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There’s a classic dream many students share: you’re sitting in a classroom, the test is in front of you, and you don’t know a single answer. Scientists say dreams help us work through real-life stress and unsolved problems. Last night, my brain decided my version of that test would be this: So I dreamt, Whiskey Kitty was stuck in the toilet. That’s the kind of anxiety my mind is trying to process these days. Health tests. Breathing problems. The quiet question mark that hangs over the future. When your body starts sending warning letters, your subconscious starts writing novels. And...

The last two days I went through a full pack. This morning, though, something shifted. When I woke up, I only took three or four puffs and put it down. That may not sound like victory in the traditional quit-or-fail world. But in the world of harm reduction, it’s progress. And progress is the currency of real change. If you look at current thinking about addiction, there’s something strange about how we’ve handled smoking, drinking, and drug use for decades. When someone struggles, you’d think the natural response would be encouragement and support. Instead, we punish them. The system often...

I’ve made the point by now: quitting smoking is hard. Not dramatic hard. Not movie-montage hard. Real hard. The kind of hard that shows up quietly in the morning, taps you on the shoulder, and asks, “So… what’s the plan today?” And the plan, whether I like it or not, is this: it has to be done. I just scheduled an appointment with a cardiologist, along with a few other specialists for various health issues. That alone changes the tone of the whole situation. This isn’t a lifestyle experiment. It’s not a self-improvement hobby. This is health. This is survival....

The fight with Mom didn’t end when the words stopped. It kept playing afterward. I call it the tapes. You know the kind. Old recordings that loop in your head, replaying the harshest lines anyone ever said. Not the compliments. Not the forgiveness. Just the sharp edges, over and over, like a broken record that only knows one song. This time it involved family, so I’ll leave the details out. But the emotional echo stuck around long after the argument ended. And I didn’t help my situation. I missed my medication yesterday.I loaded up on caffeine.My system was already wound...

Last night and this morning were rough. Mom and I got into it over finances, legal issues, family tensions, and her belief that my past and recent marijuana use has damaged my brain. One comment led to another, and before long the conversation wasn’t a conversation anymore. It was a chain reaction. Old frustrations. Old fears. Old resentments. Arguments like that have a way of piling history onto the present, turning one disagreement into a courtroom drama starring the entire past. Eventually, we both did the smartest thing two people can do when the emotional temperature hits boiling: we stopped...