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NICODEMON’S LIES Part One
REPOST from ClearColors (Nancy) Date Unknown
This article helped me from WhyQuit.com… Some numbers may be off - outdated - but the info is spot on. Nancy
Nicodemon's Lies?
by John R. Polito, Nicotine Cessation Educator
As teenagers, what most of us thought would be a brief rebellious experiment, was quickly transformed into a powerful lifelong chemical addiction, as regular nicotine feedings soon became mandatory. Research confirms that for many, it only took a couple of nicotine-laden cigarettes before the shackles of slavery started to close. What seemed innocent soon resulted in a brain wanting disorder. Without us realizing it, nicotine was activating, saturating, de-sensitizing and up-regulating dopamine pathway receptors, as our brain's priorities teaching circuitry was taken hostage.
Two, five, eight nicotine fixes a day. When will enough be enough? "I'll quit tomorrow" or "I love smoking" became our cry! Welcome to the realities of true chemical dependency. A world built upon lies. Science calls our lies denial. Denial is an unconscious defense mechanism - just below the surface - for resolving the emotional conflict and anxieties that naturally arise from living in a permanent state of self-destructive chemical bondage.
Three primary areas of denial relied upon by nicotine addicts are dependency denial, cost denial and recovery denial. Truth is sacrificed for peace of mind, to remain hostage in an artificial world of "nicotine normal," or to justify relapse. Most nicotine addicts we'll see today are fully insulated by a thick blanket of unconscious denial rationalizations, minimizations, fault projections, escapes, intellectualizations and delusions, that hide the pain of captivity or create the illusion, that the problem is somehow being solved.
The average addict musters the courage to say “No" to the wanting for that next fix about once every 2.5 years. It's then that roughly 1 in 20 will succeed in breaking free for an entire year. These horrible recovery statistics eventually result in half of us dying by our own hand, with male smokers losing an average of 13 years of life expectancy, while females lose 14. Our intentional self-destruction is undeniable evidence of the depths of denial. Denial insulates us from the extreme price paid with each and every puff - a little more of life itself. It doesn't have to be.
According to the World Health Organization, the next three years will cost 15 million of our brother and sister addicts their lives. Once residing here on Easy Street with us, we hope you'll share what you've learned as failure to either self-discover, or be taught the "Law of Addiction" is a horrible reason to die.
Our Lie: My cigarettes are my friend.
The Truth: Friend or Master?
What kind of "friend" would deprive us of oxygen, take away our ability to smell, burn our clothes, destroy our teeth, harden our arteries, elevate our blood pressure, daily feed us 4,000+ chemical compounds that include arsenic, ammonia, acetone, formaldehyde, butane, massive doses of carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, methane, stearic acid, vinyl chloride, mercury, and lead, together with 81 known cancer causing agents (one of which is created when nicotine breaks down - NNK), before finally killing you with cancer, a stroke, a heart attack or emphysema? Imagine seeing your executioner as a friend. Imagine residing inside a mind that is so sick it is willing to trade 13 years of life for one chemical.
Our Lie: I enjoy smoking.
The Truth: This may be the most deeply ingrained rationalization of all, as it has a solid basis in the following flawed denial logic. "I don't do things that I don't like to do." "I smoke lots and lots of cigarettes." "Therefore, I must really enjoy smoking," instead of the correct conclusion, “Therefore, I must really be chemically addicted to smoking nicotine.”
Did you enjoy being the not addicted "you" or have you forgotten what it was like to live comfortably inside a mind that does not crave for nicotine? If you cannot remember what it was like being “you", then what basis do you have for honest comparison?
If you truly enjoyed being addicted to nicotine, then why are you here reading these words? Is it that you liked smoking or that you liked not having to experience what occurred when you didn't smoke - withdrawal?
Studies have long ranked nicotine as a more addictive substance than either heroin or cocaine. In fact, cocaine's generally recognized addiction rate among regular users is 15%, while nicotine's addiction rate of over 70% is at least five times as great.
Imagine convincing your mind that it " likes " being addicted to the drug that addiction scientists now rank as the most addictive substance on all of planet earth. We are nicotine addicts. A pack a day smoker smokes 7,300 cigarettes each and every year. How many of your last 7,300 nicotine fixes did you really enjoy? How many of the next 7,300 will bring tremendous joy to your life?
Isn't it time to be honest?