightly ancy, or else, unsure of how to use this energy.

If right now, you’re still believing that you need nicotine to deal with something (live life, or handle something, or accept something), you’re destined to struggle.

So I began to drink more, or sometimes eat more. I would essentially be moving my hands back and forth to my mouth more often to quench some type of appetite, because I was used to doing it with a cigarette.

What you believe, will belie your destiny

Push through this time. You need to push through it so you develop a more natural level of dopamine and habitual action with your hands. It’s hard. It doesn’t come easily. If you don’t push through it you will end up back in the same position. This is a type of action you’ve probably been cementing for nearly a decade or more.

It all ties back into ‘doing other things’.

You have to do things differently. And it starts with thinking about things differently.

If you think that you’re going to need to smoke because it was something you’ve always done previously, then you’re going to struggle. Just remember, nothing you’ve done in the past determines what you’re going to do now.

Now is always a new moment

“There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow. Today is the right day to live. .”

Dalai Lama

The past is gone and the future is in your hands! This is the crucial dilemma in understanding your path. Make a choice. You are completely free to do so, every time you want to make one.

A habit is defined as something you do naturally or without thinking. Something you may gravitate towards because it feels common, because it has become easy. Change can be hard. But only because it requires will power and the urge to do what is not as easy. If you remember that nothing you’ve done in the past determines your next decision, change becomes EASY!

marijuana

The first time I smoked marijuana it didn’t do much. I was bored, disaffected, and didn’t really understand the appeal. But I was young, and the opportunity was sure to arrive again. The 2nd time I smoked marijuana, I got mind-blowingly high and it was horrible. My throat was burnt, my head was spinning, my mind was racing, my heart was racing, I was anxious. I was lost, and I hated it. Never again, I said.

Nevertheless, on and off, over a period of several years, I smoked a bit of weed here and there, played some video games, laughed with friends, and ate a smorgasbord of food from the local fish n chip shop. Weed gradually became a warm blanket around my mind, comforting me in ways I was unable to fulfill with family or friends. Marijuana was a quiet companion. It enabled me to function normally (unlike alcohol which was gradually inebriating) but it consoled my brain, my thinking was slowed, I was able to fully live in the moment and enjoy doing whatever I felt like doing, without concern for the wider world or the future. 

marijuana was the companion I didn't have

But this isn’t a story of loneliness. Well, not yet.

Around this time I worked in a bar. Working late nights and drinking, and when I wasn’t drinking, I was smoking. Often with friends, often with colleagues. Occasionally with family. But more often, alone, in my room. All my alone time was mary jane time. All my thinking was done stoned.

Around the time I broke up with my first girlfriend, the end of an approximately 3 year relationship, was the time I began to spend more time with marijuana than I should. Several times a week, I would relish the time spent on my own, with video games, and fast food, staying up all night. I was 20 years old. Several years down the track, I knew I had a problem because I couldn’t control it. Whenever I had weed, I would feel compelled to smoke it. If I didn’t have weed, I would seek it out. Sometimes, pitifully, shamefully, sometimes weakly. It became a constant which was inevitable.

Initially, the comfort blanket of marijuana was a console on my mind, but gradually this became a fog of anxious thought. Walls built up around me about what I could and couldn’t do. What I should do. Psychological barriers that caused me to sweat profusely, ignore phone calls, stay inside the house, avoid socializing. Most of this was in my head. But everything about life is in your head, right? Your entire world is perceived through your eyes and ears and processed in your mind. I was burying myself in my own anxious thoughts.

I won’t go into the aspects of my early teenage years which were difficult, parents breaking up etc, but safe to say when my early 20s dawned on the days of heavy smoking I was depressed, lost, bored, angry and difficult. I had some therapy sessions. I queried why I was smoking weed in the first place and why I couldn’t seem to stop it. Why it was a constant pursuit and why it was so inevitable.

Ultimately, I was lonely in my own head. I needed comfort. And the double-edged-knife of mary jane was still the easiest way to find this.

I used to joke that mary jane and I needed a divorce.

Several times over the last 15 years I was able to stop smoking weed for long enough to see some of the clouds disappear. And each time, eventually, usually after only a few weeks to a month or two, it would feel ok to smoke a joint. And then the downwards spiral would begin, like a well-worn path to the same place, I would end up with weed, alone, in my room.

