Myths of Dependency
Discovering What You Really Want

We've all heard it before..."Really, I want to quit smoking, but I can't. I'm chemically-dependent on nicotine." So what is chemical dependence? And what does it mean so far as a human being goes?

eGetGoing, on online source for drug abuse treatment, defines chemical dependency as follows:

"Chemical dependency is a psychological, and sometimes physical, need to use alcohol or other drugs that doesn't go away even when using them causes negative consequences."

Now, what does this really mean? What is the "need" for certain drugs that they describe and in what way does this need prevent management of the problem by not going "away even when using them causes negative consequences"? Essentially, the idea of chemical dependency is that, with continued use, a certain drug can 'integrate' itself into the body and/or the mind in such a way that the need for it precedes our capacity for moderating or discontinuing its use. In short, the drug circumvents our conscious decision-making process, making it impossible for us to intentionally control our cravings for it.

First and foremost, let me ask this hypothetical question: If tobacco plants underwent some kind of remarkable change, and suddenly smoking a single cigarette were to induce an explosion of one's head into tiny pieces, how many people would be driven by their chemical dependence to smoke another cigarette? How many people would say," Oh well, my head is going to explode, but I really need this cigarette, so I'm going to smoke one anyway. So long and farewell!" Would some people do this? Inevitably, there are a miniscule, if not negligable, fraction of people that simply don't value their lives whatsoever and insist on seeing things that way, and they probably would. But, by and large, the overwhelming majority of people that 'struggle', sometimes even desperately, with kicking chemical dependencies with cigarettes would very miraculously find that elusive willpower that they before claimed was 'taken away' or 'arrested' by nicotine.

Now, you may say," That's an absurd example! There is no way that cigarettes will ever be able to explode someone's head!" You're absolutely correct, and I certainly don't plan on arguing otherwise. I employ this exaggerated scenario to bring to light a certian point that is often ignored today in light of the idea of chemical dependence. The fact of the matter is, we popularly understand chemical dependence as a situation in which a drug, itself, forces us to continue desiring and facilitating its use. We say," I whole-heartedly want to quit, but I can't." In response, I might reply," You probably do have a certain inkling of desire to kick the habit, but you, yourself, don't really want to, and there is certainly nothing 'whole-hearted' going on here."

But, doesn't chemical dependency imply that one cannot be whole-hearted in their effort to discontinue the use of cigarettes? Isn't the snag of chemical dependency that it prevents one from actually wanting to quit? This is where my outlandish hypothetical situation quickly debunks this myth. If a smoker knew that their next cigarette would instantly strike them dead, there would be no talk of dependency and reduced willpower. Nobody would put a cigarette to their mouth lamenting that they have no control over themselves and they can't help it. The decision would be quick and final...no more cigarettes, plain and simple. Quite frankly, this says something largely unaddressed by popular knowledge about chemical dependency. But, what exactly does this mean? What, in particular, does this bring to light about our dependence? Quite simply, this means that we must re-evaluate ourselves. Do we actually want to quit? Do we actually have any genuine desire to free ourselves from our habit, or are we simply doing a whole lot of wishful thinking? That is to say, is it that we truly want to stop smoking, or that it would simply be nice if it were to happen to us, without any of our conscious participation whatsoever?

Oftentimes, what we really mean when we say we want to quit is that we simply want quitting to happen to us. For instance, when a person is laid off from their job, they effectively quit working. However, their cessation of working was in no way something they participated in (provided that they did a good job at their particular tasks), it simply happened to them. Now, let's say a person wanted to quit their job and that they could easily do so without enduring financial disaster, yet their only effort at doing so was to continue working there to no foreseeable end, the whole while hoping to be laid off by coincidence. This is perhaps the most ridiculous and completely ineffective method of quitting a job that a person could ever devise. Clearly, this person deosn't want to quit their job, at all! They conduct themselves no different than the next employee which enjoys his job and wishes to continue his employment. In the same way, a massive number of people that fervently insist that they want to quit smoking actually want the exact opposite. They want to continue smoking indefinitely, just as our hypothetical employee clearly wants to continue working at his job.

Assuming a person could quit smoking if their head were going to explode upon taking their next drag, then at least one thing is quite clear. Regardless of chemical dependency, they do possess the ability to quit, and furthermore, just as they could save their head from explosion at a moments notice, they could call on this ability at any given time. What's going on here, then? Why does there seem to be this vacuous gap between a persons theoretical ability to handle their addiction and their actual success in doing so?

