I could stop doing my shameful and deplorable thing any time I want to, but I will probably never want to stop as long as I keep doing it.
There is a button inside your brain labelled "do that again!", and it is an integral part of animal behavior control, to reinforce things that tend to increase survival potential. If you do something that pushes the button, you're probably going to do it again. And if you do multiple things that push it, you're going to do most often the thing that pushed it the hardest.
Eating food gives it a light tap, but nicotine mashes it really hard. That's why I decided a long, long time ago to never even touch a tobacco cigarette with my fingers, much less put one in my mouth. I'm afraid that not only would I not be able to stop, but that it would displace my lesser addictions, like overeating, video gaming, binge reading, and my other non-salubrious habits, so that I die from lung cancer instead of heart failure, which is the barrel I'm staring down now.
Why couldn't I have been addicted to exercise and fresh vegetables, right?
