welcome to my nicotine-stained world

i am a smoker.

believe it or not, i've only just felt the sudden enlightenment of this very status a few hours ago when my lungs felt like they were about to cave in from a massive bout of hacking. a quick visit to the clinic tells me that they're infected, my entire respiratory system is infected. with what? i didn't ask. as far as i'm concerned, i'm infected with an affliction of the mind.

i can't stop smoking.

but why? everyone seems to question. and even i, as the sole pilot of my mind and being, can't seem to figure that out. it's a seemingly easy question that's shrink-wrapped in a film of doubt. every time i attempt to answer it, there's a tiny reflection of uncertainty that calls out to me from a corner of my mind. yeah yeah, it's really hard to quit smoking, they say, and that's why people never stop trying.

bullshit. i've met people who've quit, and never touched another cigarette again.

but i've also met people who can do double backrolls. and don't give me the if-you-try-hard-enough-you-can argument.

well then, perfect, viv. just the perfect justification for your lack of effort. girls can justify every damn thing can't they? it's so easy, so quick, so blameless. don't you just love it?

fact is, i don't. i wish i didn't have my incorrigible wit in this situation. and i say incorrigible because it's so ingrained in my system that sometimes i don't even think anymore about what i am arguing about. my mind is one track: need to have a super-stoic reason not to quit smoking. doesn't matter that i am oblivously charring my lungs with a thousand chemicals. doesn't matter that each cigarette reduces your life by a certain number of hours. puff away chickadee. there's always tomorrow to quit. come on, what is a few hours more to live if you didn't have the bliss of this one cigarette?

it all sounds too ludicrous to me. yet i don't even know where this sardonic humour is coming from. perhaps it's the effect of the cough mixture, washing through my brains in waves. oh beautiful. here's another reason not to stop smoking. cough it up, sister. codeine is just as beautiful as nicotine. in fact, more beautiful.

something tells me i'm beyond redemption. but that can't be the case. i don't want to be beyond redemption. no one should ever be beyond redemption in this world.. as uncle bill tells us in the naked lunch. he came out of a 15 year affliction with junk! and i'm not even a junkie. i don't know what you are sniggering about. nicotine-addiction is not the same as junk-addiction.. (and you can't see me twiddling my thumbs)

yet i can probably understand junk-addiction better than nicotine-addiction (of course not from first-hand experience, as i said, i'm not a junkie).. junk puts you in a different world, nicotine doesn't. junk ebbs through your brain and covers your senses with extreme pleasure. nicotine doesn't. i know some who will beg to differ. but seriously, for me, nicotine doesn't. sometimes it relaxes me about a millionth of a bit, but most other times, it's just something to do.

so breaking a habit should be relatively easier than breaking an addiction, shouldn't it? find something else to do. well.. twiddle your fingers. bite your hair. watch your nails grow. you can't say exercise. because you can't just pick yourself up and go for a run in the middle of your tequila shot or vodka tonic. people who smoke in clubs face the highest retention rate for quitting attempts. because there just isn't anything else to do. talk to someone? chances are, the minute you do that, they light up and say to you "what were you saying again?" and once again, it all spirals into nothingness.

and so it seems, that i've taken my nicotine addiction all the way around the universe and back. i can't seem to drop it. beat it like an unwanted child. but i guess i can own that little spark of optimism that perhaps one day i will. there should be light at the end of the tunnel, no? i just hope that this light isn't the end.