From an addict's perspective...

My cigarette craving has been out of control. I spend way too many minutes of my days dreaming about them lately. Since emphysema doesn't top my list of ways I'd like to leave the earth, I have tried like crazy to just put them out of my mind....usually by poking something calorie-ridden into my mouth. As the scales keep tipping toward a serious meltdown, I have been researching, a.k.a. "googling", things like: organic cigarettes, nicotine free cigarettes, the EZ Smoker for cryin out loud! I made my mother my cohort and we finally settled on some nicotine AND tobacco free smokes from an organic site. I am the Queen of Justification, after all. Snickers vs. cigarette...which is worse? Seriously.

They arrived last Friday. One pack of honey rose Blue Lights and one pack of honey rose Vanilla. I carried them around in my purse and that was good enough, just knowing they were there if I needed one...until Monday. I decided to try the Vanilla first. Oh how I wanted it, WILLED it even, to taste just like my beloved Marlboro Ultra Lite shorts. It didn't. It didn't even come close. Was like takin' a big puff of heated air, in fact. So I thought, "Well, maybe if I drag a little harder on the dang thing...". Nope. Plus, it smelled like the worst pack of cheap cigarettes I'd ever smoked...and I smoked plenty of cheap cigarettes in my high school days. To be absolutely clear, these wretched cigarettes were NOT cheap. No, I believe they average out to be about fifty cents a smoke. Desperate times call for desperate measures. So, I tried out the Blue Lites yesterday. An improvement on the vanilla but still, soooooo not a Marlboro. I WANT a Marlboro. An entire pack. I want to chain smoke four at a time. Oh, the bliss!

I think, perhaps, I've just been fooling myself all these years, telling myself, my husband, my children, "It's not the NICOTINE I'm addicted to...I simply LIKE to smoke. Leave me alone, I can quit whenever I want to." And I have quit....several times now. It seems to be that I can quit whenever I want....it's the restarting I am having trouble controlling. I've the self control, for the moment, to not buy the pack of Marlboros I so desperately crave. Probably becuz I've not yet tried the American Spirit "organic" (lol??!) cigs that still hold the promise (delusion?) of being the alternative I'm looking for. And after that, well, there's still the EZ Smoker!!