Deliverance vs Self-Will

When I quit drinking (sobriety date 1-17-93) I was delivered.  I went to meetings, read the literature, prayed the Serenity Prayer day and night, detoxed, called my sponsor, wrote in my journal, and worked the 12 Steps...all this done very imperfectly but done nevertheless.  In other words, I was willing to do whatever I needed to do to stop drinking.  I will say I relied heavily on my Higher Power to help me even though my relationship history with GOD was shaky GOD was all I had that I could depend on.  I sure as heck couldn't depend on me!  And there was no one else on this Earth that could do for me what my Higher Power could do for me.  As a result, I was delivered from the compulsion and obsession to drink.  Poof.  Gone.  As if I'd never had it.  A memory so faint it is hard to believe it ever had so much power to take me down like it did.  Charity, my sponsor, said as long as I remember my last drink I'll be fine.  What this means to me is as long as I remember how far down King Alcohol took me, the pain, the despair, the terror and isolation...and what that bottom felt like...hurt so bad...royal ass-whipping...I never want to feel that again...dear GOD help me from ever going there again...I'll be fine as long as I remember.

When I quit smoking (11-17-93) I was not delivered.  I crawled away from that addiction. By the end of my 25 illustrious years of smoking I had graduated to smoking 3 packs of Marlboro reds a day.  I coughed a lot,  had a lot of phlegm, allergies, and was breathless.  My hair, breath and body always smelled like an ashtray. Most of my clothes and furniture had cigarette burns.  Plus the cost was going up, up, up!  Jeesh.  By then I was spending about $160.00 a month!  To add insult to injury I saw a poster titled something like---"MEET 5 OF AMERICA'S BIGGEST DRUG PUSHERS".  There were 5 men in pin-striped suits, their pink cheeks aglow with heath, vitality and wealth, their rings and Rolex watches down to their hand-tooled Italian leather sparkling shoes.  Wow...all that I wasn't and didn't have.  On the bottom of the poster..."These are the owners of America's largest tobacco companies".  What!? I'm kind of slow but the dots finally connected and it became clear every time I spent my money on cigarettes I was paying these guys to have their quality of life and diminishing mine. I was taking from my children's mouths to feed theirs. So I smoked my last cigarette at 10 pm, Thursday, November 17, 1993.   I told myself no matter what happened I would not smoke.  I thought I might die, have seizures, go crazy, grow fat...no matter what, I would not smoke.  For 4 weeks I felt angry, outraged, murderous, hostile, hair-triggered nuts...after that I had about 5 weeks where I mourned, grieved, cried, felt sorry for myself, suicidal, and just wanted to die.  One thought seemed very persistent, "I might as well smoke.  What's the point in stopping?  No body cares."  I had a strong adverse reaction to quitting.  I used what Charity taught me regarding the last one...except it's the last cigarette and what it took to crawl away from that addiction...I NEVER want to go through that again.  GOD help me.

And do you know that once in a great while, if I'm standing downwind to a drink of alcohol or a cigarette, a sneaking little thought can flit and flicker ever so gently whisper in a kind, benevolent way, "What's one drink or a smoke?  It's not going to kill me."  Yep.  19 years later...hilarious.  The saying is "While I'm in a meeting, my disease is doing pushups outside on the parking lot."  I believe it.