Lone Smoking & The Toxic Helper

This is the usual tale of starting off as a teenager but with one significant difference. I started smoking on my own. I was never tempted to start in front of friends or due to social pressure; I started because I could take myself off for a walk, be on my own and then I could use cigarettes as an escape. I got into smoking weed a couple of years later, that was even better for the 'escape' or 'blocking' reasons for smoking but weirdly I was more sociable when smoking weed.

That took me through to my mid-twenties where a mental health scare meant I had to stop smoking weed and the only way I could do that was to smoke cigarettes as a substitute. They became the 'safe' option; they became 'helpful' and ironically I started to see it as a way of looking after myself. 

I've never liked smoking. I never liked the cage I climbed into and the fact that each one just meant you wanted another and another....I hated the fact that I'd let something else control me like that.

I read 'The Nicotine Trick' by Neil Casey and I stopped smoking for about five years. I was convinced I'd stopped and would never be so brutal to my lungs ever again but the belief that it was 'helpful' and a useful coping mechanism was obviously still there. Plus I would allow the odd 'blip' and still believe I'd stopped.

I don't know how the cigarette toxic coping mechanism crept back in solidly once but I know that cheap cigarette prices in Africa made it all a lot more accessible again and I was spending a lot of time alone again. The end of 2010 I decided to start smoking again and it's been a battle ever since. I've had a few months off here and there but it's still my 'secret' friend in times of need and ties in nicely with alcohol, my other toxic coping mechanism that I turn to, alone most of the time.

So now I've put it out there. I don't want to drink alone or smoke ever again and I don't want to depend on toxic coping mechanisms anymore.