Why We Care

Alima’s Story

“I have literally seen what these products are doing to the human energy body. They instantaneously drain life-force, effectively blocking spiritual connection and creative power, the gifts of this human experience. They hold an extremely low vibration—one that is seriously detrimental to the health of our Earth and to our physical bodies. And the level of disgust I felt was enough to make me never use them again.”

- Alima Swan

My expertise on addiction, drug dependency, and withdrawal has been gained through personal experience. Throughout college, I used nicotine (and other substances) to cope with overwhelming amounts of stress and the pressures of a perfectionistic complex. I was chronically anxious and depressed, and chemically dependent on anti-depressants I had been taking for several years. My experiences with chronic pain and surgical trauma were also adding deeper layers to the suffering I was experiencing.

Pushed to the limit of suffering that a human being can tolerate, and let down by the mainstream approaches to my issues, I sought healing through non-traditional means. I dove deep into self-help and spirituality, gleaning insight and knowledge from Bhuddist philosophy, New Age teachers, and experts on the mind-body connection of pain and dis-ease. Eventually, my path of awakening led me to the realization that the drugs I was using to manipulate my brain chemistry were preventing me from true healing. So, I quit using antidepressants and faced an extremely painful withdrawal experience, physically and mentally. After that, my use of nicotine and other substances continued, but I was questioning the nature of my dependencies and their impact on my well-being. I simply wasn’t ready to stop.

Then, I had a life-altering spiritual experience, where the true energetic effect of synthetic and modified nicotine products was revealed to me. I saw the vibration they emanated as dark and severely disruptive—I saw the way they drain life force from those who use them, blocking the creative potential and spiritual connection we are meant to embody. I also saw the darkness behind the entire production process, being shown images of the grotesque scale of mass-production and the unseen consequences this has on our Earth. I also felt the way my generation was being manipulated by an agenda designed to suppress our free-will.  

I could never see these products the same way. Any illusion of normalcy or harmlessness around them was thoroughly destroyed. The level of disgust I felt was so strong that any residual desire I had to use them was totally overpowered. But I was at the same time filled with overwhelming compassion for all of the people addicted to them who felt trapped in a self-defeating cycle.

My experience pushed me to face my other dependencies, willing to experience the physical and emotional pain inherent in withdrawal and loss of a coping mechanism. I knew this was the only way to really know myself and to heal the underlying emotional pain being suppressed and covered up by substances. My experiences with repeated surgical trauma also gave me the experience of withdrawing from pain medications on multiple occasions—another intense and life-altering experience.

So, when I offer support and advice for your withdrawal experience, know that I intimately understand the pain you are experiencing. It is my passion and purpose to provide a loving space for healing where you don’t have to fear judgement or shame, and where you can begin to connect to the same unconditionally loving force that carried me through my darkest moments. I believe that we all deserve to live a life liberated from substances that manipulate our minds and bodies, so that we can experience the limitless beauty and power of our uninhibited life-force.

I grew up surrounding by addiction. All my parents and step-parents struggled with some sort of addiction: nicotine, alcohol, prescription pharmaceuticals, and/or illegal substances. Seeing the dark realities of what addiction does to a person and family gave me a strong commitment to stay away from any potential source of addiction. My mother, with whom I was extremely close with, died due to her alcohol and substance addiction when I was a young teenager. Her death mainly served to reenforce my commitment to sobriety, but it came with a cost.

By the time I got to college, I realized I had an intense fear of these substances. Even the thought of of a sip of wine filled my body with panic; these substances did have control over me, just in a different way. Having to face my feelings was incredibly difficult, but gave me the clarity that I feared myself, not the substances. I had to believe that I had control of my own life, that I was not a victim of biology and ‘addictive patterns’ that ran in my family. This entirely changed my perspective on addiction as I saw the root cause to be unresolved emotional pain.

Seeing many close family members, including parents and grandparents, attempting to quit with varying degrees of success left me optimistic when the first big e-cig brands, like NJOY and Vuse, hit the shelves; I hoped they would ease the suffering that came along with withdrawal. It was only a short while before the illusion started to crack; I saw how many simply replaced their cigarettes with electronic versions, not even decreasing nicotine consumption and certainly not quitting. The vessel of nicotine consumption has simply changed its shape.

While I did see some high school classmates begin to use these products, the ‘quitting assistance devices’ bubble was throughly popped when I arrived at college. Juuls were everywhere. I was astonished to see young people so addicted to the very product I thought was marketed to cigarette users. The concern continued when, upon the arrival of the first shipment of disposable nicotine vapes to the local convenience store, the man at the counter was handing them out for free to any college student there on a snack run. That blue raspberry stick made its rounds in my friend group as I questioned the intention behind this suspicious gift. Why were these being handed out like candy to barely legal adults? I started to see how synthetic nicotine product companies were not just wanting a market share of current cigarette users, but wanted to create entirely new customers to boost profit, and how middle men were happy to comply.

After my personal experience with addiction and seeing how my peers were struggling with nicotine addiction in a society where it is being peddled at every turn, I could not turn away from my generation, that has been left behind by others. Restore Harmony was created to take back our personal power from those who wish to compel us into self-harming behaviors and to free everyone from the prison of nicotine addiction.