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Habit to Addiction

Further to my Blog on Habits, I visited my habits and one of them stood up predominantly, my ‘SMOKING’.  My father used to be a chain smoker (he is 86 now and had left smoking probably in his 50s) and my first puff emanated from his cigarette butt. I must be 8-9 years old when my friend and me decided to taste the thunder!! Well the initial puff was horrible, coughing and spitting! Then the smoke got used to us!! This probably carried on for a year or two and stopped. 

The next episode started when in college as a Macho syndrome; this is the place it developed into a habit. It started as a sequence based on timing and slowly developed into habit where the cue was the time of the day.  During my Army training days, though there was a very strict policy of no smoking, I sneaked few cigs once in a while. Those days in Army almost 90% of the officers smoked and it just carried on.  The numbers started increasing, there was no compelling cue, it was the gatherings, which triggered the cue, and I was slowly getting addicted. 

Marriage, kids and moving to corporate world reinforced my smoking. The cue always used to be work life balance/struck for ideas/too much work load/angry with the boss/disappointment with subordinates so on and so forth. Now I am fully retired and the current cue for smoking is boredom and the urge to indulge in it on a regular intervals.  The only thing, which controls my smoking, is the restrictions imposed by law, like flying/train journey/smoking in public places/ law of the country (like Bhutan). Having said that, though I am fully aware of the consequences of smoking from both personal and social perspective, I enjoy it!!!

My attempt now is to control my smoking with my will, i.e. I decide when to smoke irrespective of the Cues, which triggered this habit which turned into addiction.

Raj