I´m not the independent person, I´m dammed in dependence of nicotine. I´m hard smoker and I´m not able to break it. I smoke from morning to evening at night I get up for to smoke. I tried to stop it many times, but I did not have the power of will for to do it really.

I suffer of it and because of suffering I have to smoke.

I hate me, I feel the nauseate against me.

Nobody from my nearest persons apprehends how terrible my dependence of nicotine is.

I smell from Tabaco and because of it I avoid in face of men.

The nicotine is such as the devil that dominates over me and I´m not able to liberate from that slavery.

At the last time in my conscience one verse from Hebrews made me a deep impression (3:15) – Today if you will hear his voice, don´t harden your heart as in the provocation.

This verse reacts such as the challenge for me and commands me to overcome my primitive dependence but I´m anxious that I fail again.

I have never asked to anybody for to help me because I was proud. But my condemnation is more strong that my pride, the pride only covered my scrubbiness and misery.

The thrasher by strong words could help me. I ask to anybody to provide me such thrasher, to describe me how wicked is my deformation of spirit.

For the following days which will be difficult because of symptoms from abstinence the strong words of somebody could stimulate me to overcome this time and to threat my will. I feel the fear that I will be solitary and fail.

In despair I ask to write me, to reproach me, to encourage me, to be with me in thoughts and prayers.

I believe that with such assistance I will reach recovery and peace. Maybe it is my last occasion to change this habit to liberate from it. I believe the spiritual support will refresh the will and remove the sense of need the cigarettes.

I look the unusual occasion because of the failure of these usual.

Dear  _______,
Please stop judging and shaming yourself so much.  Smoking cigarettes is not wrong or bad.  It is a defense that you
adapted to help you survive.  It is dysfunctional because in the long run it will hurt you more than it help you - but it is not shameful that you are still smoking.  Depression is caused by anger turned back inward on our selves - and it is very
important to start being more Loving to ourselves - by first stopping judging ourselves for the behaviors we adapted to
survive.  Once we stop judging and shaming ourselves then we can stop the behaviors.  Just like you said:

"I tried to stop it many times, but I did not have the power of will for to do it really.  I suffer of it and because of suffering I have to smoke"

That is the disease at work - I describe that phenomena on my web page A Dance of Suffering, Shame, and Self-Abuse.
We judge ourselves and shame ourselves and then feel so bad we nurture ourselves by going unconscious abusing
ourselves with one of our old survival tools.

Please read my web site about how important it is to start knowing that we are Unconditionally loved always and do not
have to earn the Love of the Universal Force/God/Goddess/Great Spirit.  Especially starting with the page Learning to
Love our self

Here is a quote from my book about my process of learning how to let go of the judgment and shaming:
 

"When I talk about ways that we use to go unconscious - like workaholism, or exercise, or food, or whatever - I am not saying that you should be ashamed if you are doing some of these things.

We cannot go from unconscious to conscious overnight!  This healing is a long gradual process.  We all still need to go unconscious sometimes.  Recovery is a dance that celebrates progress, not one that achieves perfection.

A significant breakthrough in my personal process came when I was able to recognize, and give myself credit for, the progress that I had made - when I realized that a pint of Haagen-daz was lasting me three days instead of being gone within twenty minutes of when I bought it.

That was a very big breakthrough for me, to be able to give myself credit for the progress instead of judging and shaming myself for not being perfect, for still feeling like I needed the nurturing of ice cream.

We had to learn to go unconscious in order to survive!  Thank God for alcohol or television or romance novels.  Thank God for ice cream!

We need to stop judging ourselves - that means allowing ourselves to do whatever it takes, whatever works.  There are times when we need to go unconscious.  There are times when we need to stuff our feelings in the moment.  There are times when it is not safe to be vulnerable and emotionally honest.

