Justifying a Drug Addiction – What’s in Your Body?

A man once told me that the strongest drug he ever puts into his body is Advil. It was quite a boast considering that he also handily justified regularly smoking cigars.

Since he’d successfully given up both problematic drinking and recreational drug abuse, he was quite upset by the notion that his nicotine habit could be a sign of ongoing spiritual decay. He thought he was improving and was sure that the demonstrable absence of his formerly addictive substances was enough proof. He was, after all, a recovered alcoholic and drug addict.

No. It isn’t enough.

I realize how a smoker might be offended by this idea. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times I’ve been told, “How dare you! You are being judgmental!” A classic defense. But I assure you, I hold no judgment at all. If you think that this is judgment, then you have no idea of the concept or the metaphysical gravity of just what judgment really is.

This is love.

If you smoke, and if you justify it, I’d love to get you to see the truth about that. Just seeing that truth could be enough to cause you to stop, to save your life. It isn’t necessarily the drug that slowly kills the smoker. Yes, of course, that’s unhealthy. But what is much worse—where the real damage is done—happens more in the psyche than in the lung. It is from the emotional energy that’s biochemically concealed by the drug.

Nicotine is a powerful, psychoactive, antidepressant medication. And like other commonly abused drugs, it is used to dull the pain of conscience stemming from unrecognized resentment and suppressed anger. 

And boy is it effective. Users feel better than they do without it. It’s the reason they use at all.

This potent over-the-counter stimulant allows the spiritually broken smoker to dodge anxiety, and easily maintain the outward appearance of calmness and serenity—and in the case of our more religious friends, piety. This is why ministers, spiritual pundits, even psychiatrists and counselors, many of the alleged role models, continue to smoke. 

It helps them remain composed.

You’ll often see 12-Step sponsors use the example of AA co-founder Bill Wilson’s smoking to deflect awareness of their own shortcomings and ongoing failure to make much progress moving toward their Creator. Nicotine addiction is historically epidemic in recovery circles. 

Once a conscience-plagued individual experiences the artificial serenity supplied by a drug like nicotine, he is compelled to repeat it. He can’t help it. It becomes an obsession. And under that compulsion to refresh the sense of relief, the cause remains, symptoms well hidden. He cannot escape his fixation with the drug, because he cannot live with the pain of conscience that those who engage in expressive suppression are forced to endure for all of their lives.

Until one truly gets free of anger and experiences a deflation of Ego Self adequate to dispel the obsessive need for relief of the pain that playing God always elicits, or unless a substitute substance is found,* then the nicotine dosing will continue.

Nicotine addicts anesthetize the pain of guilty conscience inexorably attached to secret anger. It’s a psychotropic mask, hiding fear, judgment, and anxiety they’d rather not admit or allow others to see. This is phoniness and deception beyond even their own comprehension. Though they admit that smoking is an unhealthy, bad habit, they cannot see it.

Unless the individual finds a sound solution to his secret sensitivity to stress and the inherent resentment energy that is packed into that dark force, he will continue to meet the pressure of daily life inappropriately. The force of anger will continue to feed an ever-developing ego entity. 

That energy will also alter the physiology of the body and brain and he’ll become subject to depression. In time he will be in grave danger of vascular catastrophe. 

But there’s a fate even worse than these. It is the danger that he will merrily puff away all awareness of his descent into a void so dark and eternal that no one escapes. Being emotionally addicted to nicotine does not indicate progress toward God. It represents a human-spiritual regression into oblivion.
Smoking while believing that you’re okay is a form of denial. It is the tragically flawed, and chemically enhanced logic justifying one of the most debilitating and classically injurious substances to the body, mind, and spirit that mankind has ever abused. Nicotine.

*The most popular substitute for nicotine is food, second only to self-centered sex. Oftentimes both! Overeating and immoral behavior are some of the star traits of the reformed smoker who hasn’t truly discovered the solution to the problem of his original need for nicotine.