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   Though I don't smoke or use any other types of drugs, I was thinking about what it would take to successfully quit an addictive drug like tobacco or something worse. It may be too specific to be considered proper philosophy but I think it's good to know. Though it may not be the smartest idea to start doing drugs, I think we can all learn something from people who have actually quit smoking or anything else. To break an addiction is a task that takes grim, martyred determination and some sort of genuine motivation; you always see clips in schools about teens that get to be part of this program where they are forced to see drugs for what they really are (good idea) and this is supposed to make them straight up quit recreational drug use cold turkey (possible, but highly unlikely). Sure a traumatic experience assosiated with drug use would give the user something else to feel guilty about the next time they're getting high, but the motivation to legitimately quit whatever's they're on must come from inside of them.
   The act of actually breaking a habit that will bite you back and fight to be reembraced with all it has the entire time you are trying to banish it is beyond difficult- it is practically unheard of. I personally am addicted to tea. I know that sounds insanely ridiculous but it's true; I have a cup of black tea everyday, but say I'm running late one morning and forget to have it. The "withdrawal" symptoms would start about an hour into the school day. I would begin to get a crushing migrane that makes it virtually impossible to see straight, then I would get a stomach ache accompanied by the standard aches and pains. All of this is standard withdrawal procedure. The addiction, or, rather, your body, is fighting with all it's got to get what it wants and most people give in after this first bout of pain- I know I have- you'll do anything to get rid of the pain right? Yeah, if that's a simple caffeine addiction I can only imagine being addicted to something stronger.
   Anyway, to break an addiction takes bravery and the strength- mental and physical- to maintain your position of giving up the habit until the pain abates, but, again, it also takes motivation. Why, for the love of God WHY, would anyone want to put themselves through body racking trembles and shakes and migranes and fevers and other assortments of hellish torture, oh, just because? Yeah- see- they wouldn't. The motivation to do so has to be something to cling to when the darkness creeps in (for those of you who have read Breaking Dawn and remember the part where Bella had just begun to be changed and was referencing a darkness pulling her down, but clinging to the hot spot in her chest… yeah) and when you see no point of continuing to resist the urge. For some people, this motivation may be a freedom from having an annoying daily obligation to fulfill dutifully in order to avoid a day in Hell (ME), but for other people it's family and health and all that jazz. Either way, whatever the motivation, it has to be something that, to you, is completely and totally unnegotiable, something that you are, under no circumstances whatsoever, willing to let go of. Despite what they may say, for some people their health, their family, and even their freedom won't be enough, but they will try anyway.
   The only downside to trying and, perhaps, failing at licking your addiction is that every time you don't get your fix or forget to have your tea in the morning, the withdrawal symptoms only reenforce the idea that quuting is absolutely impossible; I know I tried maybe once to quit drinking tea everyday and quit at the first sign of a headache… this is why I say that we can learn so much from people who have successfull quit, because the number of  motivations out there that will actually get you through the pain are about as many as there are bones in a shark. I'm not saying it can't be done- I know it can, I'm just saying it's hard.


-Meredith Cloverfield