The arsonist sold the extinguisher

Picture someone who turns up at your door every hour with an extinguisher for sale. Good product. Works fast. The fire is out within a minute of them using it, every single time, and you're grateful every single time. Then they leave, and an hour later there's another fire, and there they are on the step again with the invoice. You wouldn't call that a service. You'd call the police. That arrangement ran in your house for years and you paid the bill without once questioning the seller.

Draw the loop out and it isn't even hidden. The cigarette creates the discomfort. The cigarette is the only thing that removes the discomfort. The removal wears off inside the hour and the discomfort comes back on schedule, at which point another cigarette is required. Nothing enters that circle from outside and nothing good comes out of it. The relief is genuine and the relief is manufactured, both at the same time, which is precisely why it took this long to see the trick.

Here's the sentence that changes the accounting. You were both the customer and the fire. The urgency you felt wasn't a fact about the world, it was the blaze they lit on their way out the door, and it only ever looked like a need because their timing was so good. Which means walking away costs you nothing whatsoever. You aren't losing a firefighter. You're losing an arsonist, and every blaze they ever put out they had set themselves, on your property, with your money.

That's why this gets easier instead of harder. When nobody is setting fires, you don't need anything on hand to put them out. The quiet you're sitting in right now isn't a fire being held down by willpower. It's what a house looks like when nobody is starting anything in it. Some part of you may still listen for the knock on the hour. Let it pass unanswered. God didn't build you to need rescuing from your own rescuer. Nothing is burning today.