Nathan- Cigarettes- The Final Frontier.

Falling off the beer truck and on to the wagon has a number of unintended consequences. The first is boredom. Namely alternating between exploring unfathomable depths of idleness and finding equally uninteresting activities to fill the void. Such as chain smoking. Watching mind numbing American TV shows about rich housewives who are forced to invent problems to keep their lives interesting.  Going on long walks to nowhere. Napping for the sake of it. Dreaming of better days ahead.

And More Smoking.

For those of you who do not use tobacco products and wonder what all the fuss is about, let me explain it to you. Picture this- you arrive home after a day of delayed trains,  a screaming megalomaniacal boss, your co-workers' attitude towards you switching from benign disinterest to outward hostility, and you wonder how the Hell an intelligent, attractive, well educated person such as yourself ended up slogging away in a mundane admin position that carries as much stress as neurosurgery but only pays slightly better than your local McDonalds.

You hang your soggy coat up, look around at an empty apartment devoid of anything other than a half eaten microwavable lasagne,  a couple of creased sepia photos of your long dead parents, and an overlflowing litter tray that should have been changed 4 days ago but doesn't bother you because you now associate the acrid scent of ammonia tickling your nostrils with 'being home'.

You quietly sigh to yourself, sit down, and light up. Within seconds the weight of the world has lifted off your shoulders and you can be anyone and everyone you’ve ever wanted to be. You plunge into the warm velvet sea of wellness and vitality while the empty sorrow you've carried with you all day is sucked back into the vast eternal pit of cosmic woe from where it came. No matter what the worry or problem, it can be solved by cigarettes.
EVERYTHING can be solved by cigarettes.

Yes. They’re that good.

Here’s a fun fact. Nazi doctors in the 1930s were the first to discover the link between Cigarettes and Lung Cancer. It’s rather ironic that these same doctors were happy to condone removing the warning odorant from a commercially available rodenticide so it could better facilitate the mass murder of millions of innocent and defenseless people, but that’s neither here nor there. This discovery, coupled with Hitler’s renowned personal distaste for tobacco, led to the world’s first comprehensive public anti-smoking campaign. Posters condemning the habit as the work of the devil sprung up overnight across the length and breadth of the Reich. Smoking was banned in trams, buses, trains, and all Nazi Party buildings. The excise tax on cigarettes was jacked up, and officers were forbidden from smoking on duty. Even women of childrearing age were strongly discouraged from taking up the habit (and denied tobacco rations)  should it interfere with their ability to churn out all those Aryan babies required to fill all that lebensraum.

Given that everything the Nazis did is inherently Evil, Smoking should automatically be considered a divine pursuit purely based on it's contravention of Aryan Ideals. Arguably this is the reason that contemporary Germany is so reluctant to regulate tobacco usage. Understandably so- a quarter of Europe’s antebellum population wasn't wiped out by cigarettes but rather by the actions of a crazed fascist state in the throes of nicotine withdrawal. On a more personal note, I’d rather have as little in common with those despicable legions of blonde haired, blue eyed, clear-lunged non smoking Einsatzkommandos as possible, thank you very much. Yes- that's it. Each time I take a puff I'm taking both a trip to the untamed expanses of Marlboro Country and an active stand against National Socialism, the modern Far Right, and the Tea Party movement (spot the difference if you will).

However, from a pragmatic standpoint, the days of my favourite hobby appear numbered. Going to the dentist every three months to have nicotine stained calculus ripped off my teeth is about as pleasant as sliding down a banister made of broken glass. The fact that cigarettes in Australia cost close to $20 a pack adds insult to injury (this is tantamount to a tax on the Poor as statistically, the poorer you are, the more likely you are to smoke anyway). And at the end of the day it’s no longer quite as cool as it used to be. Even if I do occasionally enjoy being a hard-assed rebel pariah living life on my own terms and smoking wherever the hell I want (always at least 3 metres from a doorway and never anywhere food is being served).

Note how I haven’t mentioned my health yet, but regardless, as I approach 30 I find myself needing to get my cigarette habit under control. I’m not about to announce to the world that ‘Im Quitting for good!’ because I’ve been quitting smoking for the past ten years. But if I were to devise some form of half arsed SMART objective, maybe getting my consumption down to 5-10 cigarettes a day would be more reasonable. Perhaps turning it from a total dependency that results in mass murder every time  my happy-clappy receptors are deprived of live giving nicotine, into more of a Gentleman’s Pursuit. You know, one or two with a drink, after a shag, or a quick one while blindfolded up against a wall just before my boss shoots me for working on this rather than putting together that training seminar I’ve been putting off.

What worries me is that I’m already abusing food in Alcohol’s place. What could possibly replace nicotine?

Crack?

Wish me luck.