GOODBYE TO THE MONKEY

No, this is not some farewell missive after a somewhat long virtual absence – it is not the Chaos Monkey to which I refer, but rather to that nasty little blood sucking monkey with the pointy claws and sharp teeth who used to travel around rent free on my back. Rent free isn’t the half of it – I actually used to PAY MONEY to have it there.

You know, I couldn’t even tell you exactly when I stopped smoking. Unlike many people, I couldn’t say “I’ve been (insert addiction here) free for X years, X months, X days, three hours, two minutes and forty-five seconds.” Though for those first few days or weeks I’m sure I could have done that, by this time even the exact month has escaped my recallable memory.

I know that it’s been more than two years because I mention not smoking in a piece I wrote in November 2003. At that time it was still pretty fresh, though judging from the context enough time had passed that I was feeling okay about it. Not cocky or celebratory, but all right nonetheless.

Which was no small feat for me. Quitting smoking was one of the most difficult things that I’ve done in this lifetime and not something that I would care to repeat. There are some lessons which are so hard won that I hope never to need to repeat them – letting go of an addiction is definitely near the top of this list.

It was so difficult that even after all this time I’ve never felt cocky or celebratory about it, and though there is no reason or desire to feel the former, I think that I would be missing something to never experience the latter. I mean, after that many years of trying, failing, trying, failing, trying, failing, etc, etc., until one day I finally made it… well, if Sisyphus finally got that rock to stay at the top of the mountain, I think at some point he would deserve to break out the champagne.

Part of the reason that I never felt celebratory or even silently said “Good job,” to myself is that part of quitting for me was deciding to just not think about it. At all. Ever. Once it was gone, it was GONE – no dwelling, no obsessing, no debating, no considering, no pause to say “good riddance” over my shoulder at it. To do any of those things, I had found, was just starting a “dialog” with it all over again, something that I could NOT afford to do until I was waaaaaaay past that part of my life.

For me, the addiction to smoking was the worst, unhealthiest, most damaging friendship I’ve ever had. It was the friend who was always there for me, to celebrate my accomplishments, console me when I was sad, commiserate when I was angry, and relax with me after a hard day. Day or night, rain or shine, in sickness and in health, it was always there, always at my fingertips, unconditionally.

I’ll never leave you…

And it hated me. It wanted me dead. It used me to give itself life in the world, a parasite so cruel and insatiable that its ultimate mission was to kill its host slowly, suffocating and choking one cell at a time. It wanted to suck every drop of energy and breath out of my body until it was all I had left.

I’ll never leave you…

I tried and tried to walk away, to leave it, to thank it for the part it played in my life but now we must part ways. Thank you for the times when you were there for me, to console, celebrate, commiserate and relax. Thanks for the good times and the bad, but now I really must be moving on.

I’ll never leave you…

And as I would walk away, determined this time to make a clean break, I would hear its voice calling from somewhere, nagging and niggling from the back of my mind…

Just one more for old time’s sake. You’ll never make it without me. Who will be there for you now? Aren’t you lonely? Don’t you miss me? Come back…. Remember, I’ll never leave you…

And so I’d go back, sometimes just to argue. I hated myself for smoking and I smoked because I hated myself. Round and round and round we go, over and over and over again until one day, finally, I just refused to engage in the conversation anymore. The Tar Baby was not ever going to let me go, never going to let me have the last word. The only solution, the only way to get away, was to just ignore it, to not say anything, not respond, no matter what it said, threatened or promised.

Just to clarify – it isn’t the *smoking* per say that was the problem, it was the addiction – smoking just happened to be the form that it took for me. It could have been anything – heroin, crack, cocaine, alcohol, bad relationships, shopping, television. The point is that I couldn’t leave it, couldn’t put it down, couldn’t seem to control my own life, destiny or actions.

And all the while my eyes were wide open to this reality – it’s not like I deluded myself as to what the addiction was all about. I didn’t believe “Oh, I could quit anytime,” or “It’s not really all that bad for me.” I was all too aware of what it was, what it was doing and my own inability to stop doing it despite this knowledge.

Realization is not liberation – no truer words were ever spoken.

It was also difficult for me to come across a problem for which my willpower was no match. I was the kind of person who would tear down a mountain with a rusty spoon if I had to, but yet I COULD NOT let go of something that served no other purpose than to kill me.

It was hard and somewhat frightening to accept that there are some things in the world for which will power is not the proper tool. As my partner put it, I was really, really, really good at using a hammer, therefore I attacked all problems with a hammer, but that’s not always the appropriate tool for every job.

But if not willpower, what? Even though I’ve (apparently) done the job, I still couldn’t put into words what it was. Willpower seemed to imply / invite a confrontation where my will was tested against the “will” of an addiction, and for me the addiction always did and always would have won. (This is not the case for everyone, but it was the case for me.) Fighting fire with fire, so to speak, just led to more fire with me always getting burned.