I alienated flatmates. I lived in my room in share accommodation, ashamed that I was stoned, as if I didn’t see my flatmates it wouldn’t be so bad. I smoked weed at 9am before going to work. I smoked weed when I got home. At some point, I even smoked weed while at work.

I had numerous friends who had gone down this path with marijuana, some of which had managed to pull themselves out of it. I longed for the will to do so myself. To no longer feel self conscious in social situations, to feel at ease with myself. To want to leave the house as opposed to wanting to stay inside with video games. I was living vicariously. How did you do it? I remember asking.

By doing other things.

This simple suggestion ties together the two basic steps of breaking an addiction. If you’re in the same place, doing the same things, you’re going to gravitate towards the same activities. If all your time was spent alone in your room with video games, you have to break the cycle, and get outside and be with people. It can be a huge challenge. The second step is believing you can do it. Changing the internal monologue from ‘I’ll do what I’ve always done’ to ‘I have the will to do what I want right now’ is fundamental.

It was a huge challenge. It took me some 8 or 9 years to finally find the will to step away. It took countless attempts to reach this place. Each time, I fell back into the same groove. But if only I had understood from an earlier age – addiction is filling a void in your life with something that’s easy. Each time I made a decision to go back because it was easy and it felt normal. Maybe I wasn’t always consciously aware of the same decision – sometimes I told myself it would be different this time around. But if I had weed at home and I didn’t want to smoke it, there was a feeling that I kind’ve knew that I would anyway, because that’s what I’d always done.

Past decisions haunting my future decisions as if I was destined to do the same thing..

But it’s not true. Alfred Adler states that one is not governed by any past decision or past event. One makes a decision in the moment every time. People choose not to change. And I would not have admitted it at the time, but looking back I can honestly say I chose the easy way to fall back into the same relationship with marijuana.

Stumbling upon the psychology and philosophy of Alfred Adler by chance was a reveling experience. I wonder what might’ve been if I’d read some of his work a decade earlier.

gambling

It was not long after my eighteenth birthday that I began to work in a bar. I was fascinated with the idea of working behind the bar, mixing cocktails, learning about various spirits and libations. And it felt kinda cool.

Following some bar work in a cinema (where I attained my RSA literally the first week of my birthday), I began to work in a local restaurant. I felt cool. In between shifts, the chefs and waiters would spend their time at the nearby pub. We’d all have a bunch of drinks in the local before going back to work the dinner shift. This became the norm. Yet, it was only within a few weeks I started to see that everyone liked to throw some money into the pokies.

The “pokies” were an addiction waiting to happen…

The Chefs and kitchenhands would throw money into the pokies for fun. I wanted to be part of the group.. the first time I watched, several people were drawing out $20 here, $40 there, the odd $75. It was money. It was cash some of us didn’t have. Money that was more than the $14 we were earning per hour in our employment.

The whole concept of putting a $5 note into a poker machine like this felt alien. I couldn’t imagine the idea of spending money I’d earned in a machine like this which would or wouldn’t give it back. The pursuit of winnings didn’t seem that intelligent. It didn’t make sense.

But we’d drink. We’d have 2, sometimes 3, sometimes 4 schooners in the 1.5 hours of our break. The alcohol growing as I became accustomed. Witnessing the poker machines became normal. $5 here. $20 there. It was fun. It was a gamble.

I’d lose $10, and make $16. I’d lose another $10, and make $12. I’d waste that on beer. What a break, I was paying for the beers I was going to drink anyway with the money I won from poker machines. This was a revelation I found enticing. How come more people weren’t involved in this?! You simply won money!

Push on 6 months. I remember the first time I gravitated from using a $20 note to the soft yellow of the $50 note. It was a leap of faith I wasn’t entirely happy with. But there was a rush… the first time I truly understood the rush, the chase, the dopamine chase of the gamble. This was money I’d spent several hours working to earn. I only earned a handful of these per week. This was big money. Believe it or not, I won. Though I was only gambling 40c per button press, the press/release – win/dopamine effect was well and truly engraved. I was able to pull out approx $80. I had turned $50 into $80 and I felt like a god.

Gambling on poker machines slowly became a part of my life.

