"Nicotine slaves are all the same ..."

Two weeks, and still no cigarettes.

Many of you said that by now I would be over "the hump."

But I am still feeling physical withdrawal as acutely as I was a week ago.

Still agitated and too quick to anger.

I am bored, waiting for something to happen, something to click and restore the calm cigarettes provided.

It's not happening.

I have to start doing something to take the edge off, and I grudgingly realize it's time to start excercising.

For me, that means jogging.

I don't do gyms because they're filled with mirrors and posturing and creepy people hungry for eye contact.

I don't want to use what they call an "elliptical," nor do I ever want to utter or write the word again.

But I can't simply start jogging.

There is some preparation.

I need the perfect mix of songs for my iPod. Songs that urge me on and give me wind. Any suggestions?

I found the lyrics to a Willie Nelson song I've never heard: Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette. I think maybe it should be included in the jogging mix.

Now I'm a fellow with a heart of gold with the ways of a gentleman I've been told
A kind of a fellow that wouldn't even harm a flea
But if me and a certain character met that guy that invented the cigarette
I'd murder that son of a gun in the first degree
That ain't that I don't smoke myself and I don't reckon they'll injure your health
I've smoked 'em all my life and I ain't dead yet
But nicotine slaves are all the same at a pheasant party or a poker game
Everythin's gotta stop when they have that cigarette

Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette
Puff puff puff and if you smoke yourself to death
Tell St. Peter at the Golden Gate that you hate to make him wait
But you just gotta have another cigarette

The quitting math

Some of you have tried to tally the benefits of quitting:

Clothes smell better.

Food tastes better.

Apparently even water goes down smooth and tasty.

Is that it?

Forgive me if I do not run out to buy a six-pack of Evian.

I'll admit, my steady addiction to old white cheddar has only intensified as I am discovering new tinges of sharpness.

But, as the initial angry impetus to quit fades, I am searching for other kinds of motivation.

I found this quit calculator on the Canadian Cancer Society website.

The program allows you to enter how many cigarettes you smoke a day, the cost of each pack of cigarettes, then it calculates how much money you save over a period of time. You can project what you can afford to but after a day, week, month, year and 10 years.

A good idea, but it's doing little for me. Maybe it's a generational thing.

After a day, the calculator says, I can buy a magazine.

I didn't know magazines still existed.

After two days, the calculator says I can buy a CD.

I'd prefer to think I could go on an iTunes shopping spree. Why not get 15 songs, all by different musicians I actually like, instead of a couple songs mixed in with a bunch of crap songs, wrapped in a glossy booklet I'll never read?

Four days without smokes, the calculator says, equals movie tickets.

I went to the movies recently, and after buying a parking spot, two tickets, popcorn and drinks, I think it cost me something like $1,000.

After one week, the calculator says I can buy cologne or perfume.

Cessation. By Philip Morris.

I smell fine, thanks, but $53 could bring me within striking distance of the MP3 player I want.

True, the savings earned after one month would buy me a nice digital camera.

On and on the calculator goes, up to one year, when $2,738 can reportedly buy me a home theatre. That's kind of exciting.

At five years, I am supposed to be able to afford a home renovation.

I just bought a small house. I keep up with news on our housing market. I see how the price of homes is going up and up. It seems the cost of most things home-related is going up.

I predict that by 2013, when the calculator says I will have saved $13,700, I will be able to renovate one, maybe two kitchen cabinets.

After 10 years, with $27,400 saved, at the going rates in 2018, I will probably be able to spring for an eaves trough cleaning.

A new side effect

Perhaps most troubling of all the side effects of quitting smoking - first it was rage, then persistent agitation - is the one expressing itself very clearly on my left cheek.

A pimple.

A freaking pimple.

At 30 years old.

This is something I've not had to contend with for many years.

And during this past weekend it left me in all kinds of unfortunate social situations.

(If you're one of these malcontents that has been complaining my blog is whiny and overly dramatic, then stop reading already. It takes all kinds of triggers, silly and serious, whether a work crisis or social anxiety fueled by a skin nuisance, to scupper a legitimate quit attempt. Only in retrospect - that is, if I stay quit - will most of them seem silly.)

At my favourite coffee shop:

"Could I please get a large, light-roast coffee to go? And could you leave some room for cream, please, and not look at my face?"

