I live with a smoker.

Fuck you is all i have to say.

I am going to channel my inner Frida and stay strong.

I have the eyebrows to match motherfucker!

Weddings. Another hurdle.

A very dear couple who are friends of ours were married over the weekend. The event was whimsical & magical in every essence of the words and we could have not been happier for them.  However, this was A's and my first meeting since quitting. We are each others triggers. We've spent many hundreds of hours smoking and chatting, it was our thing, our niche and something we had to overcome - together. 

As we drank and partied, we were having a really fun night! We didn't smoke at the reception and we supported each other if a craving kicked in or we watched others smoke in a complete daze. Then I had that one drink too many and turned into a bad influence. You know those kids your Mum never wants you to hang around as a teenager. I recall saying to A, "hey, no one will know, just you and me. We'll go somewhere private and get it out the way'. A complied - of course she did, we were four sheets to the wind and I was peer pressuring her.  I stole two cigarettes from a friend and put them in my bra because; did you know that your bra is the best hiding spot??! Then the most amazing thing happened…we forgot about it. We forgot about smoking. Trust me, today isn't the same but passing out was the best thing that happened to us. 

As I took my bra off the next day, out fell the cigarettes. I've never been so proud of us. 

A, what was your take?

 

My friend: Respect

The first three days of being a non smoker were like a weird psycho-tropic drug for me. My nicorette patches were way too strong and gave me the shakes and a heart like a racehorse on acid, so I didn’t crave smoking that much. The work crush guy had asked me out to dinner at the end of the week so I spent most of my time at work re-applying my make up and wandering the hallway downstairs in the hopes of bumping into him. I barely ate or slept and I rushed around all day thinking, fuck me, this quitting thing is easier than I remember. Then came Friday, Day Four.

I was sitting at my desk trying to write an email when I noticed the screen was kind of warping and shimmering in front of my eyes. I also noticed that Felicia, the girl I share my office with, was speaking to me but not making any noise. She was just pursing her lips and blowing air at me like a goldfish when you’re about to feed it. My office phone kept ringing and I conducted conversations as if at the end of a very long tunnel, hearing the reverb of their voice echoing in my ears. As the day went on I felt more and more sick and overwhelmed, but my long awaited date with the boy crush was that night so I refused to acknowledge there was a legitimate problem.

I don’t recall exactly what happened at around 3pm that day, but these are the key elements I do remember:

Me hurling my phone receiver onto the desk while making a strangled war cry.
Me screaming at the office manager ‘Why Won’t People Stop Talking To Me?’
Me running downstairs and throwing up in the hotel bathroom.
Me running back upstairs and collecting my things without a word of explanation to anybody.
Me sending an incoherent text to my boy crush cancelling our date.
My boy crush staring bewildered at me as I ran past him on my way to the car park, sobbing hysterically.

Moral of the story: Take quitting seriously, or it will fuck your arse up.

A

Celebs

Celebrities smoking - why does this excite me?
I guess with all their fame, money and good shit in their lives - they will have to quit and suffer soon, surely?  Or perhaps they wont but at least they can pay for good anti-wrinkle cream.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1373590/X-Factor-USA-Cheryl-Cole-told-smoking-dream-job.html

My friend: Patches

Monday night was my last night as a smoker, and it was one of the best nights of my life. I drank a bottle of Giesen, put on the new Radiohead album, and smoked fifteen cigarettes in the bathtub. I posted on Facebook that as of tomorrow I would be a non-smoker, and I got 38 posts of encouragement, and 13 ‘likes.’

At 12:30am I sat on my back step and smoked my last dart all the way to the butt. My cat sat beside me on the step, wisely swaying her little head as if to say, ‘well done you, well done.’ I threw my ashtray and lighters into the bin and stumbled off to bed, off my tits drunk and slightly nauseous. I passed out thinking smugly of seeing my boy crush the next day, and how great I would smell when I walked past him in the hallway.

The next morning I was hungover as hell. As I drove to work my hands were shaking and the sun was blinding my eyes. My car was going too fast, people were braking and switching lanes in front of me as if I was invisible and every driver passing looked like they wanted to kill me and everybody I cared about. I stumbled through the front doors and my boy crush was standing in the entranceway, smiling and saying ‘hi, how are you’ with his gravelly ‘let’s go to bed’ voice. I tripped up the stairs, shrieking something about how non-smokers can’t drive, and fell into my office chair, trying not to gag.

