SUNDAY, MARCH 29

Smoke-free, day 2.

It doesn't last too long.

Today is Pam's mom's birthday, which means a drive out to the country and dinner with her family. Pam's fam is fucking rad so I'm looking forward to it, but the idea of "doing stuff" is the exact opposite of what I'm in the mood for. Add to that that every single tiny miniscule insignificant thing Pam says to me about absolutely any topic whatsoever makes me want to smash her in the face with a frying pan. Metaphorically. (Not really.) It's not her fault; at this point I haven't had a cigarette in a full day & a half and it's felt like forever. I'm breaking patterns and I hate it. So rather than get into a fight, I sit down and play Little Big Planet, and learn an important lesson that anyone who's ever played Little Big Planet will attest to: If you;re frustrated, angry, or otherwise stressed, so not, under any circumstances, play Little Big Planet. Remember the final level of Super Mario 3 with the ship that kept scrolling left and there were missles and flame cartwheels and not enough room to P-wing your way out of it and you kept dying over and over and over again but you just kept trying anyway?

...cakewalk.

I'm letting everything get to me and I'm snapping at everything. Things come to a head right about the time I holler "FUCK FUCK MUTHERFUCKING SHIT-FUCK" at the TV because my adorable Sackboy character has fallen prey to another mechanical ninja. Having no desire to try to explain to the people at Samsung's Warranty department that the PS3 controller lodged in the screen was through no fault of my own, I go and take a loooooooooooong shower.



Is it possible to hate this guy? ...yes, yes it is.


Feeling better, I help gather up everything and we head down to the car. I decide to drive. Pam gives me the cautious "Are you sure?" look, and I respond with the cranky "yes I'm fucking sure" eyeroll. This is another example in a long line of examples of why I should listen to Pam more often. As some can tell you, I am the best driver in the world, a fact not based on my skill per se, but that is self-evident through my constantly calling out the idiocy and inferiority of every other driver on the road. I flip people off, I gas-stomp and swerve, I curse, I do 90 down University avenue. On a good day. Combine that behaviour with my already obvious new personality disorder and you got trouble-a-brewin'. On the way up the DVP I randomly tell Pam that I probably shouldn't be driving because I "feel kinda high." We have to make a stop anyway, so we agree to switch places then. To get to where we're going, Pam has to direct me. Every time she tells me a direction, I have to take a deep breath and not snap her head off. Pam, being INCREDIBLY awesome, knows this and is handling me with kid's gloves. When we stop I cave; the traffic, direction taking, morning's bitch fest and the fact that we're doing anything at all that doesn't involve a couch, TV, and video game console breaks me and I light the most delicious cigarette I've ever had.

After putting it out I immediately regret smoking it. I'm reminded that whatever repairs my body has done to itself in the past 40 hours has now been undone. The weird taste in my mouth and back of my throat that has been slowly disappearing all day is back, and is fresh and disgusting. The mild sense of euphoria is nice, but at the moment I don;t want to feel euphoric, I just want to feel like a normal healthy person, so even the one benefit of smoking this thing is irritating to me. I don't verbalize any of this, of course, because the last thing I want is validity against my actions. So, now in a much better mood, I plug int he iPhone to the stereo and we talk about some of the new music I've found recently. We agree that Kidneythieves are fucking awesome and continue on our merry way to Ma and Pa's house in the country.

Dinner is great as always, but since I'm trying to break patterns, I do not go for a smoke after eating as I've done routinely for the past 18 years. Instead I go back into the living room and we all gather round to look at vacation photos. We've all been somewhere recently, so we all take turns boring each other. I can't stop thinking about smoking. I get up and start pacing around like a dog. Pam notices and makes a deal with me; If I hold out until we get home and I still want one, I can have one then. I agree that's fair. Her plan backfires when we get home and I immediately bolt outside before I even take a piss. I've been thinking about this for 4 hours, and when I light it, I take a drag, and then quickly realize that...I don;t want it. At least not in the way I thought I would. I realize I'm only smoking this thing because I made a deal with myself that I would. It's a lame reason to do anything, and this is no exception. After 4 drags, I toss the thing into the Butt Bucket we have on the balcony and go inside. 3 hours later I'm here writing this blog entry, about to hit the sack.

Tomorrow's Monday and the first day I'm going to try cutting out the 4:30 smoke break. I pity those in my vacinity.

TOTAL CIGARETTE COUNT FOR SUNDAY: 1.25 (or 2, for the purists)

Saturday March 28

Well THAT was a wash.