At the grocery store:
"Um, I know I'm a grown man with a pimple, but could I get this bread sliced?"

At the car wash:
"How much for a regular car wash?" I asked the cashier. "And will your guys vacuum out my face, er, I mean, my trunk?"

Okay, so these things were never said. But I heard them in my nervous little head. And they were probably being communicated to the barista and bakery guy and cashier by the throbbing semaphore on my face.

A week later ...

I am not chewing nicotine gum, using the patch or swallowing those new pills many of you rave about.

I may yet fill that prescription if the side effects of quitting become more difficult to manage. Just to have the drug handy in a moment of weakness is not a bad idea, my doctor says.

I am eating crappy food fairly consistently. It has never occurred to me, not once, to run out and buy a bag of carrots or a chunky, bottled fruit-shake. I want burgers and fries and pizza.

I am spending more time in front of the mirror, checking to see whether this junk food is adding any flabbiness to my jowl area. Can't quite tell yet.

I have trouble sleeping. I cannot read in bed because suddenly reading is boring and annoying. My skin starts to crawl when I do the same thing for more than five minutes. So I toss and turn for hours. The dog looks at me like I need to be walked. I am getting three hours of sleep each night.

I am buying packs and packs of sugary gum, which I chew into a rubbery tastelessness before my jaw starts to swell and I have to spit it out.

A big help has been the incredible response to the blog.

I am humbled by the number of readers who are sharing their thoughts. Even the haters.

(One wrote: "Sounds like you ... ran out of story ideas for your editor, so you thought you'd pretend to quit. True?"

Oh yeah, totally true. The best part would be when someone discovers I actually still smoke and then I would be utterly discredited and fired. Yippee. All part of the thrill of journalism.)

I am encouraged by those who share their quitting stories.

I appreciate their advice. I have been invited to a session with a hypnotherapist. Should I do it?

I am determined to quit. I have an angst pushing me. I am furious that I have let cigarettes hook me for half my life.

But the quitting will only get more difficult.

Because the angst will fade.

The real test isn't the first week or next week. It will come in a few months, after the physical side effects have passed. It will be a warm night, sitting in my back yard with my ne'er-do-well friends, drinking beer and bourbon, and I know how it could happen because it's happened before.

A Jack Daniel's-soaked internal dialogue will start, and it will go a little something like this ...

"I been quit for months. I proved I don't need to smoke. So why not, on this bootiful summer night - is that Labatt 50 dribbling down my chin or a mosquito? - while my a*****e friend is opening a pack of Benson & Hedges, why not have just one smoke as a reward?"

Don't lecture me

Yesterday I wrote about my search for famous people who have quit smoking and remained relevant.

I was curious. I needed inspiration.

What a freaking mistake.

"What the hell do you need a 'hero' for?" a reader demanded to know. "Stop being a drama queen."

Umm, okay.

"If living isn't enough motivation for you," he continued, "then you're screwed."

If living was enough motivation, I wouldn't have started smoking in the first place. My decision to smoke was short-sighted. My effort to quit -- only a week old but still successful, by the way -- is similarly short-sighted. I cannot see the finish line. I can only get through each hour, one hour at a time. That's just how I am going to quit. Telling me simply that I will live longer isn't going to magically cure me of cravings and self-doubt and all the other crap that comes with an addiction.

Call me weak-willed. Tell me I am grasping at silly gimmicks. I don't care. Anything that works, as long as it doesn't involve murder or crystal meth, is good enough for me.

As I said when I started this blog, I don't care if I quit gracefully. I just want to quit.

There's a reason I quit last week. That's when my wife was scheduled to leave the city to teach at a university in Vermont for three months. I knew I would be alone and free to indulge in what was sure to be a self-centred and generally unsavory span of several weeks.

I am drinking cheap beer. My last two dinners were from the drive-thru window at McDonald's.

I frequently get up and pace when the addiction worm starts crawling under my skin.

I scowl and mutter at people on television, especially the American news anchor who calls himself "Mr. Independent."

I play free Orbitz video games online, like eight-ball and mini putt, sometimes for hours, my jaw slack and eyes rheumy.

I am not angry that readers disagree with something I write. I welcome comments and criticism. I want your stories and tips on how to quit successfully, and in future blog posts I will write about some of these.