I put on my first Nicorette patch and smugly switched on my computer, thinking, ‘let’s do this thing.’ Five minutes later the office was filled with the smell of burning flesh. The patch had created a rash all the way down my arm, and the admin girls crowded around me, telling me to take it off because I was having an allergic reaction. I pulled it off and stuck it on my other arm, and five minutes later that arm swelled up too.

The girls made me go downstairs to get burn cream from the first aid kit. Unfortunately my boy crush was the person I had to ask for this. As I stood in the doorway, teary eyed and hung over, he smiled sweetly and asked if I wanted a coffee. What I really wanted was to have sex with him and then die but I kept that information to myself.

The patches were too strong, my heart was racing, I was sweating and shaking and every time the phone rung I flew out of my chair in surprise. I laughed too loud, I kicked the photocopier, my arms were burning, my make up was running. People peered at me from behind their computer screens like I was a hydrogen bomb, or Lindsay Lohan.

When I got home I put on two more patches and watched New Zealand’s next Top Model, trembling and sweating and wondering why that foul mouthed Dakota hadn’t been eliminated yet. I went to bed knowing full well I wouldn’t sleep a wink, and I fucking didn’t.

Day one: great success.

A

Smokin' boyfriends

I remember fucking a couple of guys just because they smoked.  If they rolled their own, watch out - i was like a sexual predator.


There was something so appealing about sharing the connection of smelling and tasting the same.
When smoking was banned from bars a few years back, it started a whole new way of meeting men. You'd both be outside, ask for a light and there you go, instant conversation starter, 'these laws suck', i'd say.  In hindsight, most of those liasons damaged my self esteem...but that's a whole other post!


I've tried dating a non-smoker once, it was exhausting. I would make sure I was fully charged with nicotine so when I slept over I didn't need to smoke, made sure I had perfume & gum on me - the works.  I remember once he suggested we share a cigar.  I didn't know then that you are not suppose to draw them back..and yep, I did and WOW it was like 10 cigarettes at once, he couldn't tear it away from me! Anyway, it didn't work out but we all knew that would happen. My reaction when he dumped me - he didn't smoke anyway, now i'm free to do so whenever i like!


However, I had a pretty big relationship once with a smoker and when I found out recently that he had quit smoking and was successful., it hurt more than if I saw him dating a model.  It wasn't because smoking was a connection but because he quit before me! Our relationship was always immature.

My friend

I read this story the other day about a man who filmed himself driving down the emergency lane of a busy highway with his pet parrot clinging to the windscreen wiper. I stared at that photo of ‘Angus Action Bird’ clinging to the wiper blades and staring death right in the face as the car sped down a highway at 100 km an hour and I thought to myself: Yeah, the fucken bird gets it.

Because making the decision to quit smoking and setting an actual date is really very similar to hurtling down a highway on the bonnet of a car: it’s fast and scary and you feel like there’s absolutely nothing to hold onto. Just like Jerry Maguire, you’re free falling.

Unlike my fairer friend, I am not quitting for the right reasons, like health and morality and the environment. I am quitting because I want to get laid more, and the general public have led me to believe that smoking makes me as unsexy as a shit in a paper bag. I firmly believe that if I quit, I will have more sex. Preferably with this guy who works downstairs at my building, but smokers can’t be choosers. Once I am a non-smoker, I will have nicer skin, I will smell and taste nice, and also, I won’t get chased out of town with torches and machetes, which is what the Government is obviously aiming for with its anti-smoking campaigns.

I expected that when I announced last week that I was quitting, I would be given a cape and gown and applauded as I strolled mightily about the office. Not so. My co-worker said in surprise “Oh but you’ll get so fat! You’ll never leave the chocolate drawer alone!” Well guess what Michelina, I already hound the shit out of that drawer, that ain’t gonna change.

My mate said “But smoking looks so sexy on you!” What is it that’s sexy exactly? The cats bum mouth I make when I’m inhaling?

Or, the best one “Well, you can only quit if you’re really ready.” Oh, are you sure? Because I’ve been thinking for the last fifteen years that I can just quit at any moment, like, ‘Hey that seagull just shit on my car, I’m gonna quit!’ Or ‘I just dropped my toast and it landed buttered side up, I’m gonna quit!’

Despite this underwhelming response, my mission remains clear: quit smoking: get laid. Just like Angus Action Bird, I’m gonna stay on this damn ride, all the way to the finish line.

Or, in the words of Angus’s dashingly humane owner: "You know what people? Not only have you just seen him on the bloody freeway doing nearly 100 kilometres an hour. If you look bloody closely, his eyes are closed."


A