(no subject)
i join the ranks of fellow live journalers in prematurely attempting to give up tobacco (or, perhaps, more accurately, nicotine as it's that that hammers through our veins for that delicious and occasional relief) before the new year. specifically, before my maternal and sister unit crash down into narita airport and i have to spend ten days in close confines with them - which may well drive me to crack, never mind a cigarette.
it's only been recently that i've admitted to myself i have something rather closely resembling an addiction (see that guarded, distant language that obscures the fact that i tussle with both sweet relief and self-hatred the two times a day i put a cigarette in my mouth), and have done for a little more than a year. i 'dabbled' for a few years- memorably those in south america to fight the border-crossing hunger and for something to do with cold travellers' hands; in japan to give me a dreadful headrush and some sort of relief for IBS (the reason, i maintain, that i started smoking... and continue to. it does something wonderful to my stomach- relaxing it- that nothing else quite matches up to). but it was the italian, and all the time i spent holding his cigarettes outside shops, or in the dazzling light of italian rooms, fields and automobiles, that really got me started... i got used to that fresh and arresting feeling of a morning cigarette, the jolt to the stomach it gives, and the way a late night cancer stick quells my frequent nerves. but, i acknowledge, this is all psychosomatic, even the way it helps my IBS, even the way it 'sends me to sleep'. and i have started to cough. i have stopped breathing so deeply. dear reader, it's got so bad that i occasionally cough up tiny flecks of phlegm. and so the action plan, other than pure fear of my mother's reaction (even if it's only surprise as opposed to anger), is to keep so active and sporty that i notice the way it is impinging on my air ways, imagining my already-blackened lungs (from two measly cigarettes a day! christ i'm sensitive) and the yellow, wizened fingers and lips i will have as a thirty-year old should i continue like this. i never smoke outside, when i'm out, so the social smoking doesn't really 'get' to me that much; one in the morning, one at night, when i'm so alone there seem to be no barriers. but it's bad, oh reader, it's bad, and i can't even imagine how impossible it is to give up when you're a twenty-a-day-kid. oh no. i'd sooner give up chocolate (maybe).
i have also given up taking the pill, just out of interest to see what happens; whether my appetite goes (yes, somewhat, though it may be the heaps of green tea i'm drinking too), whether my skin gets bad again, whether my figure shrinks to adolescent-boy proportions again (possibly because of loss of appetite too). the only tangible effect so far is that i'm..... ridiculously horny and pretty much ready to jump anyone that isn't deformed or fat. hmmm. i caught a whiff of a familiar aftershave in the street the other day on the way to work and i almost dragged the poor unsuspecting pedestrian to the ground. okay, i jest, i exaggerate; but seriously, tokyo is in the midst of a severe man-drought, and i'm considering turning to the womens if nothing turns up. grrrrrrRRRRRRR.
it's only been recently that i've admitted to myself i have something rather closely resembling an addiction (see that guarded, distant language that obscures the fact that i tussle with both sweet relief and self-hatred the two times a day i put a cigarette in my mouth), and have done for a little more than a year. i 'dabbled' for a few years- memorably those in south america to fight the border-crossing hunger and for something to do with cold travellers' hands; in japan to give me a dreadful headrush and some sort of relief for IBS (the reason, i maintain, that i started smoking... and continue to. it does something wonderful to my stomach- relaxing it- that nothing else quite matches up to). but it was the italian, and all the time i spent holding his cigarettes outside shops, or in the dazzling light of italian rooms, fields and automobiles, that really got me started... i got used to that fresh and arresting feeling of a morning cigarette, the jolt to the stomach it gives, and the way a late night cancer stick quells my frequent nerves. but, i acknowledge, this is all psychosomatic, even the way it helps my IBS, even the way it 'sends me to sleep'. and i have started to cough. i have stopped breathing so deeply. dear reader, it's got so bad that i occasionally cough up tiny flecks of phlegm. and so the action plan, other than pure fear of my mother's reaction (even if it's only surprise as opposed to anger), is to keep so active and sporty that i notice the way it is impinging on my air ways, imagining my already-blackened lungs (from two measly cigarettes a day! christ i'm sensitive) and the yellow, wizened fingers and lips i will have as a thirty-year old should i continue like this. i never smoke outside, when i'm out, so the social smoking doesn't really 'get' to me that much; one in the morning, one at night, when i'm so alone there seem to be no barriers. but it's bad, oh reader, it's bad, and i can't even imagine how impossible it is to give up when you're a twenty-a-day-kid. oh no. i'd sooner give up chocolate (maybe).
i have also given up taking the pill, just out of interest to see what happens; whether my appetite goes (yes, somewhat, though it may be the heaps of green tea i'm drinking too), whether my skin gets bad again, whether my figure shrinks to adolescent-boy proportions again (possibly because of loss of appetite too). the only tangible effect so far is that i'm..... ridiculously horny and pretty much ready to jump anyone that isn't deformed or fat. hmmm. i caught a whiff of a familiar aftershave in the street the other day on the way to work and i almost dragged the poor unsuspecting pedestrian to the ground. okay, i jest, i exaggerate; but seriously, tokyo is in the midst of a severe man-drought, and i'm considering turning to the womens if nothing turns up. grrrrrrRRRRRRR.