Hello everyone, and welcome back to my blog, Reforming Rob! I'm glad you're here and are willing to spend a few minutes with me. In my last post, I shared my experience and learning while trying to figure out my "food puzzle". In this post, we're going to move back to my favorite topic, running! But not in the sense that you may immediately think.
A Kid's Curiosity
My own experience with tobacco began when I was six or seven years old. We had smoking neighbors next door who would toss their cigarette butts over their backyard gate and into our shared stairs down to the trash can area in the alley. I was curious about those cigarette butts. Combined with my habitual obsession with playing with matches, and I suppose the resulting collision was inevitable. I didn't know how to use a cigarette, but I would light the end of those butts and put them in my mouth. Like Former President Clinton, I didn't inhale! I didn't even draw smoke, but would just smell the fragrant tobacco burning, and I liked it very much. This went on for a week or two, and then I realized that there was something pulling me back in the alley to light those cigarettes, and it wasn't just my love of fire or the smell of the smoke. I was too young to really know what addiction was, but I had heard my parents and teachers talk about it. This little experience scared me away and I stopped "smoking" those butts. Playing with fire, though, well...that's another blog post!
Fast forward nine or ten years. For reasons I can't remember, my friend and I were visiting in Phoenix and went out on the town with my older sisters. My sisters would go into the dance clubs, and since at 16 my friend and I were too young, we'd go drive around looking for stuff to do. We'd made an arrangment to meet my sisters back in a Village Inn. My friend and I were early at the restaurant, quite bored. There was a cigarette pack machine near the cashier, and we decided to smoke cigarettes while we waited. It was just one of those spur of the moment, thoughtless things teenagers do sometimes. We both had been taught not to use tobacco, and that was probably part of the lure. We smoked most of the 20 cigarettes in that pack and then threw the rest away at the restaurant.
Graduating to Smoker Status
A few days after getting back home to Farmington from our visit to Phoenix, I found myself on lunch break from high school visiting a local gas station to buy cigarettes. I didn't smoke every day at that point, but was certainly smoking regularly. From my adventure at the Village Inn in Phoenix I had learned how to really smoke, and I thought it was cool that I knew how.
I became a tobacco smoker in 1988. The whole culture around tobacco was very different then. Smoking had very little restrictions like it has today. You could smoke in stores, in the mall, in restaurants, or just about anywhere. There were tobacco laws that required someone be 18 to purchase tobacco, but in my experience I was never even asked if I was old enough. "Soft or hard pack" was the only thing retailers ever asked. Smoking was tolerated even at my high school, where there was a smoking area in which teachers and students would gather for a quick smoke between classes. As I said, the culture was very different.
Leashed to Tobacco
It's not an exaggeration to say that for the next eight years I loved smoking. Usually three packs of cigarettes per day, which qualified me as a very heavy smoker. I didn't step foot anywhere without my lighter, an open pack, and a spare pack in tow. I would wake up at night multiple times to enjoy a cigarette. If my budget was such that I could buy food or cigarettes but not both, there was not even a second thought. Cigarettes came first. I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't pay for everything I smoked either, as my employer was a tobacco retailer, and I skipped the register at times.
In 1996 I started questioning and being unsatisfied with the shape of my life. A desire for something more, or recognizing something missing, slowly kicked me into a path of changing some things. Over the next year I would do some sifting and sorting to remove debris. I sifted my friends, my music, my integrity, and other parts of my character. There was a lot to sift, and I still have work to do today! But within all that sifting there was the realization that I needed to stop smoking. So I did. About 500 times!
I Would Die Rather Than Have To Quit Tobacco Again!
Recognizing smoking as not good for me had no effect on my addiction. Learning, over time, to despise my need to smoke instead of loving it had no effect on my addiction. My successfully quitting coffee and alcohol had no effect on my addiction. My desire to become an active member in my Church had no effect on my addiction. I would make up my mind 100% that I was done, throw away or even burn all my cigarettes and associated lighters, ash trays, etc., and within 1 hour be at the store to buy more cigarettes and a new lighter. This didn't happen a few times. It happened HUNDREDS of times. Like a merry-go-round from hell. I took a family trip with my parents to San Francisco for three or four days and didn't smoke. It was horrible! Within two hours of being back on my own I had an open pack in hand. Another time I went three weeks, but got stressed out at work one day and just went right back. Again, and again, and again. As I said, merry-go-round.
A sequence of miracles happened in 1998, leaving me with having had my last cigarette in December of 1998. Those miracles are also another blog post. Without my God's direct, obvious, and purposeful help I would still be smoking today.
Once a Customer, Always a Customer
I've written everything here to try to put an exclamation point behind my next statement. I've now been clean from tobacco and nicotine for over 25 years, and STILL, to this day, I will get just the right smell from a freshly lit cigarette and I could go buy a pack and start smoking again. In my dreams now I still smoke cigarettes. A person can become addicted to tobacco or nicotine in all its varieties today and believe that they can indulge now and just quit when they want to. And people do just that, it happens with regularity. The unspoken or unsaid TRUTH, however, in my very personal experience, is that once you're addicted to tobacco or nicotine, you will ALWAYS be so. At least in this life.
RUN!!! From Tobacco and Nicotine!
In the Old Testament, Joseph who was sold into Egypt, gave us a great example in how to proceed when we're met by a serious temptation. When Potiphar's wife approached Joseph for some intimacy while her husband was gone, Joseph "RAN". My admonition to the world would be to follow Joseph's example. In my strongest language, run, run, RUN from tobacco and nicotine!
Please share your thoughts or your own experience in the comments below, on my YouTube channel, or just email me directly. I'd love to hear from you.
Until next time...RUN from tobacco and nicotine, and...
PEACE!
Comments