Seven Ways to Quit Smoking

     I was into day five of not smoking and I was feeling edgy and cranky, but after I arrived home one night in a particularly foul mood, I sat down and started to wonder. Had I subconsciously created this bad mood so I could say screw it and pull out a cigarette? Or was my attempt to quit smoking creating my bad mood?  I wondered this as I got on my computer and saw what I had written five days previously: 'Today is my birthday, the first day of not smoking and things are going well, only three little days to get over the worst of it...............'

     I lit the long, stale butt that I found in the ashtray under my bed and continued to read. Nursing an addiction that is supposedly worse than heroin, I thought back to that fateful day when I smoked my first cigarette at the age of ten. 

     I was staying at my cousin's house for two weeks one summer when her friend Martie, who I noticed was very well-endowed for thirteen, came over. My cousin Wendy turned to me and said, 'let's go out to the woods.' In a field behind her house, we sat under a birch tree and Martie took out a dark green pack of Export A from her pocket and offered one to Wendy. After lighting their cigarettes, they looked at me.

     'Would you like one?' Martie asked.

     'Well, I, uh, I don't smoke. I've never smoked.' 

     Martie took a cigarette out of her pack and handed it to me with a caveat.

     'If you're not going to inhale, I'm not going to give you one ever again. I don't want to waste my cigarettes,' she said, with an emphasis on the word waste.

     With that, I nodded in agreement and put the cigarette between my lips. She lit it. Inhaling my first hit of tobacco smoke, I almost passed out, I became dizzy and swooned but I caught myself. Nauseous and light-headed I grinned and said to her, 'I'm okay.'  From that moment, I was a cool member of the smoker's club.

     Every afternoon for the two weeks I was there, Martie came over to the house and we went to the woods to smoke. I was initiated, or more likely, I was getting addicted, if not already addicted. I was a natural. I learned to flick my butts away, curling them between my middle finger and thumb. I smoked right down to the filter because Martie said to never waste her cigarettes. 

     You may think: Was one cigarette enough to get me hooked for 40 years? Was that really the apocalyptic moment that forever colored my life in a haze of blue smoke? Yes, I would say so, although I may have taken up smoking at any other time in my future because my father and my mother smoked, my two sisters smoked and my three brothers smoked. I lived in a houseful of smoke. 

     Forty years and approximately 7,360 packs of cigarettes later, I've compiled a list. If you really want to stop smoking here are some rules to follow:

Rule #One

Never stop smoking for the sake of your kids. Their whining and fighting will lessen your resolve by dinnertime and you'll be yearning for a cigarette by the time you finally get them to bed. 

Rule #Two

Stop drinking if you quit smoking. Smoking and drinking go together like burgers and fries. You can't stop one without stopping the other.

Rule #Three

Go on a diet at the same time you quit smoking.  You will substitute food for cigarettes and we all know how that ends. 

Rule #Four

Never, ever go to a bar and think that you can sit there nursing a coke while others around you are guzzling beer and taking cigarette breaks. 

Rule #Five

Don't ask this question: 'Do you think I could bum a smoke? I just want one.'  Who are you kidding?

Rule #Six

Don't try to quit smoking when you're in the middle of a divorce, break-up or conflict with a close friend, or just generally feeling awful about life, even though quitting itself will make you feel awful about life. 

Rule #Seven

Remember when you quit smoking that you're going to feel down in the dumps. It's a natural reaction. After all, you've been stuffing your feelings and putting tar and nicotine on top of them for years. Go easy on yourself. 

World Leaders Psychopathy

  The world has been hijacked by psychopaths whose main focus is monetary gain and power. Or psychopaths like Netanyahu who don't see the bigger picture but thirst for revenge beyond the attack of Oct. 7. The grandest money-making plan of all is: ENDLESS WAR. We've already become familiar with this term. Billions is to be made in endless war. Through misinformation we blame the migrants, the drug addicts, or the climate. We focus on inconsequential news bytes - reality stars and sports events - instead of protesting the existential threat - the manufacture and utilization of weapons and their constant replenishment. Planned obsolescence - an economic term that now applies to us.
     Until forgiveness happens on a truly meaningful level and psychopathic leaders give up their need for power and wealth, this world will explode into a ball of fire and turn to hayseed.
     A lot of our reality is based on lies. As seen with the Queen's funeral, we still need our heroes and heroines and gods. It may not be important, but it's certainly significant. Humanity searches for explanations, reasons, a being to idolize, to comfort, to help us through our struggles in life. Thousands upon thousands are lining up for miles to pass Elizabeth's coffin and give a bow and a curtsy, a coffin which may hold nothing more than a handbag.
     Man has always searched for the meaning of life and this hasn't changed since the beginning of time when man's knuckles scraped the ground and he worshipped the Sun, gathered in caves and formed bear cults in order to explain the mysteries of nature. Push forward and our modern-day beliefs revolve around the false gods born out of politics, technology and 'culture.' Recently, I read a book on the opioid epidemic in the States. Outlook? Grim.
     Along with endless war, pharmaceutical greed and endless addiction to one drug or another will be a further reason for the downfall of humanity. As of 2023, one in five Americans was on some prescription medication for a psychological disturbance. Even the fish in Boston Harbour have xanax in their DNA. Evidently, there are many new neuroses that need pharmaceutical attention. In the future, there will be a major cleanup leading to mass drug incarcerations and death. So far, the blight on the landscape hasn't been sore enough, but it's reaching its peak. Once these addicted souls bleed into the better neighbourhoods along with their feces, filthy tents and broken needles, the story will change.
     When I comment on the sorry state of affairs, be it some massacre or war or holocaust, my concerns and observations usually focus on our dehumanization; numbers and quantities, times and dates, who and where don't mean as much. Whether it's 20 or 20,000, it's all the same. The predictable behaviours and the shock of depravity makes us wonder how we got here and how it will end. Not only historical, but current events that appear unbelievable and reprehensible, are believable simply because that's what we seem to do best. Repeat the past.
     Human behaviour has demonstrated through centuries of injustice and slaughter that our shadow side is undeveloped, dark and depraved. Currently, there has arisen a dangerous sect of pontificators, WEF members like George Soros, who pride themselves on their sensitivity, deep love and concern for humanity while covertly destroying those with a different agenda.