This Recovery process is a gradual transition from using our old tool box to using the new tools.  The old tools - the ways we used to go unconscious so we could survive - are not “bad” or “wrong.”  They were life savers - without them we would be either dead or mass murderers, or dead mass murderers.

We adopted the old tools because they were the best choices that were available to us at the time.  We adopted them in response to intuitive impulses that were right on.   Those impulses were “protect myself, nurture myself.”  It is the nature of the defense system that is Codependence that the ways we learned to protect and nurture ourselves are self-abusive in the long run.

So we need to stop shaming ourselves for the behaviors that we adopted to protect and nurture ourselves, at the same time that we are transitioning to behaviors that are less self-abusive.

Notice that I say less self-abusive.  We are talking progress, not perfection here.

If you have an image of what completely healthy behavior is, and you will not allow yourself to accept and Love yourself until you get there, then you are setting conditions under which you decide when you will become Lovable.  You are still buying into a concept of conditional love and by extension, the concept of a Higher Power that is conditionally loving.  You are still trying to earn, and become worthy of not only self-Love, but also God’s Love.  That small child inside of you is still trying to earn your parents’ Love and validation.

That is a natural, normal thing for humans beings on this Codependent planet.  Try not to judge and beat yourself up for it.  Try to observe it and say, “Oh, isn’t it sad that I am still doing that?  I think I will try to learn some ways that I can change it.”"

Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney

I read your quote from the bible in a very different way than you interpreted it:

At the last time in my conscience one verse from Hebrews made me a deep impression (3:15) – Today if you will hear his voice, don´t harden your heart as in the provocation.

I interpret that to mean do not harden your heart to yourself.  Be open to know that God is so great that you are Loved no matter what - even if you are smoking.

I will not "Thrash you with strong words" as you asked:

The thrasher by strong words could help me. I ask to anybody to provide me such thrasher, to describe me how wicked is my deformation of spirit.

The last thing you need is more abuse.  You are not wicked or deformed of spirit.  You are wounded.  You were wounded as a child and then wounded again and again as an adult.  The cigarettes were a tool that you used to help you control the emotional pain and survive.  When it is time for you to quit smoking you will - your job right now is to start loving your self more and then you can allow your Higher Power to guide you to heal your wounds enough so that you will not need to smoke any more.

Please, please work on being kinder to yourself.  Be open to Unconditional Love from a Loving God-Force.  Learn how
to stop the disease from beating you up.  I will write more when I have more time - but please keep reading the stuff on my web site to help you know that you are lovable and worthy even if you are smoking.  I should know - I just quit smoking 2 days ago.
Let me know what is happening,
Robert Burney

Not apologize for -but rather understand the cause and effect dynamics involved.  Smoking cigarettes is a symptom, not a cause.  It is not the core problem - it is a survival tool for dealing with the core issues which are emotional - in my opinion.

I´m __years old, . . . . I live in ______, in Slovakia, which is a small country in Central Europe. I´m doctor, I work in _____. I have been learned English for 4 years so I apologize for mistakes I hope that my answer could be understandable.

Your English if quite good - congratulations on learning a new language.

I began to read  The Dance of Wounded souls - which I copied from your web site, I´m not sure if I have a complete book.

There are only excerpts and quotes from the book - maybe 10% of it is on the web site.

Your letter caused me the occasion to describe the story of my smoking in details and ask you for your reevaluation it.

It is always good to reevaluate in my opinion - to take a new look at how we started something and process through the information to see if we can understand better how we have arrived at where we are at.

When I was the student I did not smoke despite of smoking all my friends. When I married I began to smoke. For me it was funny and I was not able to understand how my spouse could be addicted to nicotine. The truth is that my spouse quitted the smoking ten years ago. I decided to stop my smoking several times with contrary result, I smoked more and more.

