I Quit

Well, I will.

Not the blog, silly. I can’t see ever quitting that. I’m talking about one of my few remaining vices.

Cigarettes.

Cigarettes have owned my ass for a while now…um, 14 years? And that’s really strange because (1) I didn’t start smoking until I was in my 20s and (2) I HATED cigarette smoke all throughout my childhood.

My parents both smoked like chimneys when I was a kid. This was before the term “secondhand smoke” came to be coined, before anyone knew that such a thing was harmful to anyone. I mean, sure there was a nagging suspicion that SMOKING caused cancer (not that the tobacco companies would admit to it, mind you). But being AROUND smoke? Nah.

But I hated it. Everything in my house reeked of cigarette smoke. The furniture, the curtains, all of my clothes, my hair, the WALLS even. And my parents weren’t the type that rolled the car windows down when they were smoking, either. I’m not bitching…that was the culture of the time. Courtesy and smoking just weren’t seen as compatible, really.

People still smoked in restaurants and even though there was a non-smoking section in some eateries, the smoke from the SMOKING section always wafted over. Smoke knows no boundaries.

People still smoked in airplanes! And again, there were smoking and non-smoking sections. But guess how successful that shit was? Yeah, you’re in a confined environment for hours. Rows 1-15, no smoking. Rows 16-32, smoking. And if you’re in row 15, guess what? You certainly couldn’t tell you were in a no smoking section. It was moronic. But hey, there was also a time when we felt slavery was not such a bad idea. Humans, we’re really not the brightest of God’s creatures.

Growing up, I had asthma so it really sucked having smoking parents. My sister had it, too, even worse than I did. Never connected the dots that cigarette smoke might make the asthma worse.

So if I went all through childhood and into adulthood without picking up a cigarette, you ask, then why the fuck did I ever start to begin with? That’s a very good question.

And the answer is the same as it is for every smoker on the planet.

Because I’m an idiot.

The best way to quit smoking is never to start. And yet, I did start. And I blame it on my ex-girlfriend in Dallas. Because, you know, it couldn’t have been my fault. No sir.

Back then I was getting high on a regular basis. I smoked copious amounts of weed. And I was also doing crystal meth. (SEE: I’m an idiot, above.)

My girlfriend smoked cigarettes. So we’re sitting in a friend’s house one night, getting high and playing Dr. Mario on the Super Nintendo (still one of my favorite all-time video games) and she lights up a smoke.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked her.

“Sure.”

“What do you get out of smoking cigarettes? I just don’t understand it. They stink, they make your breath stink…what’s the point?”

And she said the magic words – possibly the only words – that would make me start smoking. “They accentuate the high from the marijuana.”

It wasn’t 15 seconds that passed before I said, “Can I try one?”

And WOW! What a buzz I got! Knocked me on my freaking ass. And I was hooked.

Soon I was buying my own packs and enjoying the slight buzz I still got, even when I wasn’t stoned. That buzz, though? Doesn’t last. But somehow the addiction does.

I’ve quit several times over the years. Sometimes for six months, sometimes for a couple of years. When my mom came to Dallas to help me move to Florida, I was stressed to the fucking max. Money problems to the nth degree, stress over the packing and moving, stress over leaving all of my friends behind, you name it. So I snuck a few smokes out of her purse when she slept at night. Damn, that shit was good.

And again I was hooked.

It’s been 4-1/2 years now since my stepfather died. Yeah, he smoked, too. In fact, my parents and stepparents all still smoked until fairly recently. I digress. My stepfather died a slow and painful death. Cancer. I was with him a lot in his final months, a good portion of which were spent in the very room I’m writing this from…in a hospital bed in the living room. In fact, he died in this room.

It took another year for my mom and I to say, “That’s enough.” We both went to a hypnotist to quit. But before we did that, we cleaned the whole house, we vacuumed, we Febreezed the SHIT out of everything…furniture, carpets, walls…all of it. And we  did the same in our cars. THEN we went to the hypnotist.

It worked for me, but the fucker pissed me off. He told my mom that because she’d been smoking since she was a teenager, she  probably was better off to TAPER her smoking off. Asshat. Well, that never happened. Every time I’ve quit (successfully) it’s been cold turkey.

I quit for a couple of years. She still smoked (and continues to do so), but only in her bedroom.

Then I went to BlogHer 2006. I bummed some smokes off of some friends and BAM! Hooked again. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And now it’s time to quit again, before I really start feeling the effects of this shit that is killing me ever so slowly. Britt and I have talked about quitting together for months now. She wanted to quit on July 1, right after we got back from BrittCon.

“I can’t do that,” I said. “I have BlogHer coming up and that stresses me out.” Social anxiety and all that jazz. Big crowds of people, me having to actually interact…*shivers*.

So I emailed her the other day with a new quit date. And that leads us to this:

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Friday, August 15, Karl and Britt QUIT.

It’s helpful to have a quit date picked out in advance. Especially since I just bought several cartons of smokes for my California trip. When those are gone, I’ll be buying individual packs. And come midnight on Friday the 15th, I’ll be done.

Hopefully, for good.

And if any of you bitches get up in my grill for the next 30 days after that, may the Lord have mercy upon your soul. Because I’ll rip your face to shreds with a cheese grater, and then I’ll REALLY go to work on you.

Don’t forget, this afternoon at 5:00pm Eastern time, it’s another episode of SecondHand Radio. My guest will be author Carly Milne, who wrote (among other books) Sexography.

Please join us in the chatroom while you listen to the show. You’ll be able to call in and ask anything you like, or just interject your own viewpoint on something. Sex, and lots of it, baby. Today at 5pm Eastern, 2pm Pacific.