But please don't tell me I am a drama queen. I just can't take it. I think I might stop writing this blog, then quit the Star and then start smoking again.

Omigod.

Looking for inspiration

If Barack can do it, I can, too.

For inspiration, I've been searching for famous people who have quit.

People who have not become dorkier or irrelevant after dropping the habit.

Senator Obama, whose captivating run for the White House has me tuned into CNN most nights, is about the only one I can find.

That's if you believe he's actually quit.

I picture him choking down two or three cigarettes after a speech, in a dark alley surrounded by hulking secret service agents who would die before giving up the secret.

I tried googling "famous people who quit smoking."

Depressingly, this was the first hit:

"Famous people who died from smoking related illnesses"

Nat King Cole

Clark Gable

Steve McQueen

Roy Orbison

Babe Ruth

George Harrison

Edward R. Murrow

Very little, though, on people who have quit and lived lives as interesting as those in this roster of the dead.

I'm 30 years old, and still have a notion I could be famous or make a difference. Laugh all you want. Indeed, some readers of this blog aren't convinced. One told me in no uncertain terms "this thing needs a plot line!" Another said, and this cuts deep, "I can't believe someone is getting paid for this story." So, okay, fame will probably pass me by.

But right now, my mind, deprived of cigarettes, is beckoning me to the corner store, where I should drop $10 for a pack of smokes, and get on with smoking and back on the road to my reserved spot in the pantheon of writers.

Sick and deluded, I know, but such is this smoker's mind in withdrawal, telling me I am nothing without cigarettes.

Can someone please find me a few heroes, people who quit and then made a trillion dollars, or wrote a great novel, or came up with a cool invention?

Maybe that vacuum cleaner guy smoked three packs a day and quit before coming up with the perfect suction technology.

Anyone?

Mental gymnastics

A smoker's mind, at least this smoker's mind, has an acrobatic ability to rationalize.

Here's what I am thinking right now:

I am a better writer when I smoke.

I laugh more when I smoke.

I think more clearly right after a cigarette.

Hell, my grandmother smoked into her 90s.

I also think:

There's a rhythm to how I live, a beat that would sputter and die without smoking.

After a well-written paragraph, during halftime of another disappointing Minnesota Vikings choke-fest, after Dick Wolf's name fades to black, concluding another gripping episode of Law & Order: SVU, a cigarette keeps the beat. It's something to do between times. It's the metronome that keeps the song playing.

Of course, this is all crap.

But this is how my mind works when the body is screaming for a hit of nicotine.

I cannot allow empty time to pace and hand-wring like this.

Fill the time.

Occupy the mind.

Eat.

Eat.

Eat.

That's all I can do, it seems, to distract the physical need for a cigarette.

Mindlessly, I just ate three or four pitas - I've lost count - slathered in peanut butter. Washed down with a Coke.

Strawberry ice cream waits in the freezer.

What's better? Smoking, or a peanut butter drunk?

Somehow, right now, the answer isn't clear.

Unhinged

So, um, no one told me rage was a major side effect of quitting smoking.

I am not doing so well.

At times, unhinged, you might say.

The other day - this was three days after my last cigarette - this is what happened, I am ashamed to report:

Driving in Yorkville.

Below the speed limit.

There are dirty snowbanks and illegally parked cars, both of which conspire to leave little room for driving and little to no ability to see what's coming at you from the left or right.

As I am approaching a crosswalk, a woman walks out from behind a parked van, setting foot on the street - not even on the crosswalk but five feet away from it - as I am driving past.

She starts wildly flapping her arms, and I can tell she is trying to tell me I have done something wrong.

What I see in my unstable state is someone who feels she should be able to cross the street whenever she wants, and that the rest of the world should anticipate it.

To me, the look on her face says: "How dare there be moving cars when I want to cross the street!"

She is dressed in cashmere and high-heel boots that have her wobbling like a drunk. Most of her face looks pinched with Botox, and the rest of it is covered by huge sunglasses.

So, instead of ignoring her, I punch the brakes - blocking her path - roll down the window, and bark: "What the #^&$ is your problem?"

"It's a crosswalk," she says.

"I can see that," I say, my voice increasing in volume with each word. "So why didn't you press the button over there that lights up the crosswalk signs?"