When I say gambling, I do not mean in the general sense of the word. I mean poker machines. As I look back, I can say that I was not addicted to the art of the gamble. Not the horses, the baseball, the football or any other sport. I simply craved the quick release of the poker machine. Even after several years and I learnt the true likelihood of winning, the true odds, the reality of these vile machines. I was again and again, back at them. Over long term use, I discovered if you lost, you could keep playing and gradually increase the potential of winning money back. Or winning close to – or more – than what you initially lost. It was a reason to keep playing.

I would be out with friends at a pub, and at some point I’d excuse myself and go to a poker machine. Sometimes spending long enough that they’d need to come and find me. Sometimes I’d lose all my available money.

The reward psychology of a poker machine isn’t even gambling. It is a dopamine release in the frame of a feature.. “win!”

Sometimes after being paid my salary I’d consider my available money and spend it all gambling. I’d spend the rest of the week on the down-low because I had no other money to do anything. During this time, I’d play video games. Little did I know, this was also a contributing factor in my continuing addiction to poker machines.

It took me 6 years to realize that this kind of gambling wasn’t sustainable. Even if I won several hundred bucks or more, I was back gambling it. There was no chasing the win, the win didn’t even matter. I was totally addicted to the quick release of the poker machines, the chase of a ‘feature’ and the psychological rush of throwing more and more money into the machine. Winning money didn’t satisfy it. NOTHING satisfied it.

A win was a chance to win more.

About 6.5 years after I first started, I would get paid, then within a day or two, whilst drinking at a local pub with friends, or the following day attending a pub solely to gamble, I would spend all my money. I would then need to wait another week to go again.

One day, I won $800. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but it was the most I had ever attained. The next day, I began to gamble with it. After all, $800 could be so much more?! This is the trap. That all money can be more. It can’t. It won’t. I lost the $800. It forced me to learn that I wasn’t trying to win money. I was simply playing a game that I was addicted to.

One day, $2500. Two days later, square one.

I convinced myself if I was to have a future, this had to stop. There was simply no future for me if I continued to go near these machines. It was all or nothing.

It was a very difficult decision, but one I was already onboard with.

Despite countless relapses, some lasting a year at a time, over a course of a further 10 years, I have defeated my addiction to poker machines. There is no desire to gamble. But if I go into a poker machine room in pub, the inclination is there. But I choose to shut down this appetite. It is a disaster to chase.

Even if I choose to play one, I’m not governed by them. I’m not guaranteed to throw in more based on previous decisions. There’s no predisposition to chase a loss. To gamble more. To press the button and wait for the feature. I have a choice. The choice is to remember reality. And that to walk away I win.

the revelation

I’ve been addicted to many things.

By this I mean, in some way, shape or form, acting compulsively to do something which may not have been aligned with what I really wanted do. Maybe it’s that I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.

Smoking tobacco. Smoking weed. Poker machines. Video games. Compulsive eating. Viewing pornography. For nearly 20 years, I’ve fought the tide of compulsive behaviour in one or all of these forms consistently. Most of these battles were silent. I was gainfully employed. I socialized. To family and close friends there was an understanding that I smoked too much weed and this was a problem, but to everyone else, I was a normal, quiet guy.

The revelation is that it took me over fifteen years to learn that everything I though I knew about addiction was wrong. The concept that you’re prone to do something because somehow you can’t control your own behaviour is a myth. A catastrophic ideal that lead me to believe that somehow I wasn’t in control of my own actions. It’s ok, I’m addicted. I hated this idea. But I was prone, I was consistent, I’d proved to myself over and over again that my behaviour was inherent, it was destined, it was repetitive. No matter how many times I tried to resist smoking more weed, I would end up doing so anyway.

The change in this understanding was actually conceptualizing the action of smoking and how all the talk about it is how difficult it could be to stop. How it’s ok. Everyone finds it hard. Most people can’t stop. But if you really break it down, what that says is you can’t stop doing something which you don’t want to do.

Really?

Well fuck that.

The change was about empowering myself. It was returning from the paradigm where I was governed by all my previous actions to be destined to act again in the same way to – I am in control of my life. Every time I choose to make a decision, I have no fate burdened upon me by the decisions I’ve made in the past.

The past no longer exists, and every time I need to make a decision I’m free to make it regardless of what I’ve chosen in the past.

Ultimately, this blog is about learning about personal power, and how if you change the way you think, you can control everything in your life.

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