Today is a sleepy day. It is eleven and I am just waking up. Sitting on the porch with my coffee, I am hearing the sounds of ravens in the woods. Leaves dress the ground, and the sky is overcast, though the light is peeking through. It is December and it is hard to believe. I am entering a phase of hibernation that is in sync with the season. I still made it to the gym three times this week, though I took the entire previous week off over the holiday. I enjoyed greatly, getting out on my electric bike and riding into town to the gym in the frozen weather. I have not plunged into the freezing pond yet this month due to feeling the crud, but last month took several frozen dips, one where I had to break up the ice on the edge of the pond.

I am still “quitting” smoking. I had a talk with my therapist and she agreed that I should not be too drastic with quitting, as I would ‘hurt my brain’. Currently I have not set a quit date. I am simply trying to smoke as little as possible as I go through a sort of detox that has me feeling pretty crummy. I have been attending lots of meetings. Yesterday I only attended one, but the day before I attended three. Making these recovery meetings has me staying focused on my goal, and gives me a place to process the difficult feelings that can arise without my usual coping mechanism.

I have been putting in the work. Addressing an addiction is hard work and is very exhausting, let alone having a bug or going through detox at the same time. Originally, I fought off cravings that were very strong. Now, I am mostly fighting off the desire to smoke which is an ingrained habit. In the program where I attend meetings, we talk about alcohol being cunning, baffling and powerful. Our addictions have agendas and minds of there own. This is true with nicotine as well. As I still engage with smoking to a small degree, my body or addiction is plotting to find a way for me to smoke more often, so I still struggle hour to hour to keep my smoking at bay. I take a deep breath with cleaner lungs of much needed air, and I remind myself why I am doing this. I want to live a long and healthy life. It is time for me to address my smoking. I have been very successful in a short amount of time. This is more than I ever could have hoped for.

Hope is a very poetic word to me. I usually think of hope in a spiritual sense, like it is a light or power that can reach deep down into the darkest depths of my pain and suffering. But someone introduced a new acronym that I had not heard for H.O.P.E. Hanging Onto Positive Expectations. I like this because it reminds me that I can still improve. That if I attend meetings, remain spiritual, and find kindness and acceptance toward my healing self, I may continue to move forward with positive expectations for myself. There is hope that I may someday kick this awful habit. There is also step one, where we strive to remove the denial that we have an addiction and where we simply acknowledge that we are powerless and that we need help. I like step one because it helps me keep my eye on the ball. It is really easy with an illness or addiction that is cunning baffling and powerful, to be coaxed into denial, while ignoring how bad we are harming ourselves by participating in our addiction. It is a very serious matter. The longer I stay in denial, the more I continue to stuff my feelings and deny my real authentic self.

Denial and powerlessness go hand in hand. When I take away my denial, I may be left feeling powerless. Ironically, this is a very good place to be. Many in my program choose to remind themselves of their powerlessness and take step one every single morning, regardless of how many years of sobriety they have. Recovery takes us deep and far through a river that can feel very out of control if not attended to. Even before we take action, even before we fully recover from our addiction, we must acknowledge that we are powerless. I have been spending a lot of time in this place as I struggle with smoking. And because of that I am making it. I am powerless over smoking. I can ask for help from others, my meetings, and the Universe or God. I have had to give up high expectations, a character flaw that drives my addictive personality. Most of all, stopping smoking, and the journey I have begun, have provided an amazing opportunity to take my healing and my recovery from addiction to new levels. Today I can be grateful for just that. Amen.