What if you truly believed that there was absolutely nothing good about spending the rest of your life as nicotine's slave?
Nothing!
With no sense of loss, imagine being unafraid to let go.
Rationalizations are defense mechanisms that allow us to make threatening conduct non-threatening. You convince yourself that it's "not that serious."[1]
Let's look at 7 common use rationalizations that try to explain or justify that next fix.
"It's how I deal with stress"
A 2013 study found that roughly one million U.S. ex-smokers relapsed to smoking following the World Trade Center terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.[2]
But why? Unlike "Smart Turkeys," they continued to believe in the false message old use memories told them — that smoking reduces stress.
It's normal to believe that nicotine is a stress reliever, that it calms us during crisis. How could we not? We'd felt it happen hundreds or even thousands of times previously. Or, did we?
According to a once-secret 1983 research memo by Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, "People smoke to maintain nicotine levels" and "stress robs the body of nicotine."[3] But how?
Stress accelerates withdrawal's onset. It quickly turns our urine more acidic. In users, this causes their kidneys to accelerate removal of the alkaloid nicotine from their bloodstream, throwing them into early withdrawal.[4]
The false calming effect felt after inhaling nicotine during stress is simply nicotine satisfying early withdrawal.
The underlying stressful situation remains unchanged. If the tire was flat it's still flat. If the bills were unpaid they're still unpaid.
As ex-users, imagine greater calm during crisis as we're no longer adding withdrawal to it.
"I like it" or "I love it"
Think hard. What do you like, love or enjoy about nicotine?
Is it that you like or enjoy nicotine or that you don't like what happens when you go too long without it?
We tend to draw conclusions about what we must like by watching what we find ourselves doing.
Which statement is true? "I inhale lots and lots of nicotine, many times daily, so I must really love it" or "I inhale lots and lots of nicotine because I'm addicted to it"?
Ignorance is bliss.
Is it love when you get that "I need a nicotine fix...AND NOW" feeling?
Isn't saying "I love vaping" like saying "I love when I stop pounding my fingers with a hammer"?
If we can no longer remember what it felt like to reside inside our mind before nicotine took control, if we can't recall the calm and quiet mind we once called home, then what basis exists for saying that we love using nicotine more than we miss our pre-nicotine self?
How can we claim to love something when we have no true basis for comparison?
Just two weeks free and then reflect on what you enjoy, like or love.
"Use relieves boredom"
It's easy to relate nicotine use to boredom. However, as actively feeding addicts we needed to replenish constantly falling nicotine reserves whether bored to death, having the time of our lives, and at all points in-between.
Still, nicotine use is more noticeable and thus more memorable when bored. If doing nothing, it's hard not to notice when feeding time arrives. Yet, if busy, thinking, or excited, as if on auto pilot, we often didn't notice refueling.
Have you ever noticed the minor anxieties that occur when bored? It's why we talk about "relieving" boredom.
Boredom motivates the mind to take action. It fosters creativity,[5] which can result in accomplishment and the dopamine "aaah" that comes with anticipating completion or completing a task.[6]
What's sad is a mind that views successful nicotine replenishment as an important accomplishment.
Maybe that's why the link between not using nicotine and boredom can seem so strong. The anxiety that comes with boredom tries to motivate us to get into action, to earn the next burst of dopamine. But, with boredom we'd steal it, over and over and over again by consuming nicotine instead.
Still, recovery presents the opportunity to experience boredom and to blame it on recovery. You believe you are bored because you are no longer consuming nicotine. Wrong!
If we used nicotine 12 times a day, and each replenishment took 5 minutes of our time, we now have an extra hour each day to either fill with some new activity or to sense the anxiety that comes with boredom.
But let's not kid ourselves. We didn't vape, smoke, pouch, dip, or chew due to boredom. Never-users get horribly bored too but the thought of nicotine replenishment never enters their mind.
Nicotine depletion anxieties attempt to motivate replenishment. Boredom anxieties attempt to motivate activity. Unfortunately, the nicotine addict's act of replenishment satisfied both.
Boredom can be a productive emotion. Recovery will clearly add additional free time to each day. Hopefully, you'll discover healthy and satisfying ways to spend it.
"I can't drink without using"
During the first few days, this is true for most people. Amazingly, roughly half of all relapses are associated with alcohol use.[7] If so, why drink something that diminishes self-control while in the throes of early withdrawal?
While it isn't necessary to give up anything but nicotine during recovery, early alcohol use warrants caution.
The key is getting beyond peak withdrawal before attempting use. Even then, it's good to have a plan and a back-up, and to be ready to execute both.
If you know that early alcohol use will cause you to fail and yet you drink anyway, at a minimum, it's problem drinking.[8] The bigger question is, are you dealing with more than one dependency?
"I'll lose my friends"
Imagine convincing ourselves that if we arrest our chemical dependence that our friends won't want to be around us or that we won't be able to be around them.
Yes, it takes a bit of practice before getting comfortable around users. But putting an end to all use conditioning is a necessary part of healing.
According to Philip Morris research, over 85% of smokers strongly agree with the statement, "I wish I had never started smoking."[9]
Secretly, most of our friends who use, including e-cig users, feel the same. They wish they knew how to stop. Imagine them soon having a friend who is both knowledgeable and skilled at recovery.
