Chapter Twelve: The Free Breath

You have come a long way. It is time to gather what you have learned into something you can carry. Read it slowly. Some of it you will recognise as your own by now.

What you now know

You have learned something of your own dependence, and of the house of belief the mind can build around it. Perhaps withdrawal was easier than you feared. Perhaps it was hard, or remains hard, and you have needed more help than you expected. The body does not work to a deadline in a book. What you have begun to learn is the difference between the difficulty itself and the sentences that claim to know the whole of your future. The difficulty deserves care. The sentences can be looked at, and sometimes set down.

You know that a craving is a sensation plus a story, and that the sensation is honest and the story is not. The tightness in the chest is real, and the hand that moves on its own is real. The sentence that says you need one is a sentence, and you have let hundreds of them go by unanswered.

You know that the relief the vape gave was relief from the vape, as Chapter Two showed, and that there was never anything to give up. You looked for the thing you were losing and could not find it.

You have watched a feeling that was fought stay in place, and a feeling that was allowed pass. You did this with a craving first, and then, if something was under it, with the boredom or the loneliness that was there. You found the feeling in the body. You let it be the size it was. You stayed. It rose and eased and went, and you were still there, and nothing you had feared had happened.

Beneath many a craving there was a feeling waiting to be felt, and beneath some there was only a habit, as Chapter Four said, and either way you could survive what you had been avoiding, because you did. The vape told you the feelings were too much for you. They were feelings. They came and they went.

You know the places a person can stand. The weight of shame and guilt and apathy and grief and fear. The fire of desire and anger and pride. The turning of courage. The plateau of neutrality and willingness and acceptance. The open country of clarity and love and joy. There is no climbing these. A person rises through them as the weight is set down, and the setting down is the letting go, and you know how to do that now. Nobody lives in one of them. Where you stand on a given day describes the day and says nothing about who you are.

You could not do this alone by will, and you never needed to, because there was something greater to turn towards. It was there in other people, in the body's own intelligence, in the stillness beneath thought, in whatever you have come to call it. You turned, and something carried you that your will could not have carried. You may still have no name for it. You know what it was like to be carried.

If you wrote the honest account and told it to one person, you know what went out of you when it was said, and if you set something right, you felt what that did. If you did neither, the road is still there, and Chapter Seven is where it starts. You have seen what helping another person does for your own footing. If there is a person who knows the truth of you, keep them.

A rested, moving, daylit body manufactures fewer cravings, and the practice of allowing an urge is something research has watched work. When you kept the same waking time and ate at regular hours and walked in daylight, the cravings thinned, and that was no accident.

The addiction lived alone. Whatever you did in company undid it, whether that was telling people, or a companion, or being of use to someone else, and you know by now which of those was yours.

And you know that if you slip, it is a moment, and you go on. It means you vaped. Find the feeling that came up, the shame or the fright, and allow it, and look with clear eyes at what was underneath the reach, and then walk on. Nothing you have learned is lost, and nothing is counted against you, and the person who stopped is still the person reading this.

The ordinary, coming back

Here is what a month on looks like, and a year on, so that you know it when you see it. It arrives without an announcement, and a person can be living in it for weeks before they notice.

Coffee is coffee again. A drive is a drive. A meal ends and the hand rests on the table because there is nowhere for it to go. An argument happens in the kitchen and nobody steps outside halfway through it to breathe on a plastic stick, and the argument is shorter for that, and kinder. An evening ends in bed. You turn out the light and hear someone moving about downstairs. A cupboard closes. Water runs into a glass. You move your foot to a cool part of the sheet and wait for the sound of the stairs. The landing light comes on. You hear a foot on the first stair, then the second, and move the sheet aside on the other side of the bed.

Watch the hand. In the early days it went to the pocket on its own, and the pocket was empty, and the hand came back confused. Now it goes there less and less, and when it does it finds the keys and thinks no more about it, and then it turns on the tap and fills the pan. Nobody argued it out of the reach. It was given other things to hold, a thousand times over, and it learned.

Picture a kitchen a year from your day. Say it is early and the house is not up. You come down and put the light on and stand at the window while the tap runs. There is a mug in your hand and steam coming off it. The garden is grey and the sky over the roofs is going pale. And there is nothing else. No glance at the drawer, no charger on the side, no small arithmetic about how much is left in the pod. There was a time when this minute could not have happened without a vape in it. Now the minute is empty of it, and you are here, and the breath goes down and comes up, and the day begins.

