Taking Responsibility for Your Smoking

Part of becoming a non-smoker is taking responsiblity for your past actions. Nobody forced you to start and you knew full well the dangers of smoking when you started so let's get that crap out of the way right now. You chose to smoke, you can choose to quit.

The first thing we have to do is put nicotine in its proper context. Some sites refer to nicotine as some sort of "Nicodemon" and of course that is just pure hogwash. It is a non-living (albeit addictive) chemical , nothing more. When you give it human characteristics (evil, demonic, etc.) then once again you are shifting responsibility from you back to a non-living substance. How can something that isn't even alive be responsible be responsible for your actions? It's a chemical. Period. Accept that you are addicted to it and move on.

The next step is to quit blaming the tobacco companies for your addiction. Blaming a tobacco company for making cigarettes like cursing the sun for shining or hating the wind for blowing. Things are what they are and they do what they do. Cigarette companies make cigarettes. Big deal. You chose to smoke them. Many people want to shift the blame back to the tobacco companies but not once in human history has a tobacco executive ever put a gun to someone's head and forced them to smoke. Not once. You made a bad decision, hell, everyone does, but now is your chance to fix that.

So now that we can't blame the cigarettes or the people who make them, there is just one person left and that is you. I found it very liberating to finally be able to say that yes I was stupid and I chose to smoke and it was nobody's fault but my own. I knew the dangers and I did it anyway. I chose to smoke and I chose to quit. You can too.