Smokefreeless

One thing which quitting smoking can really screw up is other people’s heads. I plan to be a prime example: in a while I will have what probably won’t be the last cigarette in my life (keep reading for why) and sometime after that, I will dig out my shiny new patches, and stick one of them to my lower back.

It’s going to be a difficult journey. I am, after all, addicted to nicotine. It is the most powerfully addictive drug known to man, exceeding even heroin and cocaine in its apocalyptically intense withdrawal symptoms. But that addiction is not why I’ve kept smoking for just over 8 years. That addiction does not completely explain why it’s going to be so difficult. Why? Because, in a way, that addiction doesn’t matter. I am a difficult smoker, probably one of the most difficult of all, because I like smoking in and of itself, and would smoke nicotine–and–tar–free cigarettes like a train if they existed.

That’s why the title of this post is emphatically not ‘smokefree’. To be free of someone or something, you’d have to have sort of disliked them or it, wouldn’t you? Smoking: oh you alluring thing, come into my boudoir. Nicotine, on the other hand — fuck off away from me, you squalid whore.

I do want to be nicotine–free, very much so. I am someone who (from now on — hopefully) smokes very very rarely indeed, loves smoking, and hates the tobacco companies for chemically manipulating and messing with the dried leaves of the tobacco plant in very many harmful ways. They add nicotine, for god’s sake. They then boost its effects to get you hooked on it, and thanks to the expertise of the scientists and lawyers who work for them, they deliver the world’s most addictive drug to you for the rest of your life and you give them a massive amount of money in return.

They don’t care about an addiction–free product and a smooth, warm taste. They are in the nicotine–delivery business, and they care about that — and your money.

Now, on to part 2.