She Said – Addiction Is Addiction, Damn It.

It’s a gorgeous day here today. Sun is shining and all that hallmark crap that would imply singing Blue Birds spreading melodic joy into the open waiting souls of shiny happy people. Yah, well screw that, my car smells like cigarettes.

So really, I got in the car this morning and it smelled like cigarettes. I do not have words for how much I hate cigarettes, but that’s just my thing, and I get that. But here’s what is happening now and then, he is smoking instead of drinking.

Excuse me! What the F is the difference? None. At least that’s how I see it.

Alcohol is not the core problem with alcoholism. Addiction is. And it manifests itself when, in times of stress, the addict chooses to use instead of “deal.” So swapping out alcohol for cigarettes is the same damn thing. Seriously.

At it’s core, the addict believes that he or she “just needs a little help” to deal with a situation. Whether it’s stress or boredom or anxiety – or even gets a bonus treat to celebrate something. That “treat” or “crutch” replaces the addicts own internal ability to handle their own emotions. And it is that inability to deal with emotions that leaves you on forever weak ground.

I felt completely and totally undermined. If overall problems are not actually being addressed and we’re just substituting one addiction for another, what have we been doing for the last 2 months? Seriously.

And MORE than that, he was sneaking around to do it. He knows how I feel about cigarettes. They’re disgusting – never mind that they are yet another way to slowly kill yourself, thus proving that you still see no value and worth in yourself. So it’s still SNEAKING and it’s still using a crutch.

My trust was again completely undermined. Really, so you’re sneaking around smoking, what else are you sneaking around and doing that I don’t know about. THIS IS THE OTHER CORE PROBLEM.

I had been feeling so positive, like we were on the right track, and this really gob-smacked me.

Now, to be fair, we had a great talk about it. He gets it, he sees it, it’s done. He truly didn’t think it was a big deal because it didn’t do anything like impair his ability to drive, you know, the bad things that alcohol does. But he didn’t think about it in terms of the underlying issues.

IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT THE UNDERLYING ISSUES!

But here’s my question, why doesn’t everyone else see this? You can always tell when an AA meeting has let out because there are unusually large collections of people sanding outside smoking. People who have traded one addiction for another. One crutch for another. One self-destructive deadly habit for another.

This bothers me. I understand the idea of dealing with one problem at a time, I really do. But in this case ADDICTION is the one problem, not alcohol.

And my car stinks.

And he gets it – it’s done. I trust that. I really do.