All a shadow needs is a reason to notice you, and a reason for you to notice it. Then it pulls you into the catacombs. Its sole drive is to draw your attention away from light—the light outside you, and the light within. Shadows love the night. It serves as camouflage. They love winter, too. Winter gives them more room to skulk. Shadows hide behind everything when they see light. They despise the equinox.

When confronted by the formidable, shape-shifting adversary of depression, it’s tempting to blame the graspable abstraction of darkness, the murky metaphor of unlifted mist.

Tempting, yes. but I’ve stopped relegating responsibility to nature—because nature is the cure, not the cause. I no longer think of shadows and darkness as carriers of depression. Let’s take a closer look at a depressive habit: smoking. There is nothing else I have done that threatens to kill me with such formidable success. And just a note here. If you are a smoker I am not telling you that you are wrong. This is my own journey. This is my own experience.

After two years of freedom, in December 2025, while in my beloved Ethiopia, I stood outside the African Jazz Village in Addis and lit a cigarette. From that moment, I resumed smoking at least twenty a day. I returned to England addicted to nicotine and hating it the whole while. This is how it went. When I wake, my first thought is, I will not kill myself by smoking, and my next, where are my cigarettes? Then I smoke myself into a headlock of self-hatred, and so the day begins. This was my daily reflection, my daily descent. I spent three months knowing I was inhabiting the life of a slow suicide.

On March 5th, 2026, I attended Allen Carr’s ingenious online course to stop smoking. The session was delivered by a wonderful woman named Emma. I sat in my kitchen and stared at the screen alongside seven or so other people, each in their own homes, staring at their screens—a scene reminiscent of the COVID days. Emma led the session, which lasted just over half a day. I say wonderful woman named Emma because I haven’t smoked since. The thought of smoking now only makes me smile, recalling how free I am. There are no withdrawal pangs and no euphoria except the occasional gust of inspired inner happiness because….

….here’s an extra miracle: a few days after breaking free from nicotine, my depression lifted. It had been clouding me in shadow since December—hunting me, haunting me day and night, drifting alongside me like an embittered, deceitful Iago. And I havn’t ever made a connection between the two conditions, until now. I mistook it for a friend, even as I sensed the shadow of a dark enemy.

I’m writing this to thank Emma, and to thank Allen Carr’s magnificent, ingenious Easyway, for freeing me from Iago—and holding me accountable to happiness before addiction.

My blog is unedited.

Accountable to Happiness