I ended up using skills from a variety of places in my life, learning from other experiences as well as all of the times that I “failed” at quitting prior to that. One of the most important things I think was just walking away and letting it go – no looking back, no arguing, no obsessing. I had thought the thing through to death and no good whatsoever could come of thinking about it anymore at that point in my life, so I committed to not even considering it for at least a year. Once that year was up I decided I better take another just to be sure.

So, here I am two years later just now giving myself permission to notice that I actually got over an addiction, even though I had almost given up believing that it would ever happen. While I was trying to quit (like for almost ten years) I would periodically ask people who had quit how they did it to see if I could gain any wisdom from others on the topic. Though I learned a great many things in this manner, there were a few things that I seemed to hear from many different sources which ultimately were not true in my situation.

One was that I just needed to want to quit enough for it to happen – this was never true for me. I’ve joked several times in the past couple of years that I STILL don’t have a desire to quit smoking. Internally I was so ambivalent – it was like arm wrestling with myself. Desire versus addiction with me being pulled apart in the middle.

Wanting to quit never led to me quitting, and quitting didn’t require a desire to do it. Letting go of needing to WANT to do it helped me a lot. I didn’t need to WANT to quit – I just needed to quit.

The second was that I had to do it for myself, that I could never quit “for” someone else. Though it was true that I had never been able to quit for my partner (who desperately wanted me to for obvious reasons) or my family, or my friends, I also hadn’t been able to quit for myself either.

Frankly, if I’m honest about it, I quit and stayed quit for my daughter. I was pregnant with her when I quit, and despite the risks associated with smoking during pregnancy, the addiction was stronger than my fear of those risks. Though I knew it should be enough, in reality it wasn’t.

What I was really afraid of wasn’t smoking while I was pregnant, but trying to quit when I had a child. There had been too many times in the past when I had been totally psychotic, violent and out of control when I was in withdrawal and there was NO WAY that I wanted a child to ever experience that. I needed that part to be over before I had an innocent and vulnerable baby in my life, so it had to be now (read: then) or never.

A consequence to having a child that I didn’t anticipate at the time was that once she was born, I wouldn’t have the time or space to smoke anymore. With a baby, there was NO WAY that I could have taken a “break” more than twenty times a day to smoke, especially if I wouldn’t smoke around her. Once she arrived, staying quit was a breeze – I didn’t have time to think about it, much less go through all the hassle it would have entailed to actually srart again.

So how did I do it? I’m still not sure – I’m just glad that I did. I never have experienced the kind of elation that I thought I would after it was all over. Rather, I just feel a calm sort of relief that I was fortunate enough to get out when I did. There are times that I still miss it, though it is a very weak, very distant sort of longing, like wondering what a long-lost friend is doing these days.

But then I remember – oh yeah – that’s the friend who hated my guts and only kept me around to use me to death. I’m sure my brain has something more pleasant and useful to do…

In retrospect, having an addiction certainly did teach me a few things – not judging others for their addictions is the first thing that comes leaping to mind. I remember, oh so vividly, when I first saw Sid and Nancy when I was in my late teens prior to having my own addiction. I thought, and may have even said out loud, that I just didn’t get why someone would totally destroy their lives with a drug – if it was me, I’d just quit.

Yeah. Right. If addiction taught me one thing, it’s that it isn’t always that easy.

This also generalizes to other “addictions.” Negative emotional states, behaviors, thought patterns and relationships can be addictive as well. Just like smoking, any action repeated enough – regardless of how ultimately destructive it is – causes a “rut” chemically and behaviorally which gets more and more difficult for the person to get out of.

The irrational nature of addiction illustrates the point to me that suffering is often the most difficult thing to let go of. I once asked a Tibetan Rinpoche if he thought that Samsara (i.e. this imperfect reality in which we all suffer to some degree) existed simply because we were addicted to it, we were used to it, so we just kept coming back and (re)creating it over and over.

He thought about it, considered the notion, rolled it around in his mind and then laughed out loud. Yes, he thought, that may very well be possible.

Good bye monkey. Though I learned much in your presence, I’ve learned innumerably more valuable lessons in your absence. And while there have been times when I may have missed the falsely reassuring illusion of your friendship, I do not miss your sharp little knives twisting in my back, claws clinging tick-like to my body while you feed on my soul. I can breathe easier, run faster and jump higher now without you riding around on my back.

Though my reality may not be rut-free, at least I managed to crawl out of the pit. And for that I think I can finally say “Yeah me!”

*******************
*******************
*******************

Recently, someone asked for advice on how to handle / help her spouse quit smoking. Since this gives more concrete information on the topic, for whatever it's worth, I'll include it here for those of you who have A LOT of time on your hands for on-line reading:

***************

This is a subject near and dear to my heart. I struggled with smoking and found that overcoming it was the single most difficult thing I have ever done in my life -- I'd rather be in labor once a week than have to do that again. It is very difficult for some people to quit and much easier for others. Much of it depends upon your own personal physiology and brain chemistry.

