The benefits of addiction

Picredit: Trond Elling Haverland

Hmmm, looking at my last post it's clear to see that quitting smoking that morning was obviously having an effect. So, yeah, I quit smoking. It's been a week, and before you laugh, that's still a week without smoking. Which is fucking amazing considering I smoke(d) around 20-30/day minimum.

Cold Turkey. Motherfucker. I am still having trouble concentrating on anything. In fact the urge to close this browser window and do something else is (almost) overwhelming. Except that something else is either go for a smoke or sit here screaming until the pain goes away.

This is not great for work obviously.

I've caught up on a hundred little things that slipped through the cracks because I have the attention span of a housefly. In fact, last week, all I could think about was smoking. Or, not smoking, I suppose. It was utterly consuming for the first three or four days. However, now I have tidied the little things, and hung the pictures in my office, and cleaned the apartment, and done the laundry, and changed the tail light in my girlfriend's car, and all of the other wee things I ignored cos was too fucking hungover/drunk/panicking that I was hungover/drunk/panicking. So now I have to focus on the big things. Like the two articles for lablit that are two weeks late, the two manuscript revisions I need done by Friday or the presentation to Research Council (the Deans & Dept. Chairs) that's due in two weeks.

Oh yeah, I'm sober too. Fuck me, it gets really boring. My girlfriend, whom I adore, is a part time stoner so the conversation doesn't really sparkle in my house. So, the Big Question that still bugs me is, What does one do to relax? For instance, on Friday I was amazing, got shit-loads done, gave a totally fucking awesome presentation to our postdocs, and was just generally fucking cool. So, to celebrate?

I had to go for a fucking run. I got home, got changed and had to hit the streets because if I didn't, I would have gone for a beer. And that would have become 5 very quickly, and that would have lead to a pack of cigarettes (and who knows what else). So running, it was. Only I haven't run further than...well, at all, for almost a year so I only managed a couple of miles. And being a lanky cunt it only took me 11 minutes. So then...

thankfully I still had laundry to do and a house to clean at that point. So, I didn't go too insane (there was a brief Ewan McGregor/Trainspotting moment where I was lying on my bed screaming, but we can ignore that).

Tonight I have Muay Thai, which rocks. This is an excellent way to blow off steam and post-nicotine rage. My classmates may disagree, but fuck them, this ain't no fucking sewing class. However, tomorrow there is no Muay Thai, so I shall go running, and with nothing to do afterwards (not including the work I can't concentrate on) what shall I do to stay sane? What do normal people do?

...answers on a postcard to the usual address.