I am afraid you are correct, and that practice is freedom and life itself.
You're free to smoke but being enslaved to an addictive bunch of weeds is not my definition of freedom. Nor is the use of a poison a part of my definition of life itself.
There is freedom in personal responsibility and the strength to manage one's life free of addiction. The first few are a choice but after that there is addictive compulsion.
But, as I said, the choice is yours.