Yes, I think it’s crucial for me to check in here. I understand that what I have been doing for most of my adult life is self medicating for immediate relief. I’m working my way through a book called unwinding anxiety that focuses on how anxiety is fuelled by negative addictive behaviour patterns. Not just substances, but the ways in which we repeat unhelpful behaviours for their immediate impact. It helps to know that the reason I get drawn back into smoking is that my brain can still view it as a rewarding behaviour, even though rationally I know it isn’t.
I know I’ve got lots of work to do. But I went 9 months without using and started to build far healthier behaviours during this time. I guess the longer I can show myself that the healthier behaviours are more rewarding, the more my brain will reject the illusionary reward of smoking. That’s the narrative I want to create, as some who has no interest in getting high again.
And thanks for the support and encouragement bimi. It’s great to have a community that understands and empathises, and shows that sobriety can be done. One of the things I feel really lucky about is that I never really enjoyed drinking. Don’t like the taste and always got hangovers. I used to drink in my teens and early 20s because it’s what you were expected to do, but now I can just say I don’t like it.