Demons and Vices

1/10/26

The week before Thanksgiving I decided to give up smoking. I had purchased a pack at a local gas station, and it cost almost $15! Using a card and buying by the carton, it’s easy to justify, or at least turn a blind eye to, the cost – and the cost per pack when buying in bulk is not that high. So this time I was paying in cash and hadn’t brought enough in with me for the pack, never imagining the cost would be that high. In perspective, that is almost a full hour of work time at my mundane job for one pack – or close to the cost of a full meal for me at a restaurant. More than I want to try to afford anyway!

The first day I did pretty good! The cravings hit, I found a way to distract myself and only had two cigs – only when the craving hit so hard I was incapable of anything else. That night, I didn’t sleep much. The next day my emotions were all over the place, as is normal when I don’t reset, and under the nervous energy I made several realizations about myself and why I smoke. I tell people I have an addictive personality – if I read a book nothing else will happen until the book is finished, if I drink I will find a reason to continue drinking, if I pick up a video game controller I’ll be stuck on that for a while too. I do my best to keep all things in moderation, but some things are hard for me to manage, so I allow myself to drink coffee and smoke cigs, those are my two vices.

However! The cigs are not just a vice, they are much more of a crutch than I realized. It takes a lot for me to admit that, I’m finding. Underneath that internal layer of smoke, I found demons I didn’t know I had buried. Gives a whole new meaning to the term “internal smudging” that one of my mentors used to use lol. I found that cigs were my way to balance all kinds of things – stuck in my head over a puzzle I can’t figure out? Go smoke. The voices of self-doubt and second guessing myself getting a little too loud? Go smoke. Too many trains of thought going at once and I can’t focus? Go smoke. Time to switch tracks to a new task? Go smoke. Unsure of how to handle a situation? Angry for any reason at all? Energy is all scattered? You get the idea. 😊

2025 for me, seems to have been the year when the phrases “no good deed goes unpunished” and “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” really hit home. Don’t get me wrong, I am very familiar with those phrases, but this last year that was the constant theme. I was very much aware of the Year of the Snake, transformation, shedding the old, moving into new ways of Being. We have to be willing to transform, right?!, to shed that skin and grown into something new, which of course means that we have to grab a hold of that skin (old patterns, outdated thoughts, bad habits) with both hands and remove it. Which in turn means we open ourselves up to all the things that are included in “the old”, process, and let go.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean punished by outside sources but instead by my own Self. Second guessing, self-doubt, lack of self-confidence, anxiety, overthinking, you name it. We are human, and it seems for the vast majority of us, we learn these things at a young age and spend the rest of our lives dealing with the consequences. I set expectations for myself based on what I know I’m capable of and how I think things will go, then allow myself to be harder on my self than I should when it doesn’t work when I planned. [Side note, I know I’m using all the words in here that I teach not to use and some of you may have noticed – should, have to, incapable, but, etc. Bear with me 😊] I set the bar higher for myself than I ought to, and am disappointed in myself when I don’t reach it. Need to give myself time to remember who I am and that these are learning opportunities, not a reason to be down…? Go smoke. Once upon a time, I’d turn to the bottle, and that only makes matters worse, at least with smoking I can still remain present.

With the way of the world, Sin taxes, and all the things we have economy wise going on to deal with, I learned over the last couple months that I can’t afford my vices. Two weeks off for Winter break, and I managed to only smoke four-ish packs over the time off instead of the 12-15 it would have normally been. I haven’t quit smoking! which is reason to be disappointed in myself, but on the other hand I have cut back enough that if I wanted to I could justify the cost. A carton a month would only be the equivalent of 1 days’ worth of work for the month, instead of 1 day a week at my previous rate.

Our bodies though are so very good at responding to what we think. I thought “I’m going to quit smoking, I do not want to do that anymore.” And my body says, “I got you!! Let’s do this!” and now every time I light a cig I feel ill. Lungs tighten up, I feel nauseous, get halfway through the cig and I can’t believe I even lit it. I paid good money for it, I’m damn well going to finish it! and put my body through hell doing it. But if I don’t, it puts my mind through hell because I haven’t found the way to sort the thoughts and quiet the extra voices and demons that I found… not yet anyway. I know that time is coming, I can see the other side and I have faith in me.

