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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, July 24, 2006 |
The Law of Addiction
"Administration of a drug to an addict will cause reestablishment
of chemical dependence upon the addictive substance."by Joel Spitzer
WhyQuit - Monday, July 24, 2006
Smokers are often furious with me because they believe I caused them to go back to smoking. Why do they think this? Well, I have this nasty habit of making a really big deal any time a clinic participant takes one puff or maybe just a few cigarettes. The smoker feels I am so persuasive in my arguments that he has no choice but to have a full-fledged relapse.
In his opinion, I forced him back to the lifetime dependency which will impair his health and may eventually cost him his life. He is convinced that if I had not made such a major issue out of the incident, he would just have smoked that one time and would never have done it again. How can I sleep each night knowing what I have done?
I sleep quite well, thank you. For, you see, I am not responsible for these people's relapses to cigarettes. They can take full credit for becoming smokers again. They relapsed because they broke the one major law of nicotine addiction - they took a puff.
This is not my law. I am not setting myself up to be judge, jury and executioner. The law of physiological addiction states that administration of a drug to an addict will cause reestablishment of the dependence on that substance. I didn't write that law. I don't execute that law. My job is much simpler than that. All I do is interpret the law. This means, by taking a puff, the smoker either goes back to full-fledged smoking or goes through the withdrawal process associated with quitting. Most don't opt for the withdrawal.
Every clinic has a number of participants who have quit in the past for one year or longer. In fact, I had one clinic participant who had stopped for a period of 24 years before he relapsed. He never heard that such a law existed, that even after 24 years, the ex-smoker is not totally freed from his imprisonment of addiction.
He didn't understand that the day he tossed his "last" cigarette, he was placed "on probation" for the rest of his life. But ignorance of the law is not excusable - not the way the laws of a physiological nature are written. By the American standards of justice, this seems to be cruel and unusual punishment. But this is the way things are.
Maybe instead of going to a smoking clinic, a recently relapsed person should contact his attorney to plead his case of why he should be able to have an occasional cigarette when he desires. Maybe he can cheat just once, get a sympathetic jury, be judged innocent, and walk out of the courtroom a free and independent person.
Surely, in pleading his case before twelve impartial people, he will probably have no problem convincing them that he is innocent of any wrongdoing. And, as he happily walks out of court a free and independent person, he will probably have an uncontrollable urge and then light a cigarette.
Don't look for loopholes in the law of addiction. You will be convicting yourself back to smoking. While it may seem harsh and unfair, to many, smoking is a crime punishable by death. Don't try to cheat the system - Never Take Another Puff! Joel
XXX© Joel Spitzer 1988, 2006 - All Rights Reserved
Joel Spitzer is one of America's leading smoking cessation counselors. You can pose your quitting question to Joel online at AskJoel. His entire collection of quitting articles is available online at WhyQuit.com and may be printed and distributed for any not-for-profit health education purpose so long as there is never any charge or cost to recipients and copyrights remain in place.Contact info:
Joel Spitzer, Evanston, Illinois (847) 328-7229
Author of Joel's Library
Director of AskJoel
Director of Evanston and Skokie Departments of Health cessation clinics and seminars
Last updated July 24, 2006 0726 EST
Learn More About Nicotine Dependency Recovery
- "Never Take Another Puff" - a free 149 page quit smoking book in PDF format by Joel Spitzer of Chicago, the Internet's leading authority on cold turkey quitting and nicotine dependency recovery. Joel's free book is a wonderful collection 98 short quitting articles on almost every cessation topic imaginable.
- Joel's Library - an HTML version of Joel Spitzer's 149 page free quitting book
- AskJoel - an MSN based message board where you can pose your quit smoking question to Joel.
- Nicotine Addiction 101 - WhyQuit's guide to nicotine dependency.
- WhyQuit.com - The Internet's oldest forum devoted to the art, science and psychology of abrupt nicotine cessation (cold turkey quitting), the quitting method responsible for 91% of all long-term successful quitters.
- Freedom from Tobacco - the Internet's only 100% nicotine-free quit smoking forum. Actively managed by Joel Spitzer, smokers will find 275,000 archived member posts indexed on 22 subject matter message boards.
- Nicotine Cessation Topic Index - an alphabetical subject matter index to hundreds of nicotine cessation support group discussions at Freedom from Tobacco.
