I got “nicotine monster” from the “Allen Carr’s” book “The Easy Way” (Fundamental reading). The phrase just kinda stuck and in many consultations and discussions on nicotine and I could not find a better way of describing nicotine cravings than a monster inside of me.
To be specific…
My mental picture for Allen Carr’s Nicotine monster was Gollum from “Lord of The Rings”. In the story Gollum needs his “precious” ring and will do anything to get his hands on it. His character skulks round in shadows while he seeks the only thing that will satisfy his core desire, possession of the ring. He cant help himself the ring has made him this way over many years.
The parallel I drew between this needy behaviour and how I felt about my addiction to nicotine. I simply could not help it. Nicotine and the preceding 20 years of its abuse had conditioned me to believe that I could not live without it.
At the time of me stopping smoking I found myself in an ongoing cycle of craving, smoking, craving, smoking. This is the struggle that smokers have to deal with every day of their lives. Craving nicotine, adding nicotine to their system that does nothing more than temporarily relieves the craving, only to start the process all over again in a few hours.
Stopping smoking, going through the initial withdraws only to trip up over some craving trigger and fall back into the trap of smoking again.
Nicotine triggers a “hunger-type” response in the brain, convincing users that without nicotine they will most surely die. Heroin addicts and smokers alike wholeheartedly believe in the back of their minds that they would surely “starve” without their regular “fix”.
TRUTH is that YOU WONT DIE when you finally DECIDE to STOP SMOKING!
We all know this (logically speaking) but as smokers we ignore the obvious to illogically protect our PRECIOUS nicotine filled cigarettes.
Why do we consciously choose to be slaves to a poisonous chemical monster?
Anyone who ever thought that nicotine was not a mind altering drug needs a run a little reboot on their mental computer. The bi-hourly “withdrawal” from nicotine triggers this powerful hunger urge yet we all know logically that nothing bad will happen if we don’t smoke.
This “personal choice” is EXACTLY what makes it so “hard” to break the smoking cycle. Not the images of blackened lungs or cancer patients on their death beds. That stuff is old news far future stuff. Not even going to attempt to win this argument with it.
With or without knowing it, we lie and convince ourselves day in and day out. We are bound to “my brand”, “my crutch”, “my little pleasure”, “my relaxation”, “my de stress” or a thousand other excuses.
