Addictions... ah yes. You know how it is - you think you must surely die if deprived of the object of your addiction. It's all you can think or talk about. You're gnawing your nails and counting the moments until you can indulge it again. You can't possibly imagine a life without your addiction, especially as you know so many who share in it, and really- what else do you have in common with most of them except that shared compulsion?

And then the thing you dread the most actually happens. Something occurs that prevents you getting your fix...

And you realise something. That it had ceased to be a real addiction a long, long time ago, without you even noticing it. Something had soured your love affair with it, and it had become nothing more than mere habit. Something that you had clung to even when many of your friends had given it up or fallen victim to it. Something you had simply been assuming you were still too passionate about to ever willingly give up (that's what you told everyone, after all!), and you never questioned yourself if that was strictly true any longer. Why should you?

After a remarkably short while, instead of actively missing your addiction, you feel a sneaking and unexpected sense of freedom and purpose, because once you lift a dependence out of the equation, everything else rearranges itself into new focus. You see all the other pleasures you hadn't valued enough because you were too fixated on a habit that had ceased to be a pleasure itself. And sometimes, you realise in time just how much that addiction was harming you and wonder why you never had the guts to quit it a year ago, when you knew you should.

For the record, I had my last cigarette 4 months, 5 days ago.