What set this off?

Rewind a minute. What happened right before this hit? The last bite of a meal, a certain hour, a car door closing, a certain person walking in? Find it. That moment and a cigarette showed up together so often your brain filed them as one event. What you're feeling is that link firing. It's a memory, not a need.

It works like an old song. Three notes in, and you're back in one summer, every detail rushing in. The song isn't the summer. It's just wired to it. The cigarette hitched a ride on your ordinary moments until they felt unfinished without it. It never made them better. It just showed up often enough to wear a groove.

You're standing inside the repair right now. Stay where you are and name five things you can see. Say them slowly. The lamp. Your shoes. A scuff on the wall. You're in the old moment, and nothing is happening. That's the update your brain has been waiting for. God does His slow, good work in minutes exactly like this one.

Every trigger you walk through without answering loosens the link. Keep doing it, and over time the moment goes back to being just a moment. The meal is just a meal. The hour is just an hour. The cigarette owned this minute. You just took it back.