smoking satire. or is it irony? or just sarcasm? i don't know. i feel like winona ryder in reality bites: i know it when i see it.

any way, i like these book titles even if they are not all that clever. it probably appeals to the part of me that is anti the social pariahism, hysterical roll-back of basic personal freedoms, and general malediction flung at smokers without heed to the reasons people smoke and how much they actually hate themselves for it. 

either way, i like them today, being in a mildly grey frame of mind - in case you can't tell. a sudden then sustained decrease in cigarettes makes you down. an extra discovery.  but a small win today. i had no cigarettes at work and fought and won many small skirmishes against insurgent cravings. 

it is mind-meltingly hot in melbourne today. i think about 44 degrees at top. the sun feels like it looks. i wish i was a swiss mountain goat perched on a craggy outlook over the wintry snows. and yet, i light the fire in my hand one more time. insane. 

but a small improvement: i don't take my pouch of tobacco to work. that effectively seems to eliminate the work cravings i was battling. but what? you still have your tobacco on hand? that is not the way to quit! i know. but it is just really hard. there can be very real, escalating panic if i feel like a smoke and i have no access to it. even though it is readily available at the corner store. it is a mental thing.

anyway, if you are in melbourne or victoria and happen by some strange chance to be reading this, i wish you a thousand cold showers and a sea breeze. and please put a large bowl of water out for the stray cats and dogs, and one up high for the birds.

top image source

bottom image source

the guilt is strange. i smoked one cigarette today. that is one more than none. but i think i should have some right to say to myself, 'good job, you have gone from smoking usually at least 10 a day down to one.' but then i feel like i should not allow myself to say that, because i am guilty of the one, and the compromises feed the devious smoker's mind.

please forgive the diversion below, but i was just thinking about guilt, and seemed to recall from 2nd year philosophy nietzsche being all over the guilt thing. some searching and i found this...this is all just taking bits and pieces and totally does not give justice to the totality of the arguments of the original text or the insights of the essay!

"to take upon oneself not punishment, but guilt. that alone would be god-like."

friedrich nietzsche

all quotes below from an essay on nietzsche's genealogy of morals here: www.bbk.ac.uk/phil/staff/academics/gemes-work/nietzsche-guilt

"Guilt, in its general form, is ethically-experienced regret at one's failure (not necessarily intentional) to honour obligations to which one genuinely feels committed;"

the essay goes on to describe the relationship between guilt and the concept of nietzsche's 'bad conscience'. in terms of an awareness of one's 'masterly' instincts for bad, anti-social behaviour and the need to quell these instincts, the experience of 'bad conscience' is an "unpleasant combination of potential guilt towards society, liability towards oneself, and the need for self-aggression towards masterly instincts."

but bad conscience can be active, positive:

"... Nietzsche suggests...to burn into a great part of one's nature a 'no' to its outward expression, to become contemptuous of instincts of which one was 'formerly' proudest, to live with the contradiction of a freedom that is both restricted (externally) and enhanced (internally), creates a wholly new phenomenology: that of human nature as problematical and contradictory, that of oneself as a riddle to oneself, that of the tortured 'inner life' perpetually examining itself, that of a compromised 'outer' freedom versus a purer 'inner' freedom. In short: with the 'bad conscience' we get 'the internalization of man', his creation of an inner, freer world, later christened 'the soul'. Nietzsche calls this state 'active' bad conscience (GM, II, 16)."

it is really hard today, first day back at work after the holiday break. i really miss popping outside to have a little cigarette and a cup of tea break in the sun. i so far seem to have avoided the bad withdrawal symptoms; worst at the moment is feeling stiff and sore after playing tennis yesterday (exercise really does help).

playing tennis: john mcenroe doing what he does best. it is kind of what i look like when i crack it because i can't hit it like i want to.

for context: on a good day, i would smoke between 7-10 rollies (roll your own cigarettes). over 10 and above and up and up and never stop on a really bad day...

lots of quit advice says that you should try and keep in mind the reasons you are quitting, and bring them to mind when the cravings hit. carry them around on a little card. one of my main reasons is health. so my first card would read:

"lung. cancer. emphysema. stroke. heart disease. throat cancer and that voice box replacement that means you have a hole in your throat and a vibrator to speak. eye disease."

my next card will have to have something to counteract the little voice that says,

"what about those 90-year-olds happily puffing on their daily cigar and sipping their daily straight whisky and rum?"

via this paramedic's blog

via here

Depending on the number of cigarettes you smoke, typical benefits of stopping are:

• After twelve hours almost all of the nicotine is out of your system.
• After twenty-four hours the level of carbon monoxide in your blood has dropped dramatically. You now have more oxygen in your bloodstream.
• After five days most nicotine by-products have gone.
• Within days your sense of taste and smell improves.
• Within a month your blood pressure returns to its normal level and your immune system begins to show signs of recovery.
• Within two months your lungs will no longer be producing extra phlegm caused by smoking.
• After twelve months your increased risk of dying from heart disease is half that of a continuing smoker.
• Stopping smoking reduces the incidence and progression of lung disease including chronic bronchitis and emphysema.
• After ten years of stopping your risk of lung cancer is less than half that of a continuing smoker and continues to decline (provided the disease is not already present).
• After fifteen years your risk of heart attack and stroke is almost the same as that of a person who has never smoked.

source: quit.org

january 4 2010

cigarette count: 0 (but REALLY borderline 1 before I go to sleep)

edit: cigarette count = 1

and it didn't taste good at all. it was a purely mental need, i didn't feel like the nicotine at all. the mental games begin?