Perhaps this scenario is too exaggerated? Perhaps the problem is that smoking cigarettes never does seem to place the immediate threat of an obliterated head upon our proverbial shoulders (excuse the pun)? Many smokers, after all, say," I wish I were clairvoyant. I wish I could look into the future and determine whether or not smoking actually would kill me?" Reasonable enough, I suppose. However, at this point it has become clear that chemical dependency and addiction has nothing to do with the problem. This situation is no different than an entrepreneur wondering," Will this endeavor succeed or fail?" Entrepreneurs are not addicted to business, you see. The risk is simply part of their business. That uncertainty is inseperable from the endeavor. Both the businessman that is obsessed with money and the businessman that takes his dealings with a grain of salt will ask this question just the same.

Thus, a smoker that laments his or her inability to quit is actually completely capable of quitting, regardless of the chemical dependency that has developed. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that the inability to quit when one insists that they want to is not related to the addiction. Instead, it means that the chemical dependency is not the scourge that we originally defined. It does not circumvent our conscious decision-making process, forcing us to continue use against our will. We choose to continue use, and mostly use the concept of chemical dependency as an excuse to continue doing so. The habit is intentionally perpetuated, yet much of this intentional decision-making is written off as if it were unintentional. The strange gap between our theoretical ability to quit and our actual success is not that strange at all, really. Within that gap are the intentional, autonomous decisions to continue smoking for which we decide to absolve ourselves of responsibility. To put it plainly, one wants to smoke regardless of reasons to quit, but also wants to pretend as if they don't.

Why is that? Why is it that so many people that complain of the hopeless difficulty of quitting have such a hard time simply admitting to themselves that they do not want to quit? It would seem that this pretense is nothing but bothersome. Of course, I'm certain that there's yet another question brewing in this exploration. Am I simply telling people that if they run into difficulty with quitting that they should give up and smoke to their hearts content? Am I saying that if a person can't seem to actually quit they should just throw in the towel and forget the whole business?

Well, there is a certain amount of sense to that. To begin with, until a smoker is honest with his or herself about what they really want, the best that they can really hope for is that quitting will somehow happen to them, just as our hypothetical employee tries to quit his job by waiting to be laid off somewhere down the road. The more that a smoker congratulates themselves simply for having the vague notion that they want to quit floating aimlessly in their mind, the longer they will stretch out their self-contradicting habit with little no or peace of mind, either way. The self-contradicting habit, in this case, is not smoking, but chronic and persistant self-doubt and self-loathing. The individual smokes as if it were an uncontested aspect of their lives, yet secretly they hate themselves for it. They fight themselves day in and day out, yet they continue to smoke, presumably because they want to do so...and that is the irony of the situation. They have become convinced that idle pondering of the proposition of quitting is the best they can muster to make a change, and they are terribly let down when it doesn't seem to do the trick. Of course, in reality, that type of effort is so weak and undetectable that unless they actively advertised to others that they want to quit, which these people often do, nobody would even notice the conflict they put themselves through. The whole mess here is caused by the fact that that they don't really want to quit. They would prefer to continue smoking. It's as simple as that, and it has little or nothing to do with chemical dependency. Now, so long as someone continues wanting to smoke, no amount of self-hating and self-sympathy will change that.

So, what do I mean by that? What can be said, then, about people that struggle with quitting smoking? It's like trying to lift yourself up by your own boot straps. You can tug and pull for hours and hours, you can even get violent about it and begin prying persistantly and angrily. But, in the end, you simply can't do it, because the weight in your boots is same weight that is trying to do the lifting. Just as much as you are tugging at your boots, you are equally holding yourself down. Likewise, if you honestly just want to keep smoking, then every affectacious effort you make at quitting will result in nothing more than continuing without much change, at all. It's like the saying that goes," Selfish people do good only for selfish reasons." Someone that truly wants to keep smoking, then, is only humoring the idea of quitting because it helps them perpetuate their habit. They feel as if they need some justifiable reason for continuing their behavior, and the idea that they are simply unable to do otherwise fits the bill just perfectly. So that act goes on and on, and yet it's little more than something the smoker has gotten used to doing in order to continue smoking. Just as popping open a Zippo may be a part of their smoking ritual, so is hating themselves or pitying themselves for having a cigarette...it, too, is part of the ritual.

The key point here is honesty, really. Is it that we actually want to quit, or is it really that we want to want to quit? In other words, so many smokers seem to struggle with quitting because quitting cigarettes isn't the goal their efforts aim at. Instead, the smoker desperately trying to quit with no success is just desperately trying to care about quitting. Actually quitting is not at all the result of this kind of effort. Thus, the struggling smoker is not really struggling to quit smoking. When they say "I really want to quit, but I just can't do it", they actually mean "I really wish I didn't want to keep smoking." That is much closer to the struggle that characterizes so many people that claim they are too addicted to quit despite fervently wanting to do so.