I probably shouldn't even mention this for fear of jinxing it, but... we quit smoking.
Let me rephrase that... we are in the midst of our latest attempt to quit smoking.
So far so good.
It's been one day.
Between the two of us, we've tried just about everything, multiple times. Patches, gum, pills. I even went to a hypnotist years ago. That was not money well spent; my first stop after he pronounced me a "non-smoker" was the gas station at the corner for a pack of smokes.
In a bit of counterintuitive thinking, we seriously thought about trying to quit when we first moved to Bako. Our thinking was that everything in our lives was so upended at that time that it might be easier to break the habit when everything was in turmoil.
Bad idea.
But I think it's going to work this time. We're taking Chantix.
Now, we thought about doing it a year ago, but one of the side effects of Chantix is the not infrequent occurrence of suicidal depression. Considering we were now living in Bakersfield and my career had collapsed and I basically already had one foot out on the window ledge, we thought the timing was... bad.
But here we are a year later, and suicidal depression isn't much of a concern. Been there, done that. I've been soaking in it for a year so I'm just used to it.
We actually got the pills weeks ago, a few days before news reports came out linking it to a 72% increased chance of heart attack or stroke. It gave me pause, since there's a history of heart problems in my family and I just not that long ago spent a month nursing my mother through open heart surgery.
But then my seemingly resurgent career collapsed and my attitude about the side effects was "fuck it". I'll take a massive heart attack over the alternate future... living in a cardboard box off the highway. And on the off chance these pills don't kill me, I'll finally be a non-smoker.
Which is good, because cardboard is extremely flammable.
