Article January 29, 1979 Issue

Escape from addiction

BRYAN G. POPE

Why did I smoke? Many others did. I was young and I thought it conferred extra manliness and social acceptability. My pipe had become a sort of indispensable adjunct to my personality. In fact I had, quite unconsciously, mortgaged a part of myself to something outside myself, and was busy paying the premium.

How did I give up smoking? I didn't. It gave me up. Instead of having to pay off the mortgage, I gained the inestimable gift of freedom from that addiction (I was a heavy smoker), and better still, a view of what freedom really is.

How did it give me up? While I still smoked I became interested in the Science of being, which is another name for Christian Science. Finding through Science that man's real being is and always has been spiritual woke me up to the fact that Spirit, God, is the only real life-giver or stimulus. Many related truths came pouring into my thought; much that had been obscure in Bible teaching became clearer and more meaningful. The desire to smoke simply dropped away naturally. There was no struggle. Because I had found the real stimulus, the counterfeit had to let go of me. And that was the end of it.

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