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The Starving Dragon
The Starving Dragon
FROM: MutinyFever 4/23/2003 8:04:04 PM
Long, long ago, in a lifetime far, far away, I smoked just one. Bitter tears I shed when I realized the dragon Addiction still had a lair in my heart. I had thought him dead, after seven winters of starvation. Just one cigarette fortified him and he drew strength. With each puff he felt his claws, yawned his mouth, breathed his fire. The cinders that were his eyes began to smolder, and then he SEIZED ME.
After relapsing on my seven year quit, it took me two years to get quit again. I tried and tried to find the strength to quit again. A dozen tries in those two years. A dozen agonies ending in hours. I tried. I failed. Just one, I`d thought. I scoff at my hubris. So does the dragon.
I was healthy before the relapse, getting a cold every 3 years or so. In the two years of the relapse I had at least a dozen colds, and I developed a persistent cough. Hiking became a problem. I became more sedentary in general. I lost weight and muscle tone. I gave up my yoga practice, which I had been faithful in performing for 5 years. I grew more depressed, and had less in the way of coping mechanisms to relieve that depression.
The dragon loved it. Just one and my sense of self was crushed under his dictatorship. Death was to be my tribute to the dragon`s rulership. At last, though, I`ve reached deep within to find love. Love for myself, my wife, my family, my life. That love sustained me while the dragon roared. I have quit again.
Today is the two hundredth day of my quit. The dragon is not dead, but he is starving and weak again. The dragon has retired to his lair to wait, to watch. Just one, he whispers with a long blackened tongue, his voice cracking and weak. Just one and I will have you again.
I`ve learned my lesson.