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PSYCHOLOGICAL SET-UPS FOR CRAVINGS
REPOST by CarlyKicksButts on 6/24/2010
There are five major psychological ways that recovering addicts set themselves up to experience craving.
1. Euphoric Recall: Euphoric recall is a way in which addicts "romance the smoke" by remembering and exaggerating the pleasurable experiences of past nicotine use, while blocking out painful and unpleasant aspects of the memory.
2. Awfulizing Abstinence: When addicts awfulize abstinence, they notice all of the negatives and exaggerate them while blocking out all of the positive aspects of recovery. This leads the recovering nicotine addict to feel deprived in recovery and to believe that being smober is not nearly as good as using the nicotine.
3. Magical Thinking About Use: Magical thinking about use is the belief that using nicotine or other drugs will solve all of their problems. This magical thinking is brought about by the euphoric recall ("Remember how good it was!"), and the awfulizing of smobriety ("Look at how awful it is that I can't use it.").
4. Empowering The Compulsion: They exaggerate the power of the compulsion by telling themselves that they can’t stand not having the nicotine and telling themselves that there is no way to resist the craving.
5. Denial & Evasion: The final psychological set-up is denial and evasion. Addiction is a disease of denial. This denial does not go away simply because they are not using the drug. Many nicotine addicts deny their need for a recovery program to reduce the likelihood of craving. They also deny that they are setting themselves up to have craving for the drug. Because this denial is an unconscious process, many nicotine addicts believe they are doing the best they can in recovery when, in fact, they are not…
It seems like those of us here, working it every day, trying to keep it REAL and not allow the blinders to block our view...are doing a VERY good thing indeed.
I really do believe most people who relapse do it to themselves by one of the methods above. Making it worse than it is (it's not easy, but it IS simple. Really!)
People think a craving is going to kill them.
NO ONE has EVER in the history of EVER gotten killed by a craving :-) 
I feel very safe in making that statement ! Anyway, I stumbled on this article, and thought it was truly fitting. Carly