My senses are too dull for fiction and yet fiction is what I want to write. I had a groove once. I don’t mean in the nebulous sense of mojo, more in the carpentry sense of a tongue and groove, that is I felt as though I fit inside of fiction; whether the fit was good or no is completely irrelevant.
The cold hard truth of it is, well, it’s cold and hard. Reality. Not a big fan, sure we send one another a card at Christmas and we’ll go to one another’s grand-whelps bar mitzphah and, you know, send a Ramadan card, but it’s not like Reality ever calls me up and says ‘Let’s go have a drink or something, hey dawg?’ We don’t really run in the same circles, sure I’ll tip my hat if I see him on the street and he’ll wiggle his bald pate my way, that’s about it.
I haven’t had a cigarette in 2014. I’m a compulsive son of a bitch, so I do have way too much e-cigarette paraphernalia, still, if one was talking dollars and cents I am ahead of the game. Crass as it might be that’s where the whole e-cig thing is; dollars and cents. The FDA hasn’t weighed in yet. Some rabid anti-smokers and/or politicians are banning e-cigs from the same places as analog cigs, and I’m sure they want to tax the fuck out of them. Well, shit, not them them, I mean I don’t care if that’s what happens to the faux cigs, disposable look alikes (though the battery thing is disturbing). I don’t like those things, they taste like crack.
I’m smoking the sort of things that look like you could communicate with the mother ship or stun someone with. The controversy is over the juice and the fact that it is nicotine. I’m not marching under any banner, if you want to look at the bazillion opinions out there have at it. Both the pro and the con are in the delivery system. I still think it’s fucked up that they tax the bejesus out of smokes, if they are going to kill me and I’m too stupid not to stop, don’t sell them at all, but skip the care and concern bullshit and how the extra tax subsidizes the burden the smoker places on the healthcare system. There is no health care system, or there wasn’t one, now there’s a fucked up one. It’s seems very likely that e-cigs are a healthier way to be addicted to nicotine; no tar is obvious, I don’t know about zero carcinogens, but none of the usual suspects, no definitive report yet.
I still have several humidors full of premium cigars, and quite a few very nice pipes, and cellared pipe tobacco. I have absolutely no idea whether e-cigs are better for me than a pipe. On the one hand pipe tobacco fogs the air with burnt weed on the other hand I don’t inhale pipe tobacco; vape juice I inhale as deep as I did cigs.
A few days ago I did something kind of foolish, dragged a trashcan to the curb (let’s say forty yards, it’s a big yard and driveway) in, conservatively, two feet of snow. I was panting hard. It took me several minutes to catch my breath and when I did my lungs burned. Cold? Perhaps. Out of shape? Definitely, but I’ve climbed rocks in worse shape than this. E-cigs? Good question. All that tar and shit you cough up after a week or two of not inhaling smoke? Definitely. Old and Prosaic? Shut the fuck up. Cranky and in my dotage? Seriously, shut the fuck up man.
I have absolutely no idea how to compare my nicotine intake. There is sort of a standard for the dosage of nicotine in the juice, most places ranging from zero to 24, but, and here’s the rub, the exact same place will list 24 as 24mg/ml, 24 percent, 2.4 percent or Extra High. Now, one could compare that to the gum which is 2 to 4 mg per piece. I still have no idea how that relates to a cigarette, or whether or not you get more nicotine by chewing less pieces more often or what. When I’ve chained smoked before I could go through a pack of smokes in under two hours, and sure, it would make an intake difference between camel straights or Marlboro lights and also how far I smoked them.
