Journal Entry - A Weekend to Breathe
This weekend, I gave myself something I haven’t allowed enough of lately: a break.
Standing by the ocean, looking out across the waves and the endless horizon, I felt something begin to shift. For weeks, maybe even months, my mind had been running constantly. Anxiety has a way of making everything feel urgent. Every thought demands attention. Every problem feels like it needs solving immediately. Even when I was physically resting, my mind was still racing.
But here, watching the waves roll in and out beneath a sky filled with drifting clouds, life seemed to slow down.
The ocean doesn’t rush. The clouds don’t worry about where they need to be next. They simply move as they are meant to. Looking out across the water reminded me that not everything needs to be controlled, analysed, or fixed all at once.
For the first time in a long time, I felt present.
The sound of the waves drowned out the noise in my head. The fresh sea air felt cleansing. Instead of thinking about everything that could go wrong, I found myself focusing on what was right in front of me: the crashing surf, the changing light on the water, and the simple beauty of the coastline.
My anxiety hasn’t disappeared. It rarely works that way. But this weekend reminded me that anxiety does not have to consume every moment of my life. Sometimes the most important thing I can do is step away, even briefly, from the pressures and responsibilities that seem so overwhelming.
Taking this break has helped me more than I expected. It has given me space to think, space to rest, and most importantly, space to remember that there is a world beyond my worries.
As I stood looking out over the ocean, I realised how much I needed this.
The problems waiting for me at home will still be there. The emails, the responsibilities, the endless list of things to do have not disappeared. But I am returning to them with a clearer mind and a calmer heart.
This weekend was not about escaping my anxiety. It was about giving myself permission to pause and recover from it.
Looking at this view, with the waves stretching into the distance and the clouds opening up to blue sky, I am reminded that difficult periods do pass. The storms move on. The skies clear. And sometimes all it takes is a weekend away to remember that better days are still ahead.
Yes, better days for tobacco harm reduction are indeed ahead. The theme of the paper I gave on 3 June at the Global Forum on Nicotine was exactly that. The global replacement of combustible cigarettes by safer, smoke-free nicotine products is now well underway and is rapidly accelerating. Safer, smoke-free nicotine products are forms to drug harm reduction and although new interventions for drug harm reduction are generally ferociously resisted and the opposition persists for a long time, drug harm reduction usually do get accepted, implemented to scale and eventually get appreciated for the effective, safe, cost effective interventions they almost always are. But vaping, heated tobacco products and nicotine pouches are not only harm reduction interventions, they are also disruptive innovations. And most new disruptive innovations succeed. Even though our opponents have the backing of billionaires Mike Bloomberg and Bill Gates and the World Health Organisation, tobacco harm reduction has the evidence on its side. We also have the world’s largest traded tobacco company, Philip Morris International, earning 42% of its revenue in 2025 from safer, smoke-free nicotine products while the world’s second largest traded tobacco company, British American Tobacco, earned in 2025 18% of its revenue in 2025 from safer, smoke-free nicotine products. Our opponents may be popping champagne corks today but soon they will realise that the global replacement of combustible cigarettes by safer, smoke-free nicotine products is now inevitable and unstoppable.
I love you dude....