addi(c)tion

As I stood next to my car pumping fuel and trying to stay warm a little sticker advertisement on the fuel pump caught my eye.  "Buy two packs, save a dollar.  Marlboro cigarettes $7.89 per pack with discount!"  Uh what?  $8 a pack for cigarettes?  Yikes!  I gave a quick prayer of thanks for not being a smoker.  That wasn't always the case though.  I smoked for about four years while I was in college.  Toward the end of my addiction I was smoking about two packs a day.  Could you even imagine?!  I can't now, that's for sure.  That's like $16 a day.  That's like $480 a month - WITH DISCOUNT!  Eeek!  I couldn't even begin to claim being frugal and finance-minded with a monkey on my back that size.

And addictions are more expensive than just upfront costs.  We must consider the long term costs (think health care/life insurance), the secondary costs (think 'boy that cigarette would be so much better with a coffee/beer), the intangible costs (think dying early), the future costs (our babies inhaling their own future well-being or lack thereof).  With all those costs I wonder why we even do it?  I think about why I did it.  Well, I originally did it because I hung out with people who drank and I didn't want to drink so I chose the lesser of two evils.  I should have just chosen different people to hang out with...

I just erased four paragraphs of self-help mumbo jumbo that I realized has no bearing on where I wanted this post to go.  So here is what it boiled down to for me this morning:  Addictions are EXPENSIVE!  And sometimes our worst addictions are things we don't realize we are addicted to (like say, negative self talk) and often they can be very costly to our well being (spiritual AND emotional).  Addictions are most costly when we aren't self-aware enough to know they are there.  I sure am thankful for the wherewithal I had to quit smoking when I did...and to quit drinking also...beyond the fact that it does NOTHING for you...it would ruin the quaint little budget I've created for our family.  Thanks, Word of Wisdom, for being so wise.