Recovery from Tobacco Addiction

Written By: Murray Kelly Date: September 4th, 2009. Topic: Other Addictions.

We at Patient Support International opened our first Smokers Treatment Center in 1989 and have since evolved into a full-scale residential treatment team for tobacco addiction. We have been involved in the treatment process of over 6,000 patients, many of whom were in recovery for alcohol, cocaine, opiates and prescription drugs. Queens University conducted a random study of 31 patients over a two-year period and found that 87% of the sample were tobacco free on the day they were interviewed (one year since quitting) and the rest of the smoking addicted clients had already set a new quit day. This pattern has repeated itself over the years.

Learning from Relapse

One of the reasons for this is the repositioning of relapse in the minds of the patient. Relapse is now seen as a learning experience and not one which brings failure and shame into the recovery process. This single innovation has meant that our recovery numbers have dramatically risen, reflecting the removal of the terrible shame the culture projects onto those who are tobacco addicted.

Tobacco Treatment Is Trauma Treatment

In addition, the grief and trauma treatment work, which accompanies the tobacco recovery process, has significantly improved the overall recovery outcomes among our clients. We were in the trauma business well before we realized it, thinking this was just what many people went through when they quit smoking. We have since become very adept at both identifying and treating trauma in our clients. Tobacco recovery depends upon it.

The single biggest reason for this is the treatment of tobacco along with all the other addictions co-presenting at the time of admission. In fact, our field training teams and our residential treatment teams have come to the same conclusion,

“If you are not treating tobacco, you are not treating trauma.”

We know from experience that some great trauma and addictions healing work is being done across recovery nation. We simply point out that when you treat tobacco addiction, the trauma treatment goes much deeper and produces exceptional results in our clients.

An Adaptive Survival Strategy

After many years of treating all addictions, but especially tobacco we, have come to the conclusion that tobacco is:

the gateway drug for most of us
the beginning of medicating our relationship to the world we live in
the anchor for our core identity
the primary medication for childhood pain
the platform for other addictions to invade our being
for many children and youth a survival strategy
an adaptive survival response to our loss and identity issues

No Pressure, No Judgment

As a result, we do not use shame-based frames for the treatment of tobacco addiction. We understand that this addiction springs from the need to survive and represents for the child an adaptive survival strategy employed in the medication of emotional pain in order to live another day and hope that life will get better. That someday the hurt will stop. Tobacco gets us to that day.

“Tobacco is harmful
because of what it does to us
not because of what it does for us.”

Childhood Brain Disease

The addicted smoker is not a weak, stupid, lazy person. He/She is addicted to the most dangerous drug ever ingested by humans. To the brain, nicotine is more powerful than cocaine or heroin. Dr. Mark Gold from the University of Florida’s College of Medicine calls this deadly addiction “a childhood brain disease”.

We agree. Our experience, and the current research indicates, that after a very short tobacco exposure a neurological pathway is constructed in the brain which can never be destroyed. Yet it can be decommissioned and new pathways of healing wellness can be built to sustain the recovering person in their new identity as free men and women, perhaps for the first time in their lives.

Treatment of All Addictions at Once

This past year in Grand Rapids Michigan, the PSI field treatment team partnered with the residential division of Pine Rest in offering tobacco recovery services to clients beginning their recovery journeys for alcohol, cocaine, and opiates as well as other addictions.

The clients were invited to join the tobacco recovery section of the treatment process. Every seat was repeatedly filled in both the men’s and women’s programs. And, much to their complete surprise, they enjoyed the experience immensely.

They reported in their evaluations both a deeper sense of recovery, an emergence of a significant spiritual awareness and to no-one’s surprise, a direct connection with the core childhood trauma which had waved through their lives ever since.

“Thank you from the bottom of my heart. This tobacco experience has been tremendous. I have healed from the inside out. I am finally free.”

At first there is fear and doubt, but with gentle, kind, professional guidance each tobacco-addicted person enters the recovery process scared but ready to accept the challenge of freedom. The confidence in their own recovery potential skyrockets.

Moderate Withdrawal

Modern medicine can moderate the withdrawal and the depression so the tobacco recovery process is much easier to begin. There is in the end, only one thing to be truly afraid of, and that is never getting the chance to live as a free man or woman, to never feel our emotions without the danger of childhood exposure and thus, the core fear of being overwhelmed by our own pain.

It works.

We focus on our tobacco recovery, and the possibility of becoming and staying alcohol free is stronger and more lasting.

We focus on healing our tobacco addiction, and our heroin addiction becomes possible to heal as well.
We focus on our tobacco recovery by healing our childhood trauma. This removes the main reason we are attracted to any medication. When there is nothing that needs to be medicated we are free to work our program of sobriety and smobriety.

“If you want to stay sober then get yourself smober”
Dr. Doug Davies, ASAM

They go together better than we could ever have imagined.

“ Five years from now no treatment provider will want to heal any addiction without treating the tobacco addiction as well.” “It will be unthinkable.”

Nicotine Anonymous

The 12-step program is completely central to the total recovery experience. When you have a positive tobacco recovery experience you are best served by joining a 12-step group and keeping yourself grounded in your own daily program, your daily practice. From Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous to Nicotine Anonymous we know the hand of help is always there when we need it both to maintain our conscious contact and to help others become totally free from all addictions in the same process. It makes sense and it works.

Be Sociable, Share!