When the reaching looks for a new home

The old reaching sometimes goes looking for a new home, the phone or the fridge or the drink at six, and Chapter Five said what that is and what to do about it. Notice the reach, find the feeling under it, let the feeling be there for a minute, and then eat the biscuit or leave it, as you like.

There is also a flatter thing some people meet after the cravings have gone. You expected to feel free and instead you feel flat. The cravings have gone and taken a certain drama with them, and what is left seems grey. If this is you, look at what the vape used to do to the shape of a day. It punctuated it with small peaks every half hour, and the body got used to the rhythm. Without the peaks the ground looks level, and level can feel like flat until you have walked on it a while. Give it time, eat well, walk in daylight, and talk to someone. For most people the flatness lifts as the body finds its own rhythm again, and what comes in its place is steadier than any peak.

A low mood that stays for a long time, that does not move with sleep or company, belongs in the conversation too. You pick up the phone and say you are fine, and the person at the other end starts telling you about their day. You can stop them. You can say that you are getting through work and eating your meals but there is no pleasure in either, and that you nearly left the phone ringing.

The long tail

About the cravings that still come. A cue can fire long after you stop expecting one. A song. The sweet smell of somebody's vapour at a bus stop. A stairwell where you used to stand. A stress that arrives in the same shape as an old one. Something in you goes oh, and reaches, and then remembers. For most people these are rare by now and pass inside a minute, and they are thinner than the ones you knew at the start, a sketch of a craving.

What to do with one is what you have always done. Stop. Find where it is in the body. Let it be there. Watch it ease and watch it go. Then look at what the cue was and, if you like, smile at it, because a thing that once ran your afternoons has become a thing that visits, often for less than a minute, and leaves.

If instead a craving grows over the course of an afternoon, look at what is happening around it. A meal missed. A call you are waiting for. A row that is still going on in your head while you try to work. Put those things in the account when you talk to the person who knows. If you use nicotine support, keep the packet and the instructions with your notes. A quieter afternoon is no reason to cross out the plan.

A daily practice

Here is a shape for a day. Bend it until it fits your own. It is small, and it is meant to be small. This asks a few minutes, because a freedom is kept by attention more than by effort, and attention costs a few minutes a day. There is no date on which it ends.

In the morning, before anything else, take three slow breaths. With each one, offer your willingness. I am willing to feel what comes today. I am willing to be helped. I am willing to let go. Do this before the phone, before the news, before the day has got hold of you. It takes less than a minute. Then, if you like, say one line to yourself about what the day is likely to bring and what you are willing to have in it. An urge on the drive in. A conversation you are dreading. A mood you would rather not have. Name it, and let it be allowed in advance, so that when it comes you have already said yes to it.

Miss a morning and nothing is lost. Miss a week and nothing is lost. The three breaths are there whenever you come back to them, and they keep no record of your absences.

Through the day, whenever a feeling arises that you would once have vaped past, stop, find it, allow it, and let it pass. Whenever a craving comes, do the same. Each one is a chance to practise. You do not need to go looking for them. The day brings enough on its own. The email that lands wrong. The queue. The silence after you said the thing you meant to say. The moment at three when the afternoon goes slack. Each of these used to be a reason to step outside, and each is still here, and they are the practice now. Stop for the length of a breath. Ask where in the body it is. Let it be the size it is. Then carry on with what you were doing, and notice that you carried on.

There is a particular pleasure in this. The feeling comes, and you meet it, and it goes, and for a moment afterwards there is a small clear space where a vape used to be. Stand in that space when you get the chance. Your hands rest on the desk beside the keyboard. The sentence you left halfway through is still on the screen. You read it from the beginning and find the word you were looking for, then hear someone asking whether you want tea. You turn in your chair to answer.

In the evening, take a few minutes to look back with clear eyes. Where did you reach, or want to reach? What was beneath it? Is there anything that needs to be set right? Is there anyone you could have helped? Let go of the day. Sleep. Do this kindly. It is a look back and no more. There is no inventory to be totted up and nothing to be set right unless you choose to set it right. Three things, if they come. What was hard. What you did. One kind sentence about it, said the way you would say it to a friend who had had your day and was sitting across from you with their coat still on.

The kind sentence goes in on the bad days too. If nothing kind will come, write that it was hard, and let that be the kind sentence. Then put the day down. You do not carry it up the stairs. Whatever was unfinished in it is still there in the morning, and you can pick it up then, rested, with the three breaths already in you.