That said, we are our own worst enemy right?! One of my favorite songs by Linkin Park has the line “Fighting myself, I always lose.” What a hell of a time to try to quit smoking – as we’re getting further entrenched in the dark half of the year, I had already made up my mind to get serious about the shadow work – to shed and release. And apparently, I thought I could do that without the distractions or a way to reset, since I didn’t put anything in place to replace the smoking.

Anyway, this has been my trend for a few years now, start slowing down around Samhain, let all the things come up leading into Yule, really allow myself to feel the feelings, get lost in there instead of transmuting, remember who I am sometime in mid January, finish the work and move forward. In 2025, the anxiety from that lasted into the summer, and I don’t know if I fully allowed myself to recover before jumping into this one. Trying to quit smoking in the middle of it sure boosted the anxiety and I feel like I haven’t slept in months – vicious cycle isn’t it? Anxiety keeps us awake, and not sleeping makes us more anxious. ☹

So this time around, I decided I’m not picking up the pieces anymore. The first year I remember consciously doing this work, I felt like I shattered into a million pieces and I almost frantically felt I needed to rebuild, only to find the pieces didn’t fit together anymore no matter which way I put them together and I had to leave things behind. Last year, I held on til my knuckles turned white and everything hurt from the strain – don’t let it go, don’t drop the pieces. We don’t want to do that again – and this year started out that way too.

I’m glad I decided to quit smoking, even if I’ve let myself down by not fully quitting just yet. It helped me remember that holding on is worse than letting go in most cases. I made plans for the Winter Break that didn’t come to fruition, there are things going on at my mundane job that trigger some anger, and the voices in my head are louder than they’ve been in a long time. And I’m learning to deal without burying them! The cigs are not a crutch anymore – I couldn’t use them to bury all this again anyway, now that I’m aware of it lol – but a moment in time where I can step away then come back. I have found, especially in the workplace, it is much more socially acceptable to say “I’m going to go smoke” and leave the premises than it is to say, “Hey guys, I’m overwhelmed and I need a few minutes, I’m going to go hide somewhere.” 😕 That is a whole other can of worms to deal with, and I plan on remedying that at the workplace soon as well.

So this time, I held on to all the pieces for a while, then decided it’s not worth it. And let them go. And the new thing this time around? I have no desire to pick those pieces back up. If I had to hold onto them that hard, in a refusal to shed that skin, then am I actually willing to change, to grow to transform? As co-creators of our own realities, do we need those pieces or do they hinder our perceptions? I don’t know for sure, because honestly I haven’t sat and asked these questions of myself or Source in a long time. But my gut tells me that this may be where part of our “separation” comes from… being too human and not enough Divine.

What I do know is that time doesn’t truly exist in the way we perceive it, which is a discussion for another time 😊 Whether it be a new day, a new week, a new month, or a new year, take any reason you can to make the changes you want to make. Once upon a time when I was young and fun, I’d say that any excuse to party is a good one – and yes I celebrate Take Your Teddy Bear to Work Day (second Wed in Oct) and Appreciate a Dragon Day (January 16), among others lol, for that reason. And now I say, any excuse to know yourself better and grow is a good one. The Year of the Horse begins on Feb 17, the Lunar New Year, and I’m going to take this last few weeks to finish shedding and come into the light. I don’t need these pieces anymore and they serve me no good, so it is time. 😊 I’m still looking forward to the “future” with anticipation and excitement, even if right now I can’t sleep and I have to remind myself every day to give myself grace for the days when I am not at my best. It’s okay to have a bad day, or a bad week – make sure you drink your water (and yes, I have been doing that lol), give yourself grace when the day isn’t as amazing as you’d hoped, and do what you need to do to honor your Self. When I was young and having a bad day, my dad would always say “Sleep on it, Maria, tomorrow is a new day and things will look better in the morning.” So that is on the agenda too, get some sleep when you can, reset, and things will get better ❤