I started smoking at the age of thirteen, in the first year of high school, under the influence of my fellow students with whom I shared so many hours and pleasant experiences. We eventually parted ways, but that harmful habit stayed with me until I was forty; i had smoked for twenty-seven years. I am now fifty-two, twelve years have already passed; now I am free from that enslaving practice.
How did I do it?
Before I succeeded, I spent more than a decade trying and failing.
I recognize three phases in my process of personal liberation. They did not happen linearly, when the three phases were active in my consciousness, it was when I was able to take the big step of quitting smoking.
Allow me to share with you how that conviction was generated in my conscience that quitting smoking is choosing life and affirming it.
I played sports in my teens, but over the years, when I ran a few meters I felt very exhausted and out of breath. I lost the glamour!
I knew that my smoking habit was involved in my loss of physical condition, in addition to the fact that I was doing almost no sports activities. Fortunately, I also have the habit of reading and, browsing the internet, I came across an academic, neuroscientific work, where the results of research on the most primitive area of our brain were exposed; where a set of neurons develop what they call a "Reward System" the objective of this post is not to explain this neurological system, so; I will simply say that it is a mechanism that has allowed the animal kingdom to survive, because it rewards each individual, with a sensation of well-being or pleasure, for behaviors such as eating, drinking, having sex...
But it turns out that plants have also developed their survival mechanisms and they do not have neurons, but they have developed myriads of phytochemicals, which are plant substances that fulfill many beneficial functions for plants. One of them is the alkaloids; with which they protect themselves to avoid being eaten, but we human beings have become accustomed to some of these alkaloids, such as caffeine, nicotine. And look what a surprise; These alkaloids alter that reward system and make us feel satisfaction or a sense of well-being when we consume them. The problem is that, by smoking, we introduce so many toxic substances into the body that sooner rather than later they end up harming our body.
I had already tried to quit smoking and had failed, the fact of learning that there was a reward system that nicotine had altered, calmed my remorse a little; Well, I understood that it was not because I had a weak will that I failed; since a part of my brain had been alienated by nicotine.
Unfortunately, a friend died at the age of 32 from lung cancer caused by smoking. That devastated me. Then I couldn't fool myself anymore and I understood that I had an addiction problem: I was addicted to the nicotine in cigarettes.
That was my first phase of emancipatory awareness, recognizing my problem without disguising it, without softening it.
And so other years passed, I smoked and tried again and again to quit smoking to; after a few days, sometimes weeks and about twice a few months; to fall back into such a pernicious habit.
I then entered my second phase of liberating consciousness.
I don't know how it happened, but one fine day I forgave myself and banished forever from my mind the feeling of guilt for smoking. I will summarize it with the phrases that I repeated to myself for some years: I LIKE TO SMOKE, I FEEL PLEASURE WHEN I SMOKE AND I SMOKE BECAUSE I WANT TO!!!
When I was approaching my forties, a professor told me that he believed that the best self-help a person could get was to have "A FIRM DECISION ON A FIRM CONVICTION." I was struck by the simplicity and depth of meaning contained in that phrase.
And since I already had a firm conviction that the harmful habit of smoking was a consequence of contaminating our neurons with the alkaloid of tobacco, nicotine, which produces a pleasant response with harmful results for health. For me that was already as clear as sunlight...
A beautiful day, early in the morning, I took a deep breath, I had slept well, I was in a countryside, I had not been able to buy cigarettes, but the afternoon and the night before I had enjoyed it so much that I even forgot to smoke. I looked into the distance and observed the wonderful greenery that surrounded me; Suddenly I felt a terrible urge to smoke, but then, like a lucky inspiration, my firm decision came: BUT I FEEL A LOT BETTER WITHOUT SMOKING!!!
In those days I would be 40 years old, so from that moment I decided to opt for the good things in life, to breathe freely, not to be a slave to so little, to feel good.
This is how I developed my personal mantra, which I would repeat many times and I still say today that I LIKE TO SMOKE, I FEEL PLEASURE OF SMOKING, BUT I FEEL MUCH BETTER WITHOUT SMOKING.
And I don't say it in the past tense because I suspect that this primitive part of our brain doesn't understand anything about verb tenses.