For me, it was a nightmare. I tried for YEARS to quit before I finally succeeded. Failing to quit made me feel terrible and continuing to smoke made me feel terrible -- it totally wore away at my self-esteem and confidence in myself. Here are a few things that worked for me, as well as tips for support people:

* As a person near the one trying to quit, try to be as non-judgmental and supportive as possible. Guilt makes it SO MUCH WORSE for the person quitting -- there were times that someone guilting me nearly drove me to suicide. (I'm not exaggerating.) I already hated myself for smoking, for failing, etc., and to know that someone else was also disappointed in me was almost unbearable. An "it's okay -- you'll beat it eventually" attitude was much more helpful.

*Addictions are HORRIBLE to deal with -- the person in withdrawal may go through periods where he feels he would rather not live without the substance. My thought processes were sometimes "die now, die in twenty years -- you make the choice."

* Consider Nicotine Anonymous. I had a very negative attitude about twelve step programs, but I eventually ate my words. Being around other people who also had SUCH a difficult time quitting made me feel less like a total failure, less like there was something wrong with me. (What? I'm not the only one who has picked up a butt they found on the sidewalk and smoked it when I was going through withdrawal?)

* Don't beat yourself up for giving him smokes / enabling him when he was trying to quit. My partner did this when I was trying to quit and he is a TOTAL non-smoker. (Health nut, holistic health care worker, in great shape, never smoked, etc..) It is very difficult to see someone you love suffer that intensely and not want to make it stop. Subconsciously, your spouse may be wanting "permission" from you to start again because he may feel like such a failure for letting down his loved ones when / if he starts again. (This is how my mind worked anyway.)

* Try to get him to see his past "failures" not as failures but as practice. Every time you try and don't succeed, you learn something else about how to overcome it. Maybe some coping skills worked some of the time (taking a walk), but maybe others didn't work at all (chewing gum). Next time you'll be a little wiser and know more about how to overcome it.

* Build a "tool box" of coping skills that work and be prepared to use them. For me, absolutely LOSING my temper and lashing out any anyone near me, or myself, was the worst part of it. I won't embarrass myself by telling you how many things I broke, how often I screamed at my partner, how many times I nearly threw myself off of tall buildings while I was in withdrawal...

But finally I found stuff that worked to get me through the worst of it. These are the things I did when I quit successfully:

1) I prepared to quit for more than a month before I did it. During that time, I got myself ready and planned what I would do, rehearsed it mentally, etc.

2) Went to NA meetings every time I could for the first few weeks before and after I quit. The support from people who truly understood what I was going through was very helpful. My partner had never been through it, and most of my ex-smoking friends "just quit" with not a lot of problems. I needed to talk to others who had been REALLY addicted in the same way I was.

It also helped to know that I could call anyone on the NA list any time and they would talk me through the difficult times. (I never did this but it helped to know it was an option.) If I talked to my partner when I was feeling "surly" I would just end up picking on him because I felt so awful, which would make me feel more awful, which would lead to smoking again.

3) The most difficult thing I ever faced were the messages my own mind would give me. The addiction will say ANYTHING to get you to smoke again. So, to combat that, my partner and I burned a CD of relaxing music with the two of us taking turns reading about 20 positive affirmations. This worked better for me than a "bought" tape because 1) it was tailor made for me because I wrote it and 2) it was in my own and my partner's voices, therefore I trusted what it was telling me. I played that CD night and day ALL THE TIME for the days leading up to and the first few weeks after I quit. It seemed to "over ride" all of the negative messages that my mind usually gave me.

4) I set an alarm to go off every hour and a half and would meditate for at least ten minutes every time it went off. I would sit very still and just breathe, not thinking about anything. (Though of course my CD was always going in the background.)

5) I made sure that I didn't have anything else to do for a week. I turned off the ringer on the phone, I didn't talk to anyone, I just held very still and was CALM. Calm was my whole focus for a few weeks, and it really really worked.

6) Took walks a few times every day to work off any aggression /frustration I might have pent up.

7) Gave myself permission to just experience without judgment any emotions that came up. People often use smoking as a way to push aside unpleasant emotions, so when you remove the "smoke screen," all of those emotions may just come pouring out. Sometimes I would cry and have no idea why -- other times I would laugh hysterically. I knew this was coming so I didn't think that I had gone totally crazy. :<)

8) Once the hardest part was over (first three or four weeks or so) I just didn't think about it for a while. Every time "Smoking" popped up in my head -- even if it was to notice that I was NOT smoking -- I would push it aside. I told myself that I would think about it in a year, not before. I feared that if I even let it into my mind, I would start obsessing and want to go back to it.

That is my quit smoking plan in a nutshell. The affirmations I used were things that I WISHED were true, but were not when I first wrote them. However, after a few weeks of listening to that CD all the time, they WERE true. (I am blissful and calm as I stop smoking...I am happy to have a smoke free life... I am capable of dealing with all of my emotions, etc..)

Keep in mind that nicotine is considered THE MOST ADDICTIVE SUBSTANCE -- crack is second. (Alcohol is 14th.) Though some people can "just quit" without a whole lot of torture, for others it is VERY difficult.

Good luck, etc..