According to an article by Harvard Health Publications published on MSN Healthy Living, people addicted to alcohol are more likely to also smoke cigarettes regularly. It is unclear whether or not those dependent on alcohol started smoking before or during entering an alcohol addiction centre, but regardless the article provides evidence that suggests giving up cigarettes while recovering from alcohol addiction improves an addict’s chances of staying sober. In other words, kicking all addictions can ensure that your life remains free of addiction in any form.
In an article on The Fix entitled “How I Kicked the Smokes Out of My Sobriety”, the author explains how she used cigarettes as a crutch during her time in addiction rehab, and how smoking shielded her from the loneliness of trying to get sober:
“In retrospect, it’s clear why cigarettes seemed the ideal early sobriety tool for me: They made me feel like I was doing something that was bringing me closer to people—while actually bring me further away, because we were only bonding over a shared desire to take ourselves out of the moment. Because I didn’t know who I was yet, having 20 little buddies in my Camel Lights pack made me feel less alone.”
Not only does living cigarette-free have the obvious health benefits like clearer lungs and healthy blood pressure, but it also engenders a sense of humility that allows for surrender and self-acceptance in alcohol addiction treatment. Quitting smoking reinforces the process of surrender of self-discovery experienced in alcohol recovery.
As the writer on The Fix relates, “For me to know what cigarettes could do to me and still continue to smoke meant believing, on a certain level, that the rules didn’t apply to me…Stripping that layer of denial away—admitting that smokes would kill me just as they would kill others—gave me a new taste of humility. I rediscovered—even more than I had when getting sober—that I wasn’t special, that I was just like everyone else.”
