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Chapter 7: Roadmap Overview

Topics:  Starting Point | Ending Use | Recovery Layers | Recovery Timeline


Recovery Timeline

A monarch butterly on a flower

Most but not all benefits listed below are related to smoking. Why? Here in the U.S., there are ten times as many smokers as oral tobacco users.[1] Smoking, by far, reflects the greatest health risks of any form of nicotine delivery. And until the e-cigarette's arrival, the vast majority of research focused upon it.

Remember, the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Just because science can't yet tell us when most oral tobacco, NRT, or e-cig recovery benefits occur, it doesn't mean that they're not happening.

Let's review a few health benefits of life on the free side of dependency's bars.[2]

When ending all tobacco and nicotine use, within ...

Arriving Home

What was it like to go entire days without once thinking about wanting to smoke, dip, chew, suck, or vape nicotine? What was it like being "you"?

Don't feel alone if you can no longer recall. That's what drug addiction is all about, quickly burying nearly all remaining memory of the beauty of life without using.

Trust in your common sense and dreams. It's my hope that you're curious about what it's like to go days, weeks, and then months without once wanting to introduce nicotine back into your bloodstream. Don't be afraid as there's nothing to fear, except for the delay in taking that first courageous step.

We leave absolutely nothing of value behind. In fact, every neurochemical that nicotine controlled already belonged to us. As recovering addicts, we can do everything we did while enslaved, and do it as well as or better once free.

Why fight and rebel against freedom and healing when within just two weeks it will be savored, embraced, protected, hugged, and loved? Why see challenges, freedom's stepping-stones, as frightening when they provide indisputable evidence of just how infected our life had become?

My prior attempts failed because I fought recovery, and did so in ignorance and darkness. Yes, now and then I'd get lucky and land a punch, but freedom was short-lived. But this time was different.

This time Joel and his insights effectively turned on the lights. Now my opponent couldn't be clearer. My eyes and mind were opened to exactly what it takes to both fail and succeed.

Joel burned an extremely bright line into my mind, one I'll do my very best to keep clean and clear every remaining day of my life. He taught me that I get to stay and live here on the free side of that line so long as it's never crossed, so long as all the world's nicotine remains on the other, so long as complacency isn't allowed to obscure it.



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References:

1. Centers for Disease Control, Tobacco Use Among Adults - United States 2005, MMWR, Weekly, October 27, 2006, Volume 55(42), Pages 1145-1148.
2. Primary sources for this recovery benefits timetable are: (1) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, The Health Consequences of Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General, 2004; (2) Hughes, JR, Effects of abstinence from tobacco: valid symptoms and time course, Nicotine and Tobacco Research, March 2007, Volume 9(3), Pages 315-327; (3) O'Connell KA, et al, Coping in real time: using Ecological Momentary Assessment techniques to assess coping with the urge to smoke, Research in Nursing and Health, December 1998, Volume 21(6), Pages 487-497.
3. Mamede M, et al, Temporal change in human nicotinic acetylcholine receptor after smoking cessation: 5IA SPECT study, Journal of Nuclear Medicine, November 2007, Volume 48(11), Pages 1829-1835.





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Page created April 26, 2016 and last updated September 3, 2020 by John R. Polito