Mine lips shall not touch the Unclean Thing

Goddamn Tobacco Habit It’s the end of week eight and the monitor no longer looks edible …

After two months of fiery temper, fits of questionable writing (which is really my norm), and short pieces that leave you scratching your head about what I really meant, I figure a confessional is in order …

(sob) (sniffle) … I ain’t had a goddamn cigar in all that time …

… which plays Billy Hell with my prose, attention span, and sense of humor.

The Telly is rife with ads featuring smiling ex-tobacco junkies living blissful lives with adoring children and a trophy wife. I gaze about me at the bags of dead animals and sinkfull of stained dye pots, and it all looks so compelling and easy …

Slap a patch on your shoulder and be restored to your old self, instantly.

They don’t mention the parts where the kids and spouse flee for their lives amid a hail of gunfire – opting for Grandma’s house until they hear the tell-tale snap of a empty cylinder, how nothing in the icebox is safe – or that you’d chip a tooth on frozen sherbet as it was the only tobacco surrogate within reach when gripped by a late night oral frenzy.

Nor do they mention the Dentist taking the blood pressure cuff off you exclaiming, “No need to fix that cavity, you’re already dead.”

As the noxious weed is many things to many people, it appears that like Poppa – it plays a key role in crystalizing thought. Part of that delicate balance of hormones and endorphins that was critical to humor, turned a droll line of prose into something more, and stimulated the brain cells to find something worth sharing from nothing.

Week eight. Somewhere about the New Year I’ll be restored to my old self.

10 thoughts on “Mine lips shall not touch the Unclean Thing

  1. JKSmith

    Turned 50 in April, an arrhythmia in June – scared the bejesus out of me. The fix – give up COFFEE. My GAWD, I did, I’ll live – but do I really want to now? I gave up dip a long time ago when I married a gal from Austin Texas- every time I gave her a sugar she’s steal my dip. You have my sympathies.

  2. Igneous Rock

    Uh…Anybody got a recipe for nicotene laced ginger bread cookies? For self defense purposes, and stocking sized, of course.

  3. Don

    To Quit smoking is easy, I’ve done it hundreds of times!

    Good luck with that, really.

    I’m in the same boat… just don’t put a dram of fine singlemalt and a Davidoff anywhere near me and I’ll be okay.

  4. John Peipon

    Don’tchaknow that the nicotine is out of your bod in just three (3) days? After that it’s all just psych…

    Besides, the trout used to be able to smell and taste the tobacco on your flies; reducing there catching ability. I spin a great myth, don’t I?

    Congratulations!

  5. Peter

    You know, now that I think of it, I am very glad I DIDN’T send one ot the alternatives milling through my mind. Congratulations, I wish I could get my mum to quit.

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