I started my daily smoking "habit" when I was fifteen, and I smoked about a pack a day for twenty four years, until I first got clean and sober at age 39. I had some previous experience with the 12 step program before that, so a few weeks into being clean, even though they tell you not to make any major decisions right away (quitting smoking would qualify), I wanted to quit smoking (taking suggestions from others is not my strong suit), and I decided I would use the 3rd step to help.
Step three is about making a decision to turn your will and you life over to the care of God as you understand Him. I really didn't have much of an understanding about God at that time, not being a believer, but I wanted to believe others when they told me that working the steps would help me with my problems. So essentially I decided to test the program, and especially step three and God, to see if it would work with quitting smoking. Also, getting clean followed closely on the heels of crying out to God, to help me escape the cycle of abuse I was caught in. I was not looking to get clean and sober but that is what happened when I turned in desperation to this God I did not believe in for help.
Some people will say that a craving will pass fairly quickly, but can be deceptive. Testing God this way, the cravings at first would come and go pretty regularly. I prayed my way through them, silently repeating the serenity prayer, and that did help. But after a while, maybe days, maybe a week, a craving would come and it would last for hours. I prayed for hours, and it would eventually pass. Within a few weeks the cravings passed completely, and then I was finally free of the addiction and cravings, Hooray! And thank you, God
However, seven years after quitting that time, I started again in 2001. Bad decision, and it led to a full blown relapse a year later (drugs and alcohol again after being clean for over eight years <99 and a half months>). I was hooked pretty quickly, and smoked for another 13 years, maybe 12 and a half. At the end of that I could barely breathe any more, and I knew I had to quit, but I was really afraid of facing the kind of struggle and pain the withdrawals from that first time had proven to be, despite all my prayers, which had helped, after all.
I used the patch for a year and a half, and managed to cut down to ten cigarettes a day during some of that time, especially toward the end. I purchased other products as well but never really ended up using them, and eventually gave them away. The patch and reduced smoking it was for me, as I went about telling people I was trying to quit.
When I first started going to AA I was not willing to quit drinking, but kept going to meetings because people talked about the realities of life, the pain, the suffering, the challenges, failures, and feelings of inadequacy etc, and I needed to hear all that, because it was saving my life, it was a place to identify with others who could articulate their life's truths, and I kept going back, not even being able to hear the solution.
I used to go to a meeting and then go have a beer or two or six on the way home That was in the days when you could still smoke indoors. Then I got clean and sober, and was going to both AA and NA meetings, but never once, in the first eighteen months of being clean and sober, identified myself as being an addict or an alcoholic. I would say I was powerless over my addiction or powerless over alcohol (that is actually what step one says in each fellowship, respectively).
However, during that time, I was coming up against myself again and again and seeing how much of an addict I really was in so many areas of my life, again, highlighting for me that drugs and alcohol had not been the problem, but my inability to live in a way that reflected any semblance of sanity. LOL. I was obsessive and compulsive, and I had little experience at setting boundaries with others, let alone even knowing what healthy boundaries were. Working the steps really helped me come to grips with the reality of who I was even as I wondered what it was I was recovering from.
You know, I found out that I was recovering from living a life running from God in rebellion and defiance, and that all the pain I had experienced in my life was essentially because I was not living by His principles. All this, the last couple of paragraphs, to say that it suddenly dawned on me that I was telling people I was trying to quit smoking when in reality what I was doing was trying to control something I knew full well I was powerless over, and that I had really acknowledged thousands of times over the last twenty years that I was incapable of managing on my own.
When the enormity of the insanity of that hit me, it hit me hard. Suddenly I remembered not wanting to give it to God, because secretly I did not want to quit smoking. I liked smoking even though it was killing me. I liked smoking even though it was stinky, even though it was making me broke, even though I had to be anti social to do it, even though it took precious minutes and hours out of my day every single day. I liked it and I did not really want to quit, and if I gave it to God He would take it from me. I did not really want it gone so I was trying to do it on my own. I was really lying to myself. I was not trying to quit smoking at all! I was trying to find the magic number I could smoke every day without having it kill me.