Through subconscious conditioning, most of us became convinced that nicotine use was central to our life, including friendships with other users.
While recovery means that we'll no longer use while with friends who do, no relationship whose foundation is deeper than shared drug use need be affected by the absence of nicotine.
Recovery need not deprive us of a single friend or loved one.
On the contrary, tobacco use has likely cost us relationships. Fewer and fewer non-users are willing to tolerate being around the smells, smoke, ash and stink. Vaping and spit tobacco use are major turn-offs too.
Aside from no longer using nicotine, our current lives don't need to change at all unless we want change. Mine did. I no longer sought situations that allowed me to feel comfortable smoking.
Fellow nicotine addicts don't normally try to make each other feel guilty about being hooked and using. In fact, we served as a form of "use" insurance for each other on those occasions when our supply ran out.
Obviously, I no longer frequented community ashtrays. In fact, for the first time in my adult life, I found myself totally comfortable sitting beside non-users and ex-users for extended periods of time.
Gradually, my circle of friends grew to include far more non-users and ex-users.
It was as if my addiction had been picking my friends.
"Now isn't the right time"
"I'll stop after the…next pack, next carton, next month, my next birthday, or New Years' day."
"I'll quit when school is over, while on vacation, after vacation, after I get a job, once I lose 12 pounds, after tax season, during the summer, after we move, once things improve at work, after the wedding, after I get promoted, after my surgery, once divorced, after my family member gets better, after the funeral, once I retire, when my doctor tells me I have to … what's the use in quitting now, the damage is done!"[10]
I hate to think about how many times and years I lied to myself with such nonsense. "It's just too stressful right now." Rubbish!
As reviewed, ex-users experience significantly diminished stress, as urine acidification is no longer accelerating nicotine elimination and adding early withdrawal to stressful situations.
Why did I limit myself to always purchasing only a day's supply, three packs? Because tomorrow was always the day I'd stop and I couldn't stomach throwing extra packs away.
My name is John and I'm a nicotine addict, albeit a comfortably recovered one.
"I can't quit"
While deep down I worried that this was true, it wasn't that I couldn't quit but that I wouldn't.[11]
We always had it within us to stop. We just wouldn't give recovery sufficient time to allow healing to work its magic.
More than once I relied on the fact that withdrawal was beginning to ease off (after 3 days) as justification to declare victory and reward myself with "just one."
I didn't realize that I was transporting myself back to square one, requiring another 3 days of detox and withdrawal. We're not that strong.
"Just one, just once"
This is likely the most costly and destructive use tease of all, that once we stop we can cheat the Law of Addiction.
Why torment yourself with a lie? Why pretend that brain imaging studies were all wrong, that one hit of nicotine won't cause up to half of our brain's dopamine pathway receptors to become occupied by nicotine — that our brain won't soon be begging for more?
"Just one" or "just once" denies who we are, real drug addicts.
Whether free for 10 hours, 10 days, 10 months or 10 years, just one hit of nicotine and permanently compromised pathways will re-assign getting more nicotine the same priority as they assign to eating food.
Let go of the fiction of "just one" or "just once." Laugh at it.
Along with "stress relief" it's the most threatening cessation tease inflicted on the mind. But that's not us anymore. We're smart turkeys!
We understand exactly what happens if we use again. We know that for us, one equals all, that lapse equals relapse. And don't say that you don't want one when you do.
Rather, acknowledge the desire but ask yourself, do I want the thousands of others that come with it, and all the baggage that comes with them?
References:
2. Caba, J, 9/11 Attacks Made 1 Million Former Smokers Pick Up Cigarettes Again, MedicalDaily.com, Jun 21, 2013.
3. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, Internal Correspondence, March 25, 1983, Bates Number: 670508492 https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=xnvb0133
4. Polito JR, "Use relieves stress and anxiety." 2009 Freedom from Nicotine - The Journey Home, Chapter 4: Use Rationalizations https://whyquit.com/ffn/04c-stress.html
5. Mann S and Cadman R, Does Being Bored Make Us More Creative? Creativity Research Journal, Volume 26, 2014 - Issue 2, Pages 165-173 | Published online: 08 May 2014
6. Rice ME. Closing in on what motivates motivation. Nature. 2019 Jun;570(7759):40-42. doi: 10.1038/d41586-019-01589-6. PMID: 31160742.
7. Brandon, TH et al, Postcessation cigarette use: the process of relapse, Addictive Behaviors, 1990; 15(2), pages 105-114.
8. Spitzer J, Can people quit smoking and still drink alcohol?2005. https://whyquit.com/joel/Joel_03_34_Alcohol.html
9. Philip Morris, The Cigarette Consumer, March 20, 1984, Bates Number: 2077864835; http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/wos84a00
10. Spitzer J, "I will quit smoking when..." 1984 https://whyquit.com/joel/Joel_03_10_i_will_quit_when.html
11. Spitzer J, "I can't quit" or "I won't quit"? 1986 https://whyquit.com/joel/Joel_04_21_cant_vs_wont_quit.html
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Publication date: May 4, 2021