Is the How and Why Important?

Take All of Me!

Most folks believe they need to understand the underlying causes of their nicotine addiction before they can successfully stop.  But understanding your “story” of how you got hooked and why you got addicted really isn’t important at all while stopping.  Let me explain:

Nicotine addiction is both a physiological as well as a psychological addiction.  You got hooked physically and you made sense of it with your self-reflection.  When you commit to stopping and you are in the throes of wanting a hit of nicotine, it isn’t relevant why you want to smoke or vape. What’s relevant is. that you want to smoke or vape.  That presents an opportunity for you to deal with your problem, not run from it.  

Before you stop you will need to be fortified with understanding the nature of addiction, how the information applies to you, a plan of what to expect, and a practical set of skills that will fortify you when your desires for nicotine surface. As you are stopping you will need to use these newfound skills as the urges come and go in order to keep your head on straight. Most folks want to learn "tips and tricks" to get rid of their urges for fear that if they experience them, they will give in and blow it.  But if you learn to make positive choices under all circumstances, even when you really want to bail, then you have a chance at a lasting recovery. When you learn to face your obstacles, you are meeting life on life’s terms. You are finally learning how to take responsibility for your recovery.  You are no longer a victim. 

Having said the above there will come a time in the process to explore how you have endowed your smokes with absurd, yet heartfelt feelings like, “they are my best friends’, “they have been with me through thick and thin”, “they are my only comfort or vice”. This is the psychological dependency talking, and it is important to see the ways we endow the poison of nicotine with the lies we tell ourselves in search of relief. Nicotine has never been your friend. It is an equal opportunity foe dressed up like a friend. 

What is relevant about your story is for you to explore how your need for nicotine has skewed your ability to see clearly what it is and was costing you. Remember, in quitting nicotine you are not a bad person getting good. Rather, you have been an addicted person in denial about the true nature of your problem and powerless over the control nicotine has had on your life. 

This is what the follow-up support offers after you have stopped.  It helps you learn about and confront your psychological dependency.  It helps you meet that dependency where you are so you can gain the lasting freedom you crave.  CSFL and CVFL give you 90 days of follow-up support after you stop to help by personalized one-on-one phone calls and emails because that is the number of days it takes to retrain the dendrites in your brain. The 90 days of maintained connection provides you with support, insights, and motivation to stay off. Without follow-up support you will most likely fall back into your old thinking.  When getting free we stop ourselves, just not all by ourselves. Us addicts whose nature it is to isolate, need above all, connection.