Smoking Gun

As I write this, it is 2:44 on Tuesday, and that means I have to sweat out at least another 2 hours of nicotine deprivation before my pseudo-husband comes home from work.  This is the only situation I can think of that very quickly transforms me into a deranged beast-like creature.  I'm normally a sweet as apple pie, but when I'm in severe nicotine withdrawal, I pretty much become Satan Himself.  There's no one here to take out my deranged impulses on, which is probably a good thing, however, I wont get to the "demonic" stage for another few hours at least.  Right now it's just an incessant fixation on smoking and finding cigarettes that aren't here, which keeps me from achieving much other than building resentment toward my loved one (who has been taking cigarettes out of my pack because he's too lazy to try to find his own pack and mine is out in the open!!)  

Sigh. 


When I was in college back in Montgomery County, MD, a militant anti-smoking/ anti-smoker campaign swept the area with great success.  Cigarette smoking is pretty impossible to defend if you value optimal physical health, cleanliness, and not giving your money to a company that is the epitome of corporate evil, also,  most people can't stand the smell, which really seemed to be the impetus behind the campaign.  So with virtually no case to be made for us smokers, laws and campus policies were enacted restricting smoking on campus to a cordoned off area under a bridge.  Simultaneously, laws were passed banning smoking in any commercial building including bars, and restaurants with a specially ventilated smoking section.  This utterly destroyed my favorite pastime of going to the Diner a few blocks away from my apartment and smoking and drinking coffee all night long, which I had been doing since I was about 15.  It was the only place left where you could still smoke inside.


Some thought that perhaps smokers would give up this indefensible, foul, smelly, costly, and unhealthy habit if it was made less convenient to indulge in it.  But the argument was mainly based on the dangers of second hand smoke, saying workers shouldn't under any circumstances be exposed to it while doing their jobs.  Meanwhile, smokers were derided endlessly for our wicked ways, shunned, scolded, or shot looks of disapproval and disdain.  Only the hard-core addicts like me remained in the smoking circle.  Even I tried to quit a few times.  I once held out for 8 months but that first puff I took after imbibing at a New Years party was just so damned GOOD.


The last time, (at the end of 2009), I "quit" for a little over a month.  I tried hypnosis, affirmations, the works.  But by the 30 day mark I was an emotional WRECK.  In the end, I realized how much I like to smoke.  See, I don't just smoke because I'm a complete slave to my addiction, which I am, but because I also happen to LOVE smoking.  I love smoking, drinking coffee, and writing.  That is what I live to do.  It might be a shitty thing to live for, but we don't all draw the "cure cancer" or "end hunger in Africa" life goal when we come to this world, and I don't think that necessarily makes me a "bad person".

When I'm in withdrawal, however, I definitely am a bad person.  I metamorphose into a crazy, wild-eyed gollum in search of my "precious".  It's pretty ugly.  I can feel him clawing around in my brain, skittering over the slippery rocks in my synapses.  I try to calm him by thinking at him "it'll only be another couple of hours, you can make it that long."  And that seems to keep him from fully possessing me and doing something insane to get my hands on the precious.

I think the knowledge that there aren't any cigarettes in the house, and that I have no way of going anywhere panics my inner gollum.  I know I can get through a shift at work (when I had a job) without smoking till my lunch break, so why am I freaking out over 6 hours with no smokes?  It's because I know when the craving hits, I wont have a choice, I will have to abstain and ride out the next craving and the next, each one more unnerving than the last, until my sanity starts to crumble.  Not the way I intended to spend my day.


Again, since smoking is so indefensible and universally despised so far as I can tell, there was little resistance when the state of Maryland raised taxes on cigarettes, making the price for a pack an average of $6.00.  To give you some perspective, a pack of brand-name cigarettes was $2.75 cents when I started smoking in 1999.  My mom was a smoker as well, and when we would run out of money and sell our books for $20.00 we would by cigarettes instead of food.  To me, it doesn't quite seem right to tax the hell out of people who are chemically dependent on the product being taxed.  That just seems opportunistic and a little cruel.  Especially when most smokers are in the lowest income bracket in this country.  But if you try to hinder ANYTHING by word or deed, which makes smoking harder to do, then you are certainly considered an assmuffin.  So no one spoke up.  At least the money I spend on my addiction will help go to pay for the state program that helps me with my anti-depressant meds....?  I guess?

Anyway, it doesn't really matter anymore, because I happen to believe that our entire civilization is doomed, and that we've already entered the start of an American Dark Age.  All hail our corporate overlords!!

I'm seriously considering learning how to grow tobacco on our land here for when it all goes down the tubes.  Funny, growing up as a city girl, I never contemplated winding up in the countryside nursing survivalist thoughts.  Not once.  I could not imagine anything more opposite me.  But 8 years of Bush/Cheney, 2 or 3 wars, an economic depression, and of course 9/11 has sent a lot of people into "Bizzarro World".

People will do absolutely insane things to satiate their cravings for cigarettes.  They will hold up a drug store or gas station at gunpoint just for the smokes.  I haven't gotten that far yet, but I can see it happening!  And that's saying something, because I'm as shy as a dormouse!  Not only that but I detest guns.  Now that's something I'd like to see them put a ban on.  Hmmm... guns are bad for your health and that of the people around you, statistically speaking, so....???  But everyone knows you don't mess with gun owners.  Smokers get to take all the guff.

 Okay, so far I've occupied myself writing this and researching  how to grow tobacco in my back yard for almost the entire remainder of my mandated sentence.  Apparently my sweetie is stuck in traffic about 6 miles from here and he's got four packs of cigarettes with him!  I wonder if a prayer to St. Anthony will work here, or if I need to go the goat route again....