A step in the wrong direction

Under normal circumstances I’m am fairly strongly against focusing on negativity. In this particular case, I feel like it is very important to me to dedicate one post to this. I need to make sure I highlight the problem so I make sure that I see it. I also worry that if I included this in a typical post it would seem like I was trying to cover up the problem, both to the reader and to myself.
I smoked this weekend; more than a couple. As you may have read in a previous blog, I have struggled primarily with not smoking while at social functions, especially when alcohol is involved. Rather than thinking of a way to deal with this problem and take care of it, I chose, instead, to embrace the problem and let it grow. I decided that there was no way I was going to not smoke while drinking and that in an effort not to be mooching cigarettes all night that I would just buy a pack so I only had to deal with the guilt of smoking and not the guilt of taking cigarettes from people. The plan was to smoke until the end of the night at which time I would give the remainder of the pack to someone else. This worked relatively well on Friday night. I smoked maybe half of a pack and, at the end of the evening, gave it away to another friend that smoked. This seemed all well and good to me. I had my cigarettes for the night of drinking and at the end of the night, they were gone and I could pretend that I was still a happy non-smoker.
Then Saturday night came around and to my surprise, I found myself out drinking with some friends again. I hadn’t planned on this and of course, I had to have another partial pack. So I went and bought one. I did it last night, and truthfully, a prior evening a few weeks ago. Why wouldn’t it be equally successful this night? Unfortunately for me, at the end of the night, I did not give this pack away. Why didn’t I? That’s a great question and in truth I could give you several very valid reasons that I did not. But each one reeks of being a lame excuse and I will not burden you with them. There were several people I could have given them to. I could have just left them at the house I was at. Even better, I could have thrown them away. But I didn’t, I kept them. At the exact moment I chose to keep them, it was too late to do anything about it. I had cigarettes and I was going to smoke them. I had several Sunday morning and even through the evening and into Monday morning. Of course this whole time I kept telling myself, “I just have to finish this pack and then I’ll be done again.”
The first thing I realized is that I had been lying to myself. Obviously it hadn’t been a conscious decision. And in this case I think it was one of the more convincing lies I had ever told myself. I think most times that I have told a lie to me, somewhere, I knew it was a lie. In this case, I did not. I told myself I was in control, I had beaten this thing and now I was going to taunt it. I was going to use the occasional cigarette to remind myself how terrible they were and how much I didn’t need it. The moment I caught myself in the lie was one of the strangest and worst feelings I have ever encountered. I was driving home from somewhere, I don’t even remember where and I was angry about some little thing, I don’t even remember what. I remember sitting in my car on the freeway and just fuming over this little tiny thing. I was so unreasonably angry about it. It took a while but at some point I realized this. There was absolutely no reason for me to be so mad about this insignificant little thing. Then the thought entered my head that maybe just one cigarette would be good to calm me down, but no, I’m not a smoker, why in the world would I need a cigarette? That’s when it it me. Yes, I was unreasonably mad about something, that was being caused by the nicotine withdrawals and yes, I thought a cigarette would help, that was also being caused by the nicotine withdrawals and I was addicted again.
The realization knocked me on my ass. I’m sure most of us know how it feels to be caught in a lie. The guilt, the embarrassment, the frustration at being caught. Being the one catching the lie isn’t pleasant either, betrayal, anger, feeling foolish for having believed the lie. When you really truly catch yourself in a lie, you experience all of the emotions of the catcher and the caught at the exact same moment with no one to direct them towards but yourself.
The other thing that I thought was really off about this whole situation is that I was more comfortable with giving a poison to my friends than I was with taking it from them. Seems rather backwards to me.
Anyways, the good news buried in all of this is that I am back on track. It was a rough weekend but I’m back on the wagon again and feeling great. I do have some residual sore-throateyness and congestion from a weekend of smoking but I expect that will dissipate within a day or two at the most. While this was definitely a set back, it was not a failure. Merely a small stumbling block on my road to victory. I have no doubts that I have beat this thing. I may not be perfect, and I may not have done it all at once but my eyes are on victory. I am consciously aware of my struggling and I am fighting it. I will beat this.
See ya later.
-Paul