TKOG Who ingests DRUGS through her SKIN

HOLY FRIG, GUYS! With today’s post, we are halfway through the NTKOG project! This is unbelievable! And to those of you who have stalked the full archives (I love you.), you have read the equivalent of A FIVE-HUNDRED PAGE BOOK. Am I blowing your mind a little?

Also! Do check out Secret Society of List Addicts for my post today about celebrities who look sexier when they’re carrying some extra weight. I promise I didn’t just write Alec Baldwin five times…

NTKOG #125: The kind of future ex-smoker who, beaten down by years of Big Tobacco, self-helpily turns to nicotine crutches instead of manning up and walking her path alone. (Also, breathe one word of sanctimonious anti-smoking lecture to me and so help me god I will photoshop pictures of you giving Hitler a blowjob and SEND THEM TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER, so put that in your pipe and you know what to do with it.)

I am: strong like bear.

I am not: one to admit my shortcomings, even if they’re puffing me in the face.

The Scene: The office last week, eight hours after my (allegedly) last-ever cigarette. I’m about ready to punch a nun in the face and my lungs are whispering up to my brain, it’s okay, dude, we support you – sacrifice us to that most pure and noble love. I’m going insane for a cigarette in, really, the most literal of ways. I excuse myself to run an errand and, during what would usually be my mid-afternoon cigarette stroll, sprint to Walgreen’s and pick up a box of … nicotine patches.

To me, the patch had never made sense. Nicotine’s fine and dandy, but when I’ve tried to quit before, the thing I miss most is the ceremony, the feeling of taking seven-minute intervals to meditate, the sheer sensual pleasure of drawing smoke into my lungs and then releasing it into a slightly improved universe. Even the gum I understand – they make it extra complicated to chew just to approximate the ritual nature of smoking! – but what good could a passive patch do me?!

Fast forward to twenty minutes later, I open the first patch and adhere it directly over my heart. Within thirty seconds, my pulse has amped up 20 beats per minute, my irises have flared out to anime proportions, my hands are trembling – oh sweet jesus yes, once again poison courses through my veins! Half an hour of junkie-ish delight and then … I feel normal. I feel like I’ve just smoked a cigarette. The craving is gone.

The thing that isn’t gone, of course, is my psychological desire to smoke. When I’m bored or restless, I now have no excuse to pop outside. Need some fresh air? Fuck you, sit in your dank little cell like everybody else. Sometimes the urge is more vague. I’ll experience a moment of physical ennui and, just for a moment, some sweet voice in the back of my brain will whisper, Dude, remember, just try to remember, there’s something so good you can do. It will make you delirious with happiness, if you just do it. All you have to do is remember what it— and then I do remember. It’s smoking. And I can never do it again.

But I do some other stupid thing and eventually the urge passes until the next time. And because I’m already stocked up with nicotine, these urges do not rip me to shreds.

The best part about the patch, though, is the dreams. Have you heard the phrase “nicotine dream”? It’s apparently the most common side effect: intense, vivid all-night dreams brought on by the steady influx of nicotine while sleeping. Every night, I can scarcely wait for the moment my eyelids start to flutter, because I know I’ll be exploring some horrifying or wondrous new world in intense detail.

They come from a different part of your brain, these nicotine dreams. They feel more like memory than imagination. There is none of the discombobulation or pinball-fast tangenting of normal dreams (“Where am I?” “Why is my third-grade teacher my sister?!” “WHY DO THE CHILDREN HAVE NO MOUTHS?!”) – for me, it’s like loading a forgotten but perfectly preserved reel of some experience and replaying it in real-time. Everything makes sense; even when things are bad, they click along too steadily to be nightmarish; the story can go on hour-long banal tangents then return to point. I dream now in narratives.

The other thing, if we can be totally serious, is hands-shaking rush of sheer nicotine. I love cigarettes, I trust them, we have a history together. Cigarettes are a relationship. The nicotine patch is just fucking. And cigarettes? I love you, but I’ve got a serious crush on the patch.

The Verdict: I think — I think quitting smoking is making me go insane, a little bit. But my clothes smell better and in a few weeks when I get off the patch, I’ll be saving a lot of money every month. And that whole not dying thing, eventually, I guess.

Man, though, I wish I’d known about the magic powers of the patch when I was a brash and distractible youth. I totally would have done this shit recreationally. It’s amazing. Even writing about it sends my pulse racing.

Tagged as: addiction, cigarettes, haven't smoked in five days and i haven't wrestled the faces off of any bears yet. this is above-average comportment for me., if you're thinking of quitting smoking then let me assure you it is a very good thing to do and much easier when you admit you need (chemical) help, nicotine patch, quit smoking, smoking, sorry for getting preemptively snappy about anti-smoking lectures but you wouldn't believe how many hours of them i have endured over the past five years, when my kids want to do drugs i'm going to hand them a nicotine patch and a benedryl and tell them to have a friggin' party