Quitting

I can‘t think. My mind is a mess. I am seething with anger and unleashing unmitigated rage. I wish everyone would shut the @#$% up! Every driver is in my way. I flipped off a car-load of nuns today. They were looking at me like I was some kind of a freak. So I showed them the way to Heaven, with one finger. Each person I come in contact with pisses me off. My wife would do well to quit talking, now, and my children should stay in their rooms, if they know what’s good for them. I need to be alone and be left alone!

For those of you unfamiliar with the above symptoms, I've just quit smoking. It has been about 40 hours since my last cigarette. Nicotine withdrawal is responsible for my insatiable fury. (Sounds like a Bruce Lee film).

My God, I have never in my life been this big of a prick. Every little thing annoys me, angers me, and leads me into fits of cussing, bitching, and sometimes even shoving. However, I have managed to limit any physical contact to just my dog. I tipped him over yesterday. Knocked him right over . He deserved it, he was smirking at me. Little %^$#. He‘s lucky to be alive

I have quit before, but who knew? Normally I am the kindest, most sensitive and caring , understanding guy I know. My daughters adore me. My wife, well, as is the case with most wives, she tolerates me. People think I’m funny. The transformation brought about by nicotine deprivation is absurd. It’s like Jekyl and Hyde, Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Frasier and Niles.

Part of the difficulty in quitting lies in the fact that I like to smoke. Breathe in, feel a cool clean taste? That tells you that Camel with nicotine is working to keep your breath fresh and clean. More like a full ashtray in a Nascar fans’ basement.

I know it’s stupid. I know I stink. I know it doesn’t make me cool. But I like the rush. What a great way to relieve stress. It’s an additional break, or breaks in every work day. It doesn’t surprise me that prison riots have started with a ban on smoking.

It’s not my first time quitting. I don’t think any smoker has quit just once. The guys at work laugh when I tell them that I quit. They should shut up. They could end up falling over just like my stupid dog.

I have noticed my reasons for quitting have undergone a subtle transformation. The first time was to make my wife happy. She was pregnant and had recently quit herself. Yeah, like she’s some kind of martyr for quitting. I could quit too if I threw up every morning for three months. Real tough. Stupid unborn baby.

But that didn’t work. I couldn’t quit just because she asked me too. She would tell me that I stunk, and she didn’t like kissing me during, you know. Well, I was quick to point out that kissing wasn’t necessarily a “must” when we were, you know… Bad Idea. I didn’t get to, …you know, for quite a while after that. Another time, I quit for my health. I had trouble breathing, especially at night. I wheezed, I coughed, and I generally had trouble breathing, which I thought was sexy, you know. Turns out it’s not, at all, according to the martyr.

I even tried to quit once to prove to
myself that I could. I couldn’t. I’m weak.

This time, however, is different. About a year ago I made a deal with my lovely bride that I would quit, and the money I had spent on Camels would instead go to satellite TV. I couldn’t lose, I love TV. So I quit, and we got hooked up with a two-room system. We received local channels free for six-months and a reduced package rate. We did have to sign a one-year agreement/contract which we could not cancel within the first 12 months. We were locked in for one full year. No problem!

Seven months later, I started smoking again. I was at a golf tournament and everyone in my four-some was smoking. I had been drinking, they were smoking, you know. I’m weak. She immediately went to cancel the sat/tv as part of our deal, only to realize that we were stuck for another five months. Whoops! I must have forgotten to tell her about that .

Well now the five months is up, and I don’t want to lose my MTV. So I’ve quit again.

I Like TV. TV gooood. I have come to the point in my life where certain things have greater meaning than they previously had.

Smoking cigarettes has been bumped from the number 2 spot on my list of priorities down to number 4, coming in behind, you know, television, and Chipotle Burritos.
I don’t mean to imply that I have lost interest in, you know, it’s just that it does not control my every breath, every thought, and every waking moment, as it did in the early years of marriage. Maybe it’s the security I feel in our relationship that allows me to say No to my wife. Okay, that has never happened. But the rate of decrease in frequency of, you know, is not debilitating, as I always thought it would be. It is still number one on the list, which says something, I guess.

Maybe for me, smoking was a youthful indiscretion perpetuated by the unbelievably addicting properties of nicotine. So if I stay a non-smoker, my wife has agreed to let me keep satellite TV, let me eat Chipotle whenever I want, and she will try to increase the rate of frequency of, you know. This agreement was prefaced with the idea that eventually I would stop being such a horses ass. Which I can do, if everybody would just leave me the %@#@ alone!