Where's Me Bloody Drugs Yer Bastard?

Well... it wasn't quite that bad.

The inferrence of having said last time that I've routed the habit of smoking from the working week is that I don't have that 'pure indulgent pleasure' of a cigarette with morning coffee. I don't remember when I last did and in retrospect I'm suprised at how easily it slipped away. Being English by birth I was, naturally, weened onto black leaf tea. Perhaps the caffeine hit is more powerful? Been addicted since the age of 4... let's not even start on that one!

I bought a box of 2mg gum and a nicotine inhaler on the way to work today. The inhaler is so I can get a hit (and I mean a wallop that slow release patches don't provide) of nicotine without smoke and without the unspeakable evil of minty beer should I happen to have a drink this weekend. The gum I started on right away, 14 pieces today. I'm not so concerned about that, it will naturally reduce like it did with the 4mg.

After lunch I started noticing some strange (in the sense of unusual) thought patterns occuring. Thinking about conflict situations. Some that are years in the past. Taking an aggressive tone toward them in my internal dialogue. Why am I thinking about these dead issues in this way now?

Spit out gum. Start new piece of gum. Wait a minute! Start new piece of 2mg gum.

The addiction had cottoned on to the fact it wasn't getting it's full dose and was kicking back. This is a manifestation of the irritability of withdrawl mentioned in the previous post.

I've often seen mentioned that other stresses and anxieties in life should be addressed before removing the crutch of addiction and this illustrates why. Although I imagine that for some types of people the additional stresses could actually help fighting the addiction - "Yeah! Bring it all on!" - this would require a very different strategical approach. I've managed to remove those unnecessary stresses from life that were present a few years ago. These thought patterns rise endogenously. Give me drugs or I make you think about THIS! But life is comfortable. As soon as I recognise it I can laugh it off.