you can rationalize anything
i quit butts.stipulation, though: 1-2 are permitted if i'm drinking.
stipulation to that stipulation, though: 'drinking' must = anything from serious to heavy drinking.
this fine print, in turn, intersects with another pledge i made (at least, implicitly; at least thinking, however deludedly, that i know myself): relegate 'anything from serious to heavy drinking' to weekends.
so, here i am, friday having only recently moved out the way for saturday, and i've committed myself to working up a strong enough beer buzz to massage my temples from the inside, and have since had my first smoke since sunday (monday was the first full day without).
i'm feeling ok. i'm feeling one more bummed right before i go to bed will do me just fine.
the thing i was thinking about as i smoked that first one, walking through a chafing cold to catch a train, though, was the one thing that really put the brakes on my first attempt to quit about six years ago, and the one thing that i regret will prove just as much a stopping block this time around: i always hate to be the bum.
why not buy a pack so you have something to pick away at for those times that you've allowed yourself to succumb to the jonesing?
because even if you're able to resist the full-bore, come-hither stare of a full pack of twenty cigarettes and not instantly smoke the bejeezus out of it, the problem is that once you've opened them, you've got less than a week before the rest get stale and effectively unsmokable.
mind you, this isn't akin to the mild inconvenience some pretend drinkers bemoan when encountering a skunky beer, right before they down it and start acting like nathan lane. a stale cigarette satisfies a nicotine craving about as well as a bowl of cornflakes.
the solution, then: have tobacco companies start packaging special four or five-cigarette packs of smokes.
this is a product that those lame-ass Truth activist commercials (phony grassroots; funded by tobacco company settlements) could really get behind: a modest step down on the way to quitting for reformed smokers, and a viable option for the casual "i only smoke when i drink" guys who wouldn't know what to do with those extra fifteen.
man, if only loosies -- single cigarettes sold at 25 cents a pop -- hadn't become extinct.
for that, i blame those commercials that posited kids could easily get loosies from ambivalent store owners. same guys would sell full packs to minors as it is
posted by jomilkman @ 9:59 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home