When the look back turns up something to set right, set it right the next day, where it is safe to. A short apology. A thing returned. A call you owe. Do it before it hardens. The people who recover together found long ago that a small wrong left overnight grows into a reason to reach, and a small wrong put right the next morning turns into nothing at all.

One more thing belongs to the evening, and the people who recover together have kept it. Before you put the day down, write one line of thanks. Not a category. A particular thing. The shower that ran hot on the first turn. The person who held the door while you had a box under your arm. The bus that came as you reached the stop. A sentence someone said on the phone that they did not have to say. Health and family and a roof are true and they are too big to see; the eye slides off them the way it slides off a wall. A hot tap is the size of a hand, and a hand can hold it. Write the small thing, write it plainly, and write only one.

Why one a day, and why keep on? Because thanks is not a feeling you wait for. It is a way of looking, and looking is learned by repetition like anything else. On the first few evenings you will have to hunt for the line, and the hunting is the point. Then you catch one at the time. The box is heavy and you cannot reach the handle, and someone ahead turns back to hold the door. You thank them while you carry it through. That evening you write the line without having to hunt for it. The next evening you may have to hunt again. You sit with the pen and go back through the day until you remember the voice on the phone. A craving is a claim that something is missing. It arrives with a story of lack, and the story needs an empty room to work in. A person who has spent the day seeing what they have been given is not standing in an empty room. The craving says you need, and they have lines in their own hand that say otherwise. This is not a trick. You are not telling yourself the day was good when it was not. You are seeing what was actually there, and what was there, on the worst day, included a hot tap and a held door. A person who can see that is a poor customer for anything that sells relief.

Once a week, or more if you like, talk to someone who understands. Say what is true. Listen to what is true for them. Five minutes is plenty. It can be the person you told, if you told someone, or someone who has been through this or something like it, or a person you trust who has never vaped but knows how to listen. The addiction lived alone and cannot live in the open, and five minutes a week in the open keeps it there. Most weeks you will find you have less to report than you expected.

Four small things, spread across a week, keep all of this alive. Let a feeling that is already here be here for a minute without doing anything about it. Do one thing on your own behalf, a break taken or a no said without a paragraph of apology after it. Say one sentence to yourself the way you would say it to a friend. And do one thing with someone you trust. Tell them something true, or ask for something small, or listen for five minutes with nothing to fix. You built all four when you needed them badly, and now that the need is lighter the practice can be lighter too.

If you want a fifth, look up. Once a week find something larger than the problem and look at it for a minute. The sky over the car park. A tree that was there before you and will be there after. The sea, if you have it.

And once in a while, stop everything and notice. You are breathing, freely, with nothing in your hand and nothing that you need. Do it in odd places. On the platform. In the queue at the chemist. In a garden in the evening when the light has gone low and gold and the birds are making their last noise of the day. Stop, and feel the breath go down, and feel it come up, and notice that there is nothing in you asking for anything. There was a time, not long ago, when a minute like this could not go by without a small voice in it. The voice has gone. Listen to the space where it was.

What to keep within reach

Keep a small account of what has helped you, in your own words. The book has offered many things; you need not carry all of them. There is a notebook in the drawer beside the sofa, where you can reach it without getting up. You open it on your knee and write, Leave the knot alone. Telling it to go keeps me here all evening. You know the chair you mean, and the feeling that stays while you argue with it. The pen rests against the page. You can still feel the knot as you write the next line.

The words need only be enough for you to recognise what helps. Press play. See what I can follow. Under that, in smaller writing, I can follow a conversation. That is what you put beside the thought that you will never enjoy a film again. You look at the prediction once, with something you know from your own evening beside it. The knot in your stomach can be allowed without being argued out of existence. When the prediction repeats, you have a scene to watch. You need not open the notebook again to win the argument.

Further down you write, After supper, coat on. Just to the postbox. The dog under the gate belongs beside that line, if watching it sniff is what you remember. You put that in your own untidy writing too. You do not have to want the walk before its ordinary hour comes. Nor does the page need to claim that you come home happy. There is room to write, Still feel low when I get back. If that is what happens, leave it there.

Add the names or services you would turn to, and the ordinary signs that tell you it is time. Beside your friend's name you write, Ask if she can come round. I don't need another promise. You put the number for your GP surgery underneath, or the contact for the service already helping you. Keep any advice a clinician has given you alongside it, folded inside the notebook if it is on a separate sheet. You need not watch yourself for the signs all day. You can notice them with the phone in your hand: a friend's question about coming over still unanswered, another message below it that you mean to get back to. The film is paused again. You read one more account of withdrawal, then another, looking for someone who can tell you how you will feel. By the time you look up, it is nearly ten. You write, Not answering anyone. Whole evenings on the phone. Those are things you can say when you call the surgery to ask for an appointment about the anxiety or low mood. If making the call feels too much, ask your friend to sit with you while you do it.

