the rix mix

Trouble concentrating. No ciggies. Don't jump in & pat me on the back & all that other rah rah crap. It's not like that. Last night, taking out the garbage & getting the mail from outside box, wearing winter coat, no umbrella or hat, the weather was so bad. so much worse than I expected, that I knew no way was I walking up to 7/11 for overpriced Pall Mall ultralights. Smoke butts or nothing, tough it out. A night isn't difficult. But you know you'll wake up with a problem.

Ultralights are the anxiety-smoker's ciggie. We know they're just as unhealthy. But our pyschological dependency is so strong, as we discovered in our failures to kick it, that we don't require a strong nicotine addiction to stay addicted. I've lifted long ciggie butts out of public ashtrays, when I was broke & also when I thought one or two puffs would get me past it, I knew people saw me do it. In-your-face smokers scoff at us. Enjoy the drug, they say. Sure. They buy cartons, name brands or Indian. They rarely run out. I'm the nervous, keyboard tapper type. We do most of our smoking in one place. We might be out & about for hours without a pack, pushing past the triggers, because the nicotine doesn't call for awhile. But at home, at the keyboard, is something else. Cigarettes are the paragraph spacings, the punctuations, the turn of phrase we sit back & mull over. The long TV commercial, the phone call, replying to an e mail, an instant message screen from an aquaintance we're glad to see, these are the ciggies we really crave & relish. If we had self-discipline, we'd cut out all the extraneous, unneeded ciggies we don't even notice we're smoking. It's why ciggies aren't sold in packs of ten. There's so many smokers whose smoking routines are attuned to the number of ciggies available, minus one to begin for tomorrow. Last night I was all out. But if I'd had three or four left, minor annoyance. For an anxiety smoker, that's a bunch of little smokes. No cause for anxiety. We're feeding a terrible compulsion, not a heavy drug addiction. We have all sorts of awful reactions to deprival before the nicotine thing kicks in, & it's the simplest to knock down. Couple of quick drags, put it out, save for later. The Marlboro regular smokers need a fix. But then they're done. They're honest smokers. They'll bum a Nicorette gum & twirl a pencil rather than bother with a bullshit ultralight.

I can't be flip. I'm a sick, scared man & I'm stalling. Nobody knows how sick, not even Gina with the cats up the street, a creature of routine like her cats. Without a cigarette it's taken hours to write this, on & off. I didn't intend not to smoke today. But it's raw outside, gray, awful, not October. Same weather & worse until Monday. The heat is on. I can hide under the covers. One more day. I'm a sixty year old unmarried male. We're the unhealthiest demographic in America.

Labels: mental health