I started smoking when I was 16. I quit when I was 36. The twenty-year affair would have still been going on if not for a small patch of skin. On my tongue.
I get ahead of myself.
I loved smoking. It was my pride and joy. It was my rebellion from the leash of society and the one act of showing I was independent. I was the Marlboro man expressing himself as the tough fearless lone ranger. The best part about cigarettes was that they were in my pocket. Accessible, anytime I needed that shot of Marlboro confidence.
The packet came to mean so many things as time passed. I became attached to them. They would comfort me when I was alone. With people. In moments of fun and despair. They become my cloud of warmth and my pack of respite as I fought for independence from my mental demons.
Slowly I became so fond of them that I was willing to trade anything for them. I would trade friendships that objected to the habit. I would swap cigarettes for food. I would hoard them. Collect them. Speak about them like a connoisseur. I was the man. The man that had mastered the theory and the style of smoking. It was who I was. I was a smoker.
Then slowly, I felt a new thought enter my mind every time I lit a cigarette. That I was compelled to light it. I was smoking even if I was not that keen to smoke.
Then I noticed something else. Smoking did not have the same meaning. It made me feel a bit shabby. I had to go into a specific room to smoke in the office. I had to stop what I was doing or immersed in to get up and go and smoke. I was led to smoke. I was being led. By who?
I slowly started to resent this other me that wanted to smoke. But now I had a problem. I was not attached. I was addicted.
The difference between the two states is vast. In the attachment stage, we are positively engaged. We feel in sync with each other. We gain and grow from our interactions. We look forward to being in each other’s company. The other entity completes us. It’s the hallmark of soul mates and great passions.
But in the addiction stage, our relationship turns dark. It starts to rot. It starts to drain our energy. We only realize this slowly. One day we want to get up from the seat and we can’t. Our seat belt is now a cuff. We are now prisoners of the thing we were attached to.
Slowly we start to resent this feeling. We start to resent this feeling that we are now at the mercy of the thing we once started and controlled. We start to resent the lack of control. We start to resent the thing we were attached to.
There is a subtle but certain correlation between the quality of our attachments and how they turn into addictions.
Our attachments define the quality of how we relate to others in the world. Secure attachments built-in childhood with our caregiver leads to stable trusting bonds in adulthood. Poor anxiety-causing childhoods tend to lead to low trust connections and then addictions become a way to compensate.
According to the study of Kassle and colleagues in 2006, individuals with insecure attachments lack the skills to form secure relationships, which will more than likely lead to anxiety and stress. They then may resort to abusing substances to cope with their lack of connection.
In the book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction (2018) by Gabor Maté, he discusses how insecure attachments can lead to “inadequate neurological development.” These individuals find ways to release endorphins and dopamine, the “feel-good” chemicals in the brain that produce relaxation. Maté suggests that the substances are used as a replacement for these chemicals to alleviate emotional pain.
Back in the locked chair, we are now compelled to look for a way out of this self-imposed addiction prison.
Sometimes the solution can be found by creating a crisis. In my case, the crisis came as a small white patch on my tongue. It was like a scab. It had no sensation and it looked like I had a rash but on my tongue. It slowly started to spread in my mouth. My doctor recommended I see a specialist. A skin cancer specialist!
As I entered the clinic of the specialist, I was met with a group of young doctors who looked at me with a mix of sympathy and clinical curiosity. They said nothing while we all waited for the senior doctor to make his appearance. He came in and said, “I hope you don’t mind that I have invited my team to come in, we rarely get to see cases of potential oral cancer in our clinic.”
Before I could show any kind of a shock to his statement, he had a little torch in his hand that was staring down at my mouth.
After what seemed like an eternity, he switched the torch off…looked at me in the eye, and said, “Young man, 50% of the people who have patches in their mouth like yours have tongue cancer. The only way to save their lives is to cut the tongue off. You are not that 50%.
But if you don’t quit smoking. You could be”.
And then he left. Telling his team to get some tests done to confirm his diagnosis. The tests turned out negative and I still have my original tongue.
It was lucky.
My health crisis helped me cut the addiction out of my life. I was able to surgically remove the addiction by quitting smoking suddenly. The fear of losing my tongue was big enough for my brain to know what to do. It was a painful physical detox period but after a month of not smoking..the desire slowly wilted and died. Fear of loss was the easy way to kill an addiction.
There is another way to cure additions. It is to remove them psychologically.
It’s a deeper process that involves refinding ourselves. It involves going back and finding love for ourselves. Forgiving ourselves. Rebuilding kindness for ourselves. It involves becoming whole, not perfect. It is the path of self-love that leads to compassion for the world.
It’s a path you are on if you are reading this. It will lead to joy. Slowly. Then Suddenly. Keep walking.
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Previously Published on medium
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The post How To Win Over Addictions appeared first on The Good Men Project.