I have this one fancy e-cig with a micro-chip that logs my vaping habits into the computer, well, in theory, when the software doesn’t go wonky (on the cpu, the software isn’t very well written) and two others that display puff count, variable voltage and variable wattage. Still, doesn’t tell me how much relative nicotine I’m getting. And the thing is nicotine has been the scapegoat for tobacco all along and if you shoot rats with a syringe full in a lab they will die, but shit, a syringe full of most of the stuff we ingest will kill you. I’ve never seen a study with a direct link between nicotine and cancer, for that matter with the exception of a nod to lip cancer cigars and chew seem marginally dangerous and the closest thing to a real study on pipe smokers and longevity seems to suggest they live a little longer because they are less likely to spazz about shit. I’m just saying, nicotine might be the safest part of a cigarette.
So, let’s pretend that’s true; why fuck with what is, perhaps, the safest nicotine delivery system ever? I’ll concede it might not be, but the opponents aren’t suggesting of stopping them, just restricting and taxing. Thing is I’ve tried quitting smoking dozens of times, seriously tried at least ten times, and this is by and far the best experience, remains to be seen if it’s the most effective one. The healthiest one, of course, was cold turkey. I’ve blanked on the very cranky first couple of weeks and the subsequent months when jonesing would creep up on me, but I’m sure it was terrible. The worst part about e-cigs has been resisting the urge to try things like Cotton Candy Juice or Hawaiian Punch juice. Oh, yeah, and having to charge in the car, but that was this areas pokey ass idea of how to get power in an emergency, which, frankly, was, um, pokey. And assed.
The me being compulsive part has nothing to do with nothing, I mean in the broad sense, I have to live not only like me but as me, it is its own reward and/or comeuppance.
One of those addiction things I always thought was true turns out not to make any difference in this Haredawg-Quits-Smoking-Campaign. That’s the idea that you can’t have external reasons; e.g. quitting for a kid, a parent, a co-worker … a chick. It’s the sort of thing that makes you lie to yourself and list all the reasons you really want to be personal about why you’re quitting (I want to be healthy, I want to jog, I want my teeth and fingers to be clean, I don’t want to die … I’m not convinced any of that shit is even true or, let’s say for the sake of argument, any more or less true now then it was the last dozen times). I’m pretty sure lying to yourself never works and if it did you would have lied so well you wouldn’t even know. But mostly it’s like holding the bald headed kids hand at the oncology ward and saying ‘it’s all going to be all right’ you are pretty sure it won’t be.
Anyhow, I quit for a chick. Or I am quitting. No she didn’t ask me too. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have quit if she had asked me too, but she didn’t, wouldn’t, it’s one of the more endearing and frightening things about her. There are a lot of people who if they asked me to quit I would just smoke harder and in front of them more frequently. Huh. I guess the time I went cold turkey for six months was for someone else too; my, as of that time, unborn second child.
Huh. I guess that’s always been bullshit. Of course you can quit for someone else. I think more often than not you wind up going for a lot of walks, sneaking a smoke, chewing gum really fast, slobbering minty chewed gum juice all over your fingers and coming home feeling a bit head-rushy stoned for someone else.
I don’t think I’m going to go around and tell the story, I sure don’t need to add it to pro-vaping sites, I mean the forty year two pack a day part. For one thing people always lie about that shit. To a doctor it becomes a twenty year a little under a pack a day ‘habit’. For reformed smokers it goes the other way, four packs a day starting in utero. It doesn’t matter, as far as life stats go that particular one leaves out all the other shit I did while smoking as though it were a singular and solitary activity. I sure as hell hope I don’t vilify cigarettes either, not that I’ve come to sing their praises, it’s just bad form, like giving campaign speeches after the election. Also I kind of hope to be able to smoke a pipe again. I’m not going to even try until it’s crystal clear in my head that I do not want to smoke cigarettes again ever. It’s not yet. The cool thing is my head is not jonesing for them; jumpy head that it is I don’t want to spook it.
Cigarettes never have a good story, every pipe does, even if you don’t burn stuff in it. There, I have just bored the living bejesus out of myself.
I like the chick. I like her a lot. I’ve liked her for a very long time. As much as I’ve bitched and moaned over the past year, I’m pretty blessed, unrepentant sinner and smoker that I am blessed all the same.
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