While serving not so long ago, my neighbour with the nickname Marchala bought the same brand of lighter, probably a number of times that I have lost count of in the space of just a year that I was there, not because he was collecting them or keeping them somewhere, but because, for him, he accidentally keeps leaving them in taxis, bars, or anywhere he goes. And he has only admitted this to me. Out of other neighbours, we do have real conversations whenever we see each other or on Saturdays when everyone is home.
At first, he was not completely serious about it when he told me that losing those lighters was a planned strategy for him. Some unconscious hope that friction, because he left his room and was walking to the junction to get a new lighter, would be a big work-around and a way of resistance for him to skip the cigarette entirely. That didn't work for him anyway. Because from what I saw, I kept seeing new light with him, and he kept on lighting up his cigarette, irritated at himself in a way that never seems like he will stop soon. There was a day he said that if he didn't smoke in a day, it was like something in him was missing, and he probably might not function well. I was short of what to say.
Staying in the same compound and seeing him closely almost every day taught me that when we talk about the question of choice inside addiction, it is not a clean answer like that because looking at which moments we are examining, there's a split. I don't know when exactly he started smoking, but what I do know is that whenever he started, his first smoke was a choice and that nobody forced him to. But by the time I got to know him, it had already become a decision, something he does deliberately without anyone telling him. Even when we met and he said he wanted to stop, he would have bought the cigarette and got a new lighter before his brain booted and registered what he was doing.
What changed my mind about him was that he tried to quit and went some days without smoking. But he still went back. A person with no willpower will not even bother to do those things. But the fact that he wanted to stop it but was unable to shows me that some addictions can be so strong, not that the person is lazy.
So, is quitting addiction now beyond each person's capability? I don't think so because at the end of the day, some people eventually do stop completely, and at the same time, I don't think that capability alone explains who eventually quits addiction and who still continues with it. What distinguished the people I've watched actually quit from that was my neighbour was not a stronger character.
But it was an inward drive, something about their health, social or family concerns or just something that changed everything around their choice rather than the willpower behind it. Till I left that compound, he still smoked even though he kept buying new lighters and called it his way of quitting.
Thank you for reading.
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