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I finally got my cigarette smoking under control, after decades of a pack a day, when I realized that for me it was not a matter of addiction, but of habit. (I speak here only for myself. I’m not preaching, I’m just remembering something that I experienced.) A few times, by accident, I was deprived of cigarettes for a substantial period of time and nothing bad happened, physically. I kept reaching to the pocket where I kept them, kept snapping open the lighter, but for me the internal craving was far less than the pull of accustomed things to do with my hands when the coffee was served, or the meal was over, or — you know.
Treating it as a bad habit allowed me to get the upper hand, and quit. Similarly, there have been times in my life when over a period of time I was consuming far too much alcohol. Again, when circumstances showed me I could abstain without any physical consequences, and I decided I was dealing with habit — a ritual, really, performed only before, during and after meals and before bedtime (for ever more extended periods of time before and after and then the time in between as well) — I was able to get it under control without severe consequences in my life. Again, I’m not recommending this to anyone else, just saying it worked for me.
Now it seems something very much like that is happening to our entire society, because of the pandemic — the accident that deprives us of some things we assumed were essential to our lives, and now are looking sort of silly. Continue reading