Once in a while, read the page and change what no longer fits. A practice that helped once may not be what you need now. You cross out the postbox and write the front gate above it, or change the name beside the number because someone else is helping you now. Nothing here asks you to keep an exercise out of loyalty to the book. The page can have crossings-out and space left over.

This is one meaning of integration: you have the notebook open on your knee at ten, with the phone beside it and the television waiting. You are still frightened. The unanswered message is from the friend whose name is on the page. You open it and type, I'm having a rough evening. Have you got time for a call? You leave the notebook open while you wait. If she has time, you can ask her to tell you about her day. If she cannot talk, the surgery's number is still there for when it opens. For now the remote is under the edge of the notebook. You pull it out and press play for one scene, with the phone beside you in case she rings.

The look back at three months

Three months on, or thereabouts, sit down with a notebook and look at the whole thing. Ask three questions. What changed? What do you want to keep? What can you let go of now? If you wrote anything down before you stopped, read it now, in the hand you wrote it in. There may be a line you pressed hard enough to leave a mark on the page beneath. Read that one too. You were frightened, most likely, and did not know if this was possible. Read it as a letter from someone who could not see this far.

Or do it walking. Take a hill on a clear day, the sort with a path that climbs through gorse and comes out on a bare top where the wind has something to say. Walk it without stopping halfway to breathe on anything. Notice the lungs. They have been mending since you stopped, and on a hill you can feel the mending. The breath goes deeper than it did. The top comes sooner. Sit on the top and look at where you came from, the town small and the road you drove in on a grey thread across the valley, and watch a car come round the bend below. You can follow it as far as the trees, then it is gone. The wind lifts the edge of your coat. You put a hand in the pocket and sit a little longer, with the gorse below you and the path still warm under your legs.

Being of use

Nothing keeps a freedom like giving it away. This is the oldest thing the people who recover together know, and it is as true of vaping as of anything else. At some point someone at ease with you will ask how you did it. It might be at a wedding, out on the steps in the cool after the speeches, when someone you half know comes out with a pod in their hand and says they wish they could stop. It might be your sister. It might be a stranger.

When it comes, tell them what it was like. Put in the night you did not sleep, and the walk that saved an afternoon, and the day you nearly went back and the reason you did not. Give no advice unless they ask for it, and never tell them when to stop or how. A person who has been there and says so, plainly, without a lecture, is the most useful thing another person can meet on this road. The telling does something for you as well. A thing you can describe calmly to a stranger on some steps has lost its power to frighten you.

And there will be harder uses. One day you may sit at a hospital bedside, with someone you love asleep under a thin blanket and a machine counting something beside them, and a fear comes up in you as big as any craving you ever had. You notice, with a kind of wonder, that you can stay. There is no need to go down to the car park. You can sit with the fear and let it be there and hold the hand on the blanket, and sit there while the machine counts. Their fingers move against yours. When they open their eyes, you lean forward so they can hear you without having to lift their head from the pillow.

A closing word

The vape promised you something. A comfort, and a way of getting through a life that sometimes seemed too much. It could not keep the promise. But the promise pointed at something real, and the real thing was on the far side of the reaching. The comfort it sold you was your own breath, and the pause in it was a pause you already owned. The way of getting through was the one you had always had, which is to be here for the next minute and then for the one after that.

You have found it now, or you are finding it. It is the ability to be here, with the tightness in your chest and the noise outside the window, without needing either to be different. It is the free breath.

Some ordinary day you will notice it. The light coming across the kitchen floor, the cold air on the step when you put the bins out, your hands with nothing in them, and the breath going all the way down and all the way out with nothing missing from it. Nobody else will see it happen.

People stop every day. You did. There was never anything broken in you. There was a small dependence and a large fear, and the dependence has gone and the fear has been looked at, and what is left is you, breathing.

A last thing, and then the breath. You were loved the whole way through this. By the people you told, if you told them, and by whatever it was you turned towards in the turning. So go and live. Stand in your kitchen and let the day begin. Walk up the hill. Dance at the wedding. Sit at the bedside when it is asked of you. Stay out in the garden until the light goes. Be gentle with the ones who are still reaching, because you remember. And now and then, in the middle of all of it, stop.

Take one now. All the way in. All the way out.