The deadly Spidernet

My husband is on day 64 of his indefinite smoke break, and I am very proud of him. He is managing fairly well; he still doesn’t use the word QUIT, but I did hear him say that he will not go back to smoking.

The other night he asked me if I still get cravings and I knew what he meant. We had just finished watching an episode of Shameless, and one scene had been very intense. The young actor’s face was shown in a closeup, a cigarette slightly hanging off his lips James-Dean-style when he slowly exhaled. I haven’t smoked in so long and I could almost taste it; I can just imagine how much more intense it must have been for my husband.

I find the smell of cigarettes disgusting these days, so how could the TV scene look tempting?

I felt like a fly looking at a spider net. I know the spider net is deadly, and it would be highly stupid to fly into it but for the blink of an eye, it looked beautiful and fascinating. Just a few seconds later I look at the spider net and see it for what it is, a deadly trap.

How can this be? I am smoke-free since over two years and I am happy as an ex-smoker. Then, how can it be that I get cravings like that?

Drugs, Alcohol, Cigarettes, sugar and pills, our demons might have a different look, but we all have one thing in common, getting our “fix” has been the central focus of our lives and we panic when we all of sudden realize, we can never have IT again. Forever and ever sounds cute in a fairy tale, but it seems like a damn long time if you have to give something up.

We take small baby steps at the beginning of our quit-journey because the thought of giving something up forever is just too overwhelming. Then one day -after weeks and months of living without the addictive substance- we realize that we can live without it and we start to think long-therm. That’s when some of us get doubts, and we feel sad about letting our “comfort” go. It seems like we are grieving and we wonder, “What is there possible to grieve about?”

Someone once said, “Grief is not about forgetting, but remembering with less pain,” and it makes so much sense to me.

I think we all react differently. For some, it seems to be so easy and for some of us, it is the fight of a lifetime. We have different demons, different personalities, different lives and different circumstances, BUT in the end…we all want to be “free” and we find our way.

Cravings are just that…cravings. The last a few seconds and poof they are gone!

Craving