Whiskey woke me up again this morning bouncing and playing all over the bed like gravity was optional and the mattress was a trampoline. At one point, she nearly crawled into the toilet in the bathroom. That was a heart-stopper. One distracted second and she could have drowned. Luckily, curiosity blinked first and she backed away, offended by plumbing.
She didn’t want to go downstairs to play. Instead, she declared the upstairs her personal racetrack and turned the morning into a full game of catch me if you can. I chased, she zigzagged, and eventually we called a truce. I fed her, cleaned her litter box, and then did the hardest part of pet ownership: leaving her alone.
That’s when I figured something else out.
It turns out the doctor had been giving me Chantix, the medication that dulls smoking cravings. I ran out of it last week. No refill. No warning. And suddenly the cravings came back like they’d been waiting behind a curtain, tapping their watches. Add stress to that, and it’s a perfect storm. Not dramatic, just relentless. The kind that keeps knocking instead of kicking the door down.
What’s strange is realizing how thin the line really is. How much of quitting is chemistry, how much is habit, and how much is sheer stubbornness. Right now, stubbornness is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Writing this out helps. Blogging it helps. Seeing the words on the page turns the craving into an object instead of a command.
The danger is knowing that the same mind that can talk itself out of smoking can also try to talk itself back in. I don’t want to give that voice the microphone.
So today I’m going to the Night Owl to draw. Apple Pencil, IPad, coffee, and quiet concentration. No cigarettes. Just lines forming, thoughts slowing down, and time passing without smoke attached to it. Art has always been a better coping mechanism than nicotine ever was. It just doesn’t pretend otherwise.
Cravings are loud today. Stress is louder. But they’re still not in charge.
I got this.
by Dan and Bonkers
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