TRYING TO QUIT

It seems that most addictions are not something that we can recover from by trying. For example: trying to quit smoking rarely works. I used to smoke when I was young and it never entered my mind or interested me ‘to try to quit.’ The only way it seemed to me to stop smoking was to stop smoking. No trying about it.

Back when I smoked nearly every male smoked and many females. My dad smoked, my grandpa, my brothers, all my uncles and just about everyone else I knew. Now there were kids at school (elementary school) who did not smoke. These guys had names like Edwin, Carl, Wendell, Jasper, Martin or Travis. People with names like that don’t smoke. Only a few kids in high school didn’t smoke…a few Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, a couple of Church of the Nazarene kids and kids with names similar to the names above.

I have known a lot of smokers, chewers, drinkers, drug users, not to mention those with addictions and behaviors concerning abuse, anger, rage, food, lying and such things. I know that some are helped by therapy and recovery methods but most of the ones I have seen who quit…quit. They were not trying to quit. They no longer wanted to be the way they were and stopped being that way and became another way.

“But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.” Jesus