'You do not want to smoke...'

Saturday, July 3, 2004

I lit my third cigarette of the day at 3:20 p.m. and it was kind of a letdown. The first drag didn't produce the big sigh of relief you expect when it's been -- okay, it's seemed like -- a long time between smokes. It was more like, Where the hell have you been? Never mind, just get to work. BOHICA, lungs. Duck and cover.

I feel vaguely dizzy. Hell, I feel vaguely everything. It's hard to concentrate. The next sentence seems a mile away, and I'm not sure if I'll recognize it when I get there. Is this a quasi-withdrawal symptom or am I already feeling the unfamiliar benefits of better-oxygenated blood? I vote for the former, though "withdrawal" -- even with a modifier -- seems a ridiculous way of putting it. I have not stopped smoking, I've merely smoked much less today than normal.

The Wellbutrin helps. No, I amend that: it makes it possible for me to do even this. A week ago I could not have realistically considered waiting more than an hour after waking for my first cigarette of the day or another two and a half hours for the next one. Over the last 30 years, my brain has become accustomed to lighting up roughly every 45 minutes.

I'm afraid to do the math. Suffice to say that's a boatload of smoke.

And I've been feeling it lately. Hell, I felt it 15 years ago, when four trips up and down the court in a pickup basketball game left me bent over, hands on knees, wheezing through a windpipe that felt like it was full of Fibreglas. I spent a good part of my teens and early 20s doing something with a basketball, and there in my early 30s it became apparent that I could no longer play the game I loved because I was addicted to nicotine.

Nicotine. It's used to kill bugs, for Christ's sake. It's a fucking insecticide! What's it doing in cigarettes, or any other ingestibile product? What the hell is wrong with us?

Stop. Relax. Focus on your center. You do not enjoy smoking. You do not want to smoke. You do not enjoy smoking. You do not want...

I'm scared.

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