Recovery and Smoking Just Don’t Mix

Written By: Dr. Stephen F. Grinstead, LMFT, ACRPS, CADC-II Date: September 4th, 2009. Topic: Member Blogs.

The adverse health effects of nicotine have been widely addressed and that nicotine may also contribute to an addiction relapse, but even this does not motivate people in recovery to stop. So why do people keep smoking or using chewing tobacco even though they know it is dangerous to their health? There are a number of reasons why this is so, but I will be focusing on what I believe needs to be addressed first and foremost: the automatic and unconscious defense mechanisms called denial patterns.

A denial pattern is a way of thinking, communicating with others, and acting that keeps you and those around you from focusing on your nicotine abuse/addiction. This list was created to address the serious problem of healthcare professionals who still use a medically harmful and addictive substance and/or have clients who although are in recovery continue in this other addiction. It is especially problematic for substance abuse professionals to continue an addiction while attempting to help others overcome their addictive disorders.

To learn more about this topic please check out my article Smoking and Recovery Just Don’t Mix that you can download for free on our Article page. At the end of this article you will find an exercise that I adapted from the Denial Management Counseling Workbook by Terence T. Gorski and Stephen F. Grinstead. It includes a list of the denial patterns that are most frequently used by people who are addicted to nicotine.

To learn more about chronic pain management and denial please check out my article From Denial to Effective Pain Management that you can also download for free on our Article page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain or are living with chronic pain and have any resistance or denial and want to learn how to develop a plan for helping to identify and manage denial please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Denial Management Counseling for Effective Pain Management Workbook. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

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