Now I am yelling.

"THAT'S

HOW

CROSSWALKS

WORK!"

Amazingly, she says, "There's no button."

I scream, "Yes there is. Look. Look right behind you."

Still in denial she says, "There is no button!"

"What are you, $%^&#*& stupid?" I bark.

The woman totters on, leaving me red in the face, enraged at her arrogance.

I roll down the window even more, so I can lean out, take a deep breath and scream:

"A$%^#&E!

Then I notice everyone on the street has stopped walking. They are all looking at me.

A few seconds later, I figure out that I have totally lost it.

But hey, after quitting cold Thursday, I still haven't had a cigarette.

Now what?

Pictures of ravaged, blackened lungs.

Videos of former smokers speaking from what used to be a fully formed face before cancer and tumors and surgeons took their toll.

I appropriately cringe, and for a fleeting moment recognize that this could happen to me.

I go on smoking. These hideous images have absolutely zero effect.

But now that I am trying to quit, I am confronted with a frustrating irony:

A grim testimonial of another kind is scaring me off the pill that was supposed to wean me from nicotine.

A recent article in New York Magazine featured a first-person account of a smoker who took this popular drug, called Chantix or Champix, and started spiraling into a depressed state that included suicidal thoughts. The writer cited a recent advisory issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that it was aware of more than 30 suicides possibly linked to the drug made by Pfizer.

Lovely.

Now what?

That was my crutch, now broken. This drug was to be the silver bullet that would finally, once and for all, slay the habit.

I've tried Zyban, and it made me feel too up, too happy. Sleepless, and unsettled by a creepy perma-grin I noticed in the mirror, I dropped it.

I've tried the nicotine gum. That helped me lay off smokes for a year, the longest I've ever stayed quit.

I flagrantly abused the gum, chewing each piece for an hour until it took on the consistency of cement. My molars are nubs. (To help stop the disappearance of my back teeth, my dentist has ordered me to wear a protective mouth-guard -- it resembles a retainer -- so I don't grind teeth in my sleep. Out of pride and a sense of dignity appropriate for any 30-year-old, I don't wear it.)

So the gum is out.

What am I left with?

Cold turkey?

Oh God, this is going to suck.

And please don't show me images of tumors and black lungs that look like torched footballs. None of that magnanimous medical stuff adds up to an antidote for quitting cold.

Day One

If I am going to quit smoking, I have learned after several failed and some comical attempts, I cannot do it alone.

I used to think I could staidly quit without a complaint or eating binge. That's how my grandfather did it, or so the story goes.

But I don't think I'm strong enough to do it that way.

I'm considering going on a controversial drug that is supposed to block nicotine's effect on the brain. It's a new drug, and drawing attention for its effectiveness and possible links to nasty psychological fallout.

I have also scheduled regular meetings with my doctor. She says doing so ups the chances of success by 80 per cent.

I like the idea of regular doctor visits because it's like entering a bargain, and if I fail in my attempt, I won't just be disappointing myself but my doctor, too.

So I started thinking: Maybe, instead of not telling anyone, as my heroic grandfather did, I should involve everyone I can.

I don't care anymore whether I quit gracefully. I just want to quit.

I put my name in a quitting challenge to win an expensive car. A cancer charity is running the contest.

What if I actually win? Wouldn't do to ride around in a new hybrid, my yellowed fingers dangling out the window holding a smoldering, tasty Dunhill.

I've also told my editor and some friends that I'm quitting.

And now you.

I'd like to say I'm writing to help others. But for the most part, I'm not. This is selfish.

I need people to know I'm quitting.

The bigger the audience, the bigger the shame if I fail.

Doctors orders are to start with a half pill per day for a while, then up to two half-pills then eventually two full pills a day.

Today's the first day. I start now.

Just huffed down a smoke on my front porch.

This is it.

But the moment feels empty.

Shouldn't there be some kind of celebration, maybe a gang of salubrious backslappers to rush into my house, with kazoos and overflowing mugs of viscous fruit-shakes and words of encouragement, to cheerfully usher me into a new era of health and taste buds and ruddy skin?

But no one is around, and I realize there's a few smokes left in my pack of Dunhills.

Maybe the pills can wait for tomorrow.