That was when I became willing to surrender it completely to God. When I gave it to God and really let go of it, I was able to stop, and I stopped smoking and did not experience any cravings or withdrawals at all, absolutely none! It seemed like a miracle. It has been just over three years since I last quit smoking
Step three is about making a decision to turn your will and you life over to the care of God as you understand Him. I really didn't have much of an understanding about God at that time, not being a believer, but I wanted to believe others when they told me that working the steps would help me with my problems. So essentially I decided to test the program, and especially step three and God, to see if it would work with quitting smoking. Also, getting clean followed closely on the heels of crying out to God, to help me escape the cycle of abuse I was caught in. I was not looking to get clean and sober but that is what happened when I turned in desperation to this God I did not believe in for help.
Some people will say that a craving will pass fairly quickly, but can be deceptive. Testing God this way, the cravings at first would come and go pretty regularly. I prayed my way through them, silently repeating the serenity prayer, and that did help. But after a while, maybe days, maybe a week, a craving would come and it would last for hours. I prayed for hours, and it would eventually pass. Within a few weeks the cravings passed completely, and then I was finally free of the addiction and cravings, Hooray! And thank you, God
However, seven years after quitting that time, I started again in 2001. Bad decision, and it led to a full blown relapse a year later (drugs and alcohol again after being clean for over eight years <99 and a half months>). I was hooked pretty quickly, and smoked for another 13 years, maybe 12 and a half. At the end of that I could barely breathe any more, and I knew I had to quit, but I was really afraid of facing the kind of struggle and pain the withdrawals from that first time had proven to be, despite all my prayers, which had helped, after all.
I used the patch for a year and a half, and managed to cut down to ten cigarettes a day during some of that time, especially toward the end. I purchased other products as well but never really ended up using them, and eventually gave them away. The patch and reduced smoking it was for me, as I went about telling people I was trying to quit.
When I first started going to AA I was not willing to quit drinking, but kept going to meetings because people talked about the realities of life, the pain, the suffering, the challenges, failures, and feelings of inadequacy etc, and I needed to hear all that, because it was saving my life, it was a place to identify with others who could articulate their life's truths, and I kept going back, not even being able to hear the solution.
I used to go to a meeting and then go have a beer or two or six on the way home
That was in the days when you could still smoke indoors. Then I got clean and sober, and was going to both AA and NA meetings, but never once, in the first eighteen months of being clean and sober, identified myself as being an addict or an alcoholic. I would say I was powerless over my addiction or powerless over alcohol (that is actually what step one says in each fellowship, respectively).However, during that time, I was coming up against myself again and again and seeing how much of an addict I really was in so many areas of my life, again, highlighting for me that drugs and alcohol had not been the problem, but my inability to live in a way that reflected any semblance of sanity. LOL. I was obsessive and compulsive, and I had little experience at setting boundaries with others, let alone even knowing what healthy boundaries were. Working the steps really helped me come to grips with the reality of who I was even as I wondered what it was I was recovering from.
You know, I found out that I was recovering from living a life running from God in rebellion and defiance, and that all the pain I had experienced in my life was essentially because I was not living by His principles. All this, the last couple of paragraphs, to say that it suddenly dawned on me that I was telling people I was trying to quit smoking when in reality what I was doing was trying to control something I knew full well I was powerless over, and that I had really acknowledged thousands of times over the last twenty years that I was incapable of managing on my own.
When the enormity of the insanity of that hit me, it hit me hard. Suddenly I remembered not wanting to give it to God, because secretly I did not want to quit smoking. I liked smoking even though it was killing me. I liked smoking even though it was stinky, even though it was making me broke, even though I had to be anti social to do it, even though it took precious minutes and hours out of my day every single day. I liked it and I did not really want to quit, and if I gave it to God He would take it from me. I did not really want it gone so I was trying to do it on my own. I was really lying to myself. I was not trying to quit smoking at all! I was trying to find the magic number I could smoke every day without having it kill me.
That was when I became willing to surrender it completely to God. When I gave it to God and really let go of it, I was able to stop, and I stopped smoking and did not experience any cravings or withdrawals at all, absolutely none! It seemed like a miracle. It has been just over three years since I last quit smoking
