The evils of addiction

As my son went through the three upper grades of elementary school, it seemed the schools were intensifying their efforts to curtail smoking.  I never smoked indoors and I don't know how many times I went to open the door out onto our deck only to encounter an anti-smoking message in crayon on a brown paper shopping bag (remember those?) taped to the glass,  the message received and in the context of a 10- or 11-year-old boy sank in but I still walked past and lit up.  Then one day almost nine years ago I quit and it has lasted.

 

A couple of years ago, I picked up on an indication I had made it.  The anniversary date of the quitting came and went but I never noticed until at least three or four weeks later.  I happened to be looking at a calendar and it hit me that I had made another year without cigarettes.  The idea that the date passed without recall, to me, meant it was not that big a deal any more, nothing to think about or celebrate even.

Today I realized how insidious that addiction is.  For the first time in even more years than I have not been smoking, I went through some industrial training online.  Like most such instruction the course was divided into hour-long segments.  At the end of each segment, a time when at in-person sessions we all took a break and those of  us who smoked, hightailed it out to the smoking area to light up.

The minute I finished that first hourly segment today, I stood up and the first thing that came to mind was stepping out for a cigarette.  I could almost taste it.  I was not tempted and even if I had been it's a 20-mile round trip to buy a pack of cigarettes for, what, $9? No, no temptation, but the trigger definitely was there and stronger than should be expected.    And once it was in mind, it came up again and again after each lesson.  This is after nine years and at a time when it seldom even comes to mind unless maybe I walk into somebody's cloud in passing a smoking area near some building.

So, after all this time with the physical and mental desire all but unnoticed, the habit is still there and the triggers can bring it out.  I like to think if I had walked outdoors and seen someone smoking I would have refused.  But can anyone be sure the right set of circumstances won't arise and that first full drag which would be awesome, it wouldn't send us into that downward spiral again.

I guess my neighbor in Chicago was right.  When he quit after a scary emphysema diagnosis from his doctor, he would say when the subject came up, "I will always be a smoker, I just choose not to smoke."