As of this day, I am still a smoker, (though hopefully not so terribly unattractive a one…) but have been employing “Walter’s Special Technique” for about a month and a half now. The description linked to in the header for this blog doesn’t mention an approximate timeline for the subliminal re-adjustment to fully take effect, but I seem to recall Walter suggesting it would be a couple of months or more. The thing is, he was talking to a room full of drug-addicts and alcoholics when he related this method to us, (I needn’t mention that I wasn’t absent from the room that was filled with addicts, and neither was Walter himself…), so any such simple method of removing the desire to smoke a cigarette must be of a sort to have its effect gradually.
To be truthful, I’m not at all distressed by the fact that I’m still smoking even after faithfully following the method for these last six or so weeks. In fact, this isn’t the first time I’ve employed this technique to stop smoking. It isn’t even the second. Now I’m sure the average person reading this might take that as a sign that the method doesn’t work, so give me the benefit of the doubt here and read on. I’ll explain.
The first time I started using these little cue-cards, smoking away as I did so, faithfully trusting that the assertions being processed by my subconscious mind would build to greater and greater conviction to the point where my compulsive desire to smoke cigarettes would be gone, I stopped smoking fairly effortlessly within two months. What I also did was to stop using the method right after giving up the smokes – something that I didn’t believe then (and actually don’t believe now) should necessarily have contributed to my taking the habit back up again. Actually, what made me take the habit up again was a thing very like what had made me develop it in the first place – I’m an addict, and being an addict isn’t something that depends on the chemical actions of any drugs one takes into the body.
Long before I’d smoked a cigarette, tasted alcohol, smoked a joint, ground up a neighbour’s prescription Ritalin and snorted it, eaten mushrooms, dosed ecstasy, railed ketamine, dropped acid, smoked salvia, sampled oxycontin, or been relieved to find that cocaine didn’t cause unpleasant cravings the day after, (or even difficulty sleeping when what I had ran out), I’d been the sort of person who compulsively and obsessively pursues whatever form of immediate gratification I can set myself to. It might have its origins in the divorce of my parents, it might very well have been a latent part of me from my conception – I don’t know. It is, in fact, eternally beyond my grasp to completely understand. Believe me, I’ve tried. And in trying, I’ve learned a great deal – but the subtleties of my addiction lie beyond the scope of my possible understanding, they evolve as I do.
It’s for reasons like this that, some six months after having an extraordinarily easy time learning to go through my daily life without so much as thinking of smoking a cigarette, my then un-troubling use of Psilocybe mushrooms led to the rationalization that I’d likely be able to smoke marijuana with a similar maintenance of self-control. Take a wild guess at how well that idea worked out for me…
It was the familiar feeling of long-beloved, aromatic marijuana-smoke hitting my lungs that did me in. I know a lot of people who smoke weed and don’t smoke cigarettes – people who function perfectly well as daily potheads, living their own lives according to their own values, goals and expectations. But on that day, after gleefully overdoing it with 8 grams of bone-dry magic mushrooms (of well-above average quality, if without anything extra special about their strain), and finding myself returned to reality with the rest of my weed taken from me by a confused and angry girlfriend, I convinced myself easily that I’d come far enough in learning to manage my substance-use that smoking a cigarette or two wouldn’t likely result in my becoming a full-time smoker again… Incidentally, it was another 2 weeks or a month before I did start smoking again regularly – it was the rationalization that made it so easy to fall back. A steadily growing series of supportive rationalizations leading me right back into generally self-destructive, gratification-seeking behaviour without proper regard for the long-term repercussions of any of it. What those of you with experience in such matters will recognize as classic addict behaviour.
But this blog isn’t about all my past experiences with addiction, either to tobacco or anything else. It’s about my present, ongoing experiences in trying to permanently overcome this addiction. I’ll not be evasive about matters relating to other objects of my obsessive nature as days and weeks go on, but the main idea is to provide a consistent series of reports on what this very effective technique does for the smoker, as well as what it does not.
‘Walter’s Special Technique,’ (a name I gave to it, Walter having either not named it himself or not informed me on what he calls it), promises to gradually come to remove the compulsion to smoke cigarettes. It doesn’t promise that, once removed, the compulsion can never come back.
As I said earlier, this is actually the third time I’ve employed this method to combat my problem with cigarettes. The second time had much the same results as the first, though the catalyst by which I returned to the habit that time was the growing problem created by making sex the object of my compulsive obsession – an addiction which tends to sour quickly when pursued with a single lover…
I’m therefore quite confident that this time around I’ll have the same ease and comfort in giving up the cigarettes on the day that I choose to. Already I’ve found myself only lighting up because I’m accustomed to doing so, smoking with the other smoker I live with, and not out of a compulsive need to get my fix. I’m also aware that, if left unchecked, my addictive nature will work to the effect of eventually compelling me to seek gratification in a cigarette, and I believe that for someone such as I, the single reliance on this technique cannot suffice to keep me out of danger permanently.
Walter himself spoke of the need for a much deeper and consistently followed program of addiction-recovery if the addict is to live a healthy, normal life. I am certainly with him on that! But none of this degrades the validity of this special technique. I fully intend to maintain my use of the 51 anti-smoking cue-cards I’ve put together long after the day I smoke my last cigarette, and I also intend to continue to pursue a spiritual approach to living within present circumstances without resorting to the sorts of obsessive-compulsive behaviours that characterize my addiction.
In addition, (of course), I intend to make public the progress I make as I go along in this regard. If any of you feel inclined to apply this method in overcoming your own addiction to tobacco, please feel free to contribute your own experience with it here. My intention in creating this blog has been to share a viable solution to the problem of tobacco-addiction, without wild gimmicks or unlikely promises, and to continuously provide whatever information, insight and support that I can from my experiences with it. If you smoke and want to stop, or if you know someone who smokes and wants to stop – join me!
No comments:
Post a Comment