I’ve decided to foolishly undertake something that is usually only suggested in a high-horsey and scolding kind of way by health professionals and plain arseholes alike: giving up cigarettes.
Rather than the usual nonsense of the third day being the worst day and the cravings only lasting a second – all of it LIES – I’ve been bombarded by restlessness, irritability and cravings for everything from biscuits to coffee to housework all day long. Everything they tell you is, of course, abject falsity!
Cold turkey works about 3% of the time so don’t even bother with that. Take all the Nicotine gum, inhalers or lozenges you want. Fuck it, mainline it into your eyeballs if you need to just don’t take that little puff. It’s all the lovely stuff in a cigarette like chemicals used for embalming dead bodies and the same shit that kills you in a housefire that you need to avoid.
Don’t be afraid to get angry. Scream your little heart out into a pillow. Take the cravings head on and stare them down, maybe even flirt with them a little bit just to create an uneasy tension between the two of you. When a craving comes along just let it wash right over your frustrated noggin like wave on a rock. Think of it like this: when someone is trying to convince you to do something you know you shouldn’t do but kind of want to do (like go out drinking on a weeknight) what do you do? You repeat the word No over and over again like a mental patient, maybe grimace a lot and put your hands over your ears and say “Lalalalala I’m not listening” even though you really are.
How effective is that? Not fucking very. What you should really do is say “Yes, I really do want to do that thing but I can’t because I’m a broke motherfucker and would rather not eat baked beans until payday.” Same thing with smoking. Meet the urge head on and tell it who’s the boss. Man up, grow a pair, etc etc.
I’m all out of cutting insight for the day so now I’m going to go throw stones at cars and hope that stirs up some wonderfully distracting drama for an hour or two.