Smoking is one of the most powerful addictions there is - harder to break than heroin in many peoples opinions.  It is so powerful because there are so many components to it.  The emotional, mental, and physical components can each be very powerful in and of themselves.  The physical / physiological addiction to the nicotine can be helped by nicotine gum or patches.  I don’t know if you have these available in your country but am sure that you can probably get some - perhaps when you make your trip to the US.  I don’t believe that the nicotine patches or gum will help however unless a person is ready mentally and emotionally to quit.  It is, of course, possible to mentally shame and judge ourselves into making a behavioral change - but it is not very Loving.  It is so much better if we can do things out of Love than out of shame and judgment.  Some of the most judgmental, shaming, rigid, self-righteous, unpleasant people to be around - in my opinion - are ex-smokers or health fanatics who have shamed themselves into doing things “right” and now try to shame others.  It is much better for ourselves and everyone around us if we can change behaviors out of Love not shame and judgment.  Emotionally we are being abusive to ourselves when we shame and judge ourselves.  This is one reason that the more we shame ourselves for doing a behavior the more we have an emotional need to engage in the behavior - it just does not work very well / is dysfunctional to abuse ourselves to get ourselves to stop abusing ourselves.

My soul is wounded but from my smoking. My spiritual as well as physical freelance are limited with smoking.

I understand that your soul is wounded by your smoking but I think that there is more to it than that.  My soul/spirit was wounded by smoking also - but it was very important for me to allow myself to smoke for as long as I needed to.  One of my lessons was to learn to do what I teach people - which is to stop judging and shaming them self.  I had to Let Go of shaming myself for smoking cigarettes.  I had to accept that I was Lovable and worthy even though I was smoking cigarettes.  It was necessary for me to know that if someone could not hear what I was teaching because they were judging me for still smoking that that was their problem - and a perfect part of the Cosmic plan somehow.   I needed to learn to Love myself enough to quit smoking out of Love instead of out of shame and judgment.  As I mentioned in my first letter to you - I had just quit smoking then.  I, in fact, quit smoking on December 7th 1998 - which in the irony of the Universe was the morning after I got your first e-mail.  I quit smoking because I was feeling Loved enough to Love myself on a new level and was able to Let Go of the cigarettes on that day.  Since then I have been through many hard  emotional times and have not come close to smoking again because I am done with it now.  I am very grateful to be a non-smoker - and I still say to you that it is very important in my belief, to not shame yourself for smoking.

I don´t have the power of will to overcome the desire and craving it is all.

I decided to stop smoking again and for the prevention of my failure I wrote to numinous persons and asked them to help me.  I kept the abstinence only for several hours and I was like wild animal, I was not able to work, to think, to breath. I received many letters,  everybody wished me the courage and hope and I feel the responsibility not to disappoint them.
Day after day I diminish the daily count of cigarettes, now I smoke 10 - 12 per day. December 26th I realized don´t to smoke the whole day. It was my first nicotine free day after 21 years. Now I concentrate the power of will and courage to repeat such nicotine free day and to try to prolong it. Despite I´m not ready to do it forever I continue in my struggle.

Congratulations on the smoke free day and on cutting down on your smoking.  I believe it is very important to celebrate our progress - any progress by giving ourselves positive feedback.

In January I will fly to USA to visit my friends and I will stay in their house for two weeks. They are older and they don´t know about my addiction and they don´t smoke. Until this time I have to quit the smoking.

I am very sorry that I did not reply before you left on your trip.  January has been a very busy month for me and for some reason I had it in my mind that you were coming to the US in February - I had wanted to suggest that you might get the nicotine gum or patches while you were here.  I hope that your trip is going well.

Your Wounded souls are interesting, provide me many ideas which are useful for my work, for to read everything I need more of time because I have to use the dictionary for to translate some of words which I don´t know.

I am glad that you are finding my work helpful.  I applaud your courage and will power in learning a new language and working to learn new ideas.  I hope that you have had success in your battle with cigarette smoking and that you are being kind and Loving to yourself no matter whether you are smoking or not.
Let me know how your trip went and how things are for you.
Robert