I'm sorry to say that there are no photos to post of naked asses in chaps. The $20 went unclaimed. I have a feeling the closest anyone came was when I pulled my pants down while on the balcony just low enough to press my gluteous up against the window for the enjoyment of the crew in the teepee. Did I mention there was a teepee in the living room?

Yeah, there was a teepee in the living room.

This party reminded me about the part of quitting smoking that I hate the worst, and that's the loss of control over the brain-mouth connection. Knowing when to shut the fuck up is a skill that takes years to hone, and it's amazing how all those years of careful craftmanship and self-improvement can be rendered moot by a couple of poorly chosen words uttered at a volume about 3 levels too high. After that, there's really nothing left to but drink until you can't feel feelings anymore, and smoke lots and lots of cigarettes. Fortunately, in this case, my ability to fixate on every tiny embarassment I've ever endured made it impossible for me to do either of those things. I had a couple more beers, but I didn't fall into oblivion; rather I reminded myself that I knew a guy who, at an office party, got so slammed that he was literally running up behind people, jumping on their backs and biting their necks. So it could be worse.

I did smoke at this event, but not to the level that I usually do. Ordinarily, at a house party, I'm the guy who lives on the balcony sucking down one cigarette after another after another. In a 3 hour stay It'd not be uncommon to go through 15 cigarettes. At this event, I burned through 4, 5 at the most (so let's say 5). That's a long way from Quitsville, but still, I'm not too disappointed. I wound up WAAAY overstaying my welcome and was one of the last 3 people to vacate the premesis. Got the hint when people were crawling into bed. Subtle.

TOTAL CIGARETTE COUNT FOR FRIDAY: 7

THE NEXT DAY

Saturday morning was spent doing exactly 2 things: Pounding my fists into my temples and groaning loudly at my self, and taking care of Pam, who drank so much that the resulting hangover displayed the exact same symptoms as the Honta virus. (For the record, I have no idea what the symptoms of the Honta virus are, but with a name like that, I would imagine loud painful moaning and chronic full-body heaving are part of the package.) It was a good day of reflection, and I took the time to remind myself that sometimes, the effects of quitting smoking are as bad, and even worse, than the effects of smoking. Knowing myself, and the fact that I'm on something of a hairtrigger when it comes to saying stupid shit in public anyway, I decide to not beat myself up about it any more and chalk it all up to life experience. I also wonder whether my resume is up to date. Did I mention this was a work-related thing? Yeah, it totally was.

Saturday night I'm invited to another birthday party for another friend, and although I promised I'd go, I'm feeling too stupid, am too concerned about Pam, and am too angry about smoking so much the night before that I decide to bail. Instead Tim drops by with a case of beer and we spend the night playing Little Big Planet and watching Righteous Kill. All day long I want a cigarette, and all day long I stay glued to the couch, staring into my giant TV. I think I only left the couch long enough to use the bathroom and pay for the pizza we ordered. When Tim leaves for the night, Pam heads back to bed and I decide to chill out on the couch for a while longer to watch the end of SNL. I wind up falling asleep there. Thus ends my first smoke-free day so far.

TOTAL CIGARETTE COUNT: 0
Saturday

FRIDAY MARCH 27

Well what a difference a night makes. Slept restlessly again last night...kept waking up to discover my arm pointing straight up towards the ceiling. 'Kay so that was unusual. As expected, I slept in until about 8:30. Again.

However when I did roll out of bed, I felt like a million bucks. Well maybe not a million. Maybe a few hundred. I felt like $873.65. Considering that yesterday I felt like a sac of sweaty assholes, I call that a win.

I'm getting into a new smoking routine in an effort to break my old ones. Old routines were to have a smoke as I slowly walked to the office, have one mid morning, sneak out before lunch, have one after eating, then usually go every 90 minutes or so in the afternoon. I've cut all that out and am now waiting until 12:00 at the earliest before I start looking around and seeing if anyone's interested in heading downstairs. Usually there're at least 2 takers. Today I had one right at 12:00 and then at 4:30, but only because I was feeling particularly antzy...which seems to be the daily norm around that time. I think the 4:30 break will be the next step towards not smoking at work anymore.

Tonight will be an interesting experiment. I'm going to a friend's birthday party, and her events are notoriously hilarious. I'm a little afraid I won;t be able to get into the groove if I'm not smoking, but maybe if I go into it KNOWING that, then I won't be so bad off. Wish me luck.

By the way it's a "Cowboys and Native Americans" party and there's a $20 prize on the line for he or she who arrives in assless chaps. Yes, pictures will be posted. Do I feel the need to show off my high-end hardware? Tune in tomorrow to find out.

CIGARETTE COUNT FOR FRIDAY: 2, as of 5:53 PM.

