reading whyquit.com this topic was helpful for me as I can't sleep,trying to make sense of how I feel:
Let's start with the most costly and destructive use tease of all, that we can cheat the Law of Addiction (Chapter 2).
Why torment ourselves with a lie? Why pretend that brain imaging studies were all wrong, that one hit of nicotine won't cause up to half of your brain's dopamine pathway receptors to become occupied by nicotine, that your brain won't soon be wanting, plotting to obtain, or even begging for more?
"Just one" or "just once" denies who we are, real drug addicts.
Whether free for 10 hours, 10 days, 10 months or 10 years, just one hit of nicotine and permanently compromised pathways will again re-assign getting more the same priority as they assign to getting and eating more food.
While most who attempt cheating walk away feeling like they've gotten away with it, we cannot cheat the design of brain circuitry whose job is to make activating events nearly impossible to forget in the short-term, the time needed for recovery.
Let go of the fiction of "just one" or "just once." Laugh at it. You're now far too wise to pretend that the wanting, urges and craves you felt flowed from different brain circuitry than the wanting and urges sensed by the alcoholic, or the heroin, crack or meth addict.
While focus and fixation upon the thought of "just one" or "just once" is the most common cessation torture inflicted upon the unschooled mind, that's not us anymore.
We now understand exactly what happens if we use again. We know that for us, one equals all, lapse equals relapse, and that one puff, vape, dip, pinch, or chew will be too many, while thousands won't be enough.
Be honest with yourself. As Joel says, don't say that you don't want one when you do. Rather, acknowledge the desire, but then ask yourself, do I want all the others that go with it? When the thought of "just one" or "just once" enters your mind, try to picture all of them, the thousands upon thousands that would follow, and all the baggage that comes with them.
