Today started the usual way: Whiskey Kitty wrestling my hand like it was a small pink octopus trying to escape captivity. She hugs it, loses her grip, grabs again, and repeats the process with the seriousness of a tiny martial-arts master. For her, it’s training. For me, it’s the morning alarm clock.
After that ritual, I ordered my tea and headed to an appointment with my psychiatrist. The visit was pretty straightforward. The doctor noted that I’m depressed. That wasn’t exactly breaking news. Depression has been hanging around lately like a houseguest who forgot the concept of leaving.
He offered to prescribe an antidepressant. I said no for now. Not because I’m against medication. I’ve taken plenty of it and some of it has helped. The issue is balance. With the other medications I’m already on, adding something new can sometimes throw the whole chemistry set into chaos. If it isn’t managed just right, the mood doesn’t just lift… it can launch like a rocket. And trust me, when your brain decides to go through the roof, it really goes through the roof.
So for the moment, we’re leaving things where they are.
But then came the strange moment of the day.
While I was at the clinic, I noticed a cigarette butt on the ground. A decent sized one too, the kind that still had a couple puffs hiding in it. And before my brain could hold a committee meeting about whether this was a good idea, I picked it up and took a couple of puffs.
Yes. A cigarette butt. From the ground.
This is insane.
I don’t even know why I’m telling you this, except that this blog has become a place where honesty wins over pride. If the whole point of this Smoker’s Journal is to tell the truth about quitting, then the truth includes moments like that. Addiction doesn’t just politely knock on the door. Sometimes it crawls through the window wearing muddy boots.
The strange thing is that everything else in my life is actually going pretty well.
The art is coming along. I’m painting again and developing this series of outsider artist portraits that I’m excited about. Whiskey Kitty is still playful and affectionate, doing her best to keep morale high around here. And I’m blogging every day, which has turned out to be a surprisingly powerful support system.
Yet the results still feel low.
That’s the confusing part about recovery. You can be doing a lot of things right and still feel like the scoreboard isn’t moving fast enough.
In the end, it often seems to come down to willpower. And when it comes to cigarettes, my willpower sometimes feels like a rubber band that’s been stretched a thousand times. It still works, but it snaps back a little slower.
People love to give advice about quitting smoking. The classic line is, “Just make up your mind and do it.”
If it were that easy, cigarette companies would have gone out of business sometime around 1975.
It reminds me of Nancy Reagan’s famous slogan from the 1980s: “Just say no.”
Nice slogan. Simple. Memorable. Unfortunately, life is not a bumper sticker.
Addiction is complicated. It’s psychological, chemical, emotional, and behavioral all tangled together like Christmas lights in a box. Even the famous 12-step programs, which have helped many people, still show a relatively low long-term success rate when studied scientifically.
So if it’s this hard, what should someone do?
Give up?
No.
Giving up just makes the battle permanent.
Instead, the answer seems to be persistence. Not perfection. Persistence.
Look at the numbers.
Two puffs after a week.
Two weeks after four months.
That’s not failure. That’s progress.
Quitting rarely happens in one heroic cinematic moment where the smoker throws the pack into the ocean and walks away forever while inspirational music plays. Real life looks messier than that. It’s more like a long chess match with a very stubborn opponent.
You lose a piece.
You adjust.
You keep playing.
The key idea that keeps returning to me is something many recovery programs quietly agree on, even when they argue about everything else:
All we really have is today.
Not next year.
Not forever.
Not even tomorrow morning.
Just today.
And today, despite the weird cigarette-butt incident, I’m still in the fight. The art is still happening. The kitty is still purring. The tea is still brewing.
And that’s enough to keep moving forward.
Once again, I got this.
by Dan and Bonkers
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