THURSDAY MARCH 26

Shitty day all around. Fever's broken and my nose is basically a snot faucet. I can't concentrate on work and nothing is holding my attention for more than a few minutes at a time. Fortunately my workload is in a relative holding pattern at the moment, so I'm not losing any time, but still, I feel like ass.

Around 11:00 or so a migraine starts to creep into my head behind my eyes. I ignore it, which is probably silly. 12:00 comes and goes; I think about heading down to grab a sammich from the restaurant in the lobby but instead say "Fuck it, save the $12" and enjoy a nutritious All Bran Bar. (These All Bran bars taste really good, BTW.) Around 1:00 I sneak out for a cigarette with Bahar and Bree, the first one of the day.

At 2:00 I'm supposed to meet Jess out front of my building so I can buy a CD and T-shirt off her to help support the Outbred Inlaws, for whom she is the drummer. I head down to the front of the building and wait, but our wires got crossed and she's waiting for me 4 blocks away in front of the Manulife centre. I wait outside for 40 minutes. During this time I don't have a single cigarette. I prolly woulda done a little dance if I wasn't so fucking crusty and hate-filled because of it.

4:30 I cave; my headache is getting redonkulous and I run down for a smoke in the hopes that it will help kill the pack of wolverines in my head who are trying to push my rotting brain out through my eyeballs. No such luck. I bail on seeing a friend play at Tattoo Rock, hooking up with them at Hoops, and chilling with a long lost chick buddy who's in from Australia by way of London for another friend's B-day in favour of couch, Swiss Chalet, Neo Citran and HD TV. Tina Fay kills the pain. I go to bed around 10 and get about 2 minutes into whatever I was watching before I zonk out for the night. During the night I'm up and awake about 5 times, each time convinced that I'll never ever get back to sleep no matter how hard I try. Each time I think that, I blink and an hour passes. I'm living a particularly bad episode of The New Twilight Zone.

Total cigarette count for the day: 2

Wednesday March 25

Rough day. Not feeling so hot. My throat's all dry and scratch, bt that's from the cold I've got (at least that's what I tell myself.) But the biggest challenge awaits: A friend of mine is leaving the company forever today and his sendoff is tonight. To make matters just a little more complicated, one of my fave indie bands is playing the Rivoli tonight, so of course I'm going.

So I head down to the pub to see Jared and wish him well. I have a smoke before going in. Then for 3 hours I drink lightly and chat. About halfway through I leave to try and score a cigarette off some random stranger on the sidewalk, but instead I just go for a tour around the block. Once back inside I'm introduced to a super interesting dude who, I learn, is a physicist. Completely on edge, I run my mouth off on theories of alternate universes, Plank length, and the universal hologram theory. I stop short of explaining why Back to the Future II is a scientific impossibility, thank Christ. At 8:00 I bail; gotta go meet the wifey and head on down to the Riv to see the Switch open for Dance Yourself to Death.

When we get to the club, I pour out of the cab and light a smoke. I enjoy that as Pam & I walk to the bank machine, where I meet a drunk tourist who bums a cigarette off me as we trade semi-toxicated riffs about quitting smoking. His friend is profoundly unimpressed. On the way back to the Rivoli, I light another, for which Pam administers unto me a very stern admonishment. But that's it for me until the band is done playing. I grab one smoke between sets and one on the way home.

Total count for the day: 7

Tuesday March 24

Just got back from a RAD weekend at Johnny's in Montreal. Good time was had by all. During the 4-day stay, I smoked more than 3 packs of cigarettes, many of them indoors near a cat (to which I am HORRIBLY allergic.) Tuesday was a rough morning; I overslept, I was hacking and choking as I brushed my teeth, and the cold I've been fighting for a week was in full effect. No time like the present to cut out the coffin nails.

I smoked on the way into work, right after lunch, and at 5:00. Cigarette count for the day: 3.

So it begins, attempt #136

I've tried to quit smoking now more times than I can count. I tried the Patch very briefly and hated it. I've tried the gum and hated it more. I tried the lozenges and they basically made me throw up. Honestly, the only thing that has brought me closest to what can be called success was plain old cold turkey and willpower. Last time I quit was under those terms and it got me 4 months of smoke-free happiness. Then I went on vacation. Did you know that cigarettes are a dollar a pack in Cuba?!? Well they are. Gawd dammit.

This this time I'm trying something new. Every shrink everywhere always suggests keeping a diary of whatever addiction you're trying to kick, so in that spirit, here's my Quit Smoking blog. Any words of wisdom you have would be helpful, so please post your comments.

Here goes nothing...