It’s a sunny day here, so I decided to enjoy it at the city park along the banks of the river that splits my hometown in half. I have not been to this place since I quit, so I drove my truck down the old familiar dirt lane, and parked under the cypress trees at my favorite spot. And then - hello! - I had a moment of sharp... recollection. This is the spot where I would go on hot summer evenings to dip my feet in the cool water, to listen to the crickets and frogs…and to smoke. Sitting there in the truck, at that spot, I took a deep breath and…felt “ phantom smoke” on the back of my tongue! I closed my eyes, choked, and exhaled, again feeling that “ phantom smoke” in my mouth.
Whoa!
I wouldn’t say that I was in distress or in danger. No, it felt more like a flash of…“ intense nostalgia”. I had stumbled into a hidden trigger zone, and I was being…” seduced”.
So, I sat there, and opened my mind to feeling whatever my old addictive reflexes needed to feel, allowing the moment to start running its course. I was set to “ surf the urge”.
Somehow, in the midst of this, I felt 2 choices swell up in front of me.
I could FLEE. Crank up the truck, fishtail down the dirt lane, and just get away from that place. Grip the steering wheel and say, “Well, I guess I can’t go back there anymore!”
Or I could FIGHT. Reclaim one of my favorite spots, make it mine again.
So, I got…out…of…the…truck and walked toward the water. Oh, how that nostalgic feeling leaped inside my heart! I was literally walking in the footsteps of my addiction! Reenacting the ritual. Going through the motions. This wasn’t “surfing the urge”, this was swimming against the storm surge! Yyyyow!
But…there were no cigarettes. No lighter. No matches. Not in the truck, not in my pockets, not in my hand. And there weren’t going to be any, either. No way.
I had decided I wasn’t leaving this place until “ it” was over with. So, I walked right up to the river, breathed in the crisp air, listened to the crunchy leaves being tossed on a cool breeze, smelled the earthiness of the wet mud, stroked the gray bark of an oak tree, watched cars rumble across the nearby bridge, and kneeled down to scrunch the cinnamon-colored cypress needles with my fingers.
No smoking, no struggling, no panicking. Just… being. I was “ surfing the urge” while simultaneously “ surfing the situation”. Because I can’t surrender ground - literally! - to this addiction‘s phantoms. I can’t have the ghost of a cigarette dictate where I can and cannot spend time on a sunny day.
Did it take longer than 3 minutes for this episode to flow through me? Like, 12 minutes? Yes. Did I purposely choose to get through it, even if it meant I had to intensify it first? Yes, I did. But, I had been given the moment to make that choice. I knew it could be done - had to be done! - so I did it.
You can do it, too.
Maybe not within your first week or first month, okay? Let’s not brazenly start fighting on the old battlefields right out of the gate, for goodness sake! But, I hope you know that you can choose it, too, when you‘re called upon to fight back. I hope you feel that. I hope you grow to believe that there are always choices.
STORM: 294
