The final ingredient is an excuse. For many, any excuse will do, even joy. It could be a reunion with an old buddy who uses, two too many drinks, a wedding, graduation, or even a baby's birth and someone handing you a cigar.
Imagine being curious about vaping e-cigs and being told that the Juul compatible pod you've just been handed is filled with apple, cherry, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, coffee, mint, or tobacco flavored nicotine.
What about a chance encounter with a self-service display offering two pieces of Nicorette's new Cinnamon Surge," "Fruit Chill" or "Cappuccino" flavors of nicotine gum for one penny!
What, if after a couple of drinks someone hands you a sample Philip Morris' IQOS or TEEPS, or a Ploom heat-not-burn nicotine delivery device?
Imagine being offered the new fully dissolvable tobacco/nicotine toothpicks, sticks, film, candy-flavored orbs, or invited to experience hookah via a waterpipe.
But joyful or even stupid nicotine relapse is harder to explain to ourselves and to those we love.
The smart addict waits for the great excuse, the one that will be easy to sell to both themselves and others. As sick as it may sound, the easiest to sell is probably the death of a loved one.
Although everyone we love is destined to die and it will happen sooner or later, for the reformed addict it's the perfect excuse for relapse. I mean, who can blame us for ingesting highly addictive drugs upon our mother's death.
Anyone who does would have to be extremely insensitive or totally heartless, right? Wrong! There is no legitimate excuse for relapse.
Losing a job, the end of a relationship, a serious illness, disease, a terrorist attack, financial problems, a flood, earthquake, hurricane, an auto accident, are all great excuses too. It's drug time again, the addict is back!
Utterly terrible events will happen in each of our lives. Such is life. Adding full-blown nicotine relapse to any situation won't fix, correct, or undo the underlying horror.
Take a moment now and picture yourself fully navigating the worst nightmare your mind can imagine.
Sooner or later it will happen. When it does, let being and remaining clean and free serve as hope's lighthouse during this period of near total darkness.
Remember, we've only traded places with our chemical dependence. The key to the cell is that one hit of nicotine that will force your brain's survival instincts teacher to teach a false lesson, and make that lesson nearly impossible in the short term to forget.
As long as we stay on freedom's side of the bars, we are the jailers and our dependency our prisoner.
There are only two choices. We can complete this temporary period of adjustment and enjoy comfortable probation for life, or introduce nicotine back into our bloodstream. Why pick the darkest darkness? Why let relapse intentionally inflict cruel and unusual punishment upon these innocent bodies for the remainder of their time on earth?
If the first choice sounds better - lifetime probation - then we need only adhere to one guiding principle ... no nicotine today!
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Published in the USA