Sobriety, Addiction, and Cigarettes

Let’s talk for a moment about butts. It seems that everyone who is an alcoholic or addict is addicted to butts. I was a butt addict myself. I was a real butt man. I loved butts. I wanted butts every day. Morning, noon and night I craved butts. Fortunately, I gave up butts long ago and I’m much happier and now that I no longer have butts in my life.

Get your mind out of the gutter. I’m talking about cigarette butts, you pervs!

Cigarettes seem to dangle from the lips of just about every alcoholic or addict who is new to recovery. If you’re a 12-stepper like me, you’ll know what it’s like to pass through the thick cloud of cigarette smoke floating outside of every meeting. Sometimes there’s so much smoke near the front door of an AA meeting that it looks like smog has settled around the building.

Cigarettes, quite simply, are the absolute worst thing you can inflict upon your body. They’re terrible and most likely will lead you toward a very brutal, long death from cancer.

I encourage you to either quit or slow down on the number of cigarettes you smoke each day, with the goal if quitting entirely.

It’s a very difficult thing to give up cigarettes, especially when you’re new to sobriety and dealing with so many other things. But if you think about it, you’re probably going through so much discomfort and anxiety anyway; why not just give up the smokes while you’re at it. You’re going to have to give them up eventually, why not just get it over with now?

If you can’t give them up completely right now, try to cut your intake in half over a couple weeks. If you smoke 2 cigarettes every hour, cut back to 1. Or set aside a half pack in the morning and commit to only smoking those that day and no more. Come up with your own system, or form a support team with a friend, but you need to stop smoking the butts as soon as you can. Otherwise they’ll catch up to you one way or another and it won’t be pretty, believe me.

So get off your butt and get off the butts.