I am smoke and nicotine free for thirty days.

I can’t really concentrate anymore. I no longer sleep deeply. My experience of taste and smell has changed somewhat. For instance, I can now taste the rotting teeth in the back of my mouth. What was my favorite variety of soy milk tastes like feet. I may be going through MSG withdrawal.

Not only am I no longer spending about six dollars every day on sustaining my addiction, I am no longer buying the occasional Pepsi, Taquito Rollers, pair of hard-boiled eggs, &c which I would pick up while buying cigarettes or nicotine lozenges. Aside from deliberately going out on occasional mornings to make a lap of the neighborhood, and about eight visits to the grocery I now have no reason to leave the house at all. Some mindless driving has taken place, usually to parts of town which didn’t exist the last time I was out there. My idea of what Austin is has altered dramatically, but that is another rant.

Then there are the epic snacks.

I am a regular at two branches of [location] Donut, (Lamar, Highland) and recognized at a third (S. First). They make a real donut. No need to run into Ken’s for donut approximation anymore. I have purchased the “Bag O’Burgers” from Short Stop (four burgers, four fries, one money) and returned home eating the entire thing within hours. During hell week I ate the 2 lb package of Mrs. Baird’s Powdered Sugar Donuts with a half-gallon of chocolate milk in a single sitting. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you how long that sitting was. I could have been seven minutes or thirteen hours. I have worked out the production schedule for H-E-B’s Mootopia “diary beverage”. Papa Johns has me on speed dial. Then there was ice cream. The one thing Texas does unquestionably well is ice cream. I have spent much of the last month approaching a comprehensive survey on the topic.

Your humble narrator approaches two hundred pounds. I have purchased an entirely new, generously proportioned fat-clothes collection. This is not my all-time high weight, but it’s enough.

In addition to my increased consumption of comfort food I have acquired a particularly good snapshot camera, a ukulele with which I am doing about 30 minutes of chording exercises per day to little avail, and an impulse purchase of a new production, 1920’s-type German razor, which I’m told is like sex for your face, and a round of sundries.

Needless to say, I am not yet realizing the fiscal gains from this idea of narcotics-free living.

I remain in a persistent state of anxiousness. More frequently than I care to admit this advances into full-steam panic. I can’t communicate with my beloved Bob as well as I did before. He’s talking more, largely out of frustration. On the other hand, he comes to check on me every time I sleep. My sleep is much better than it was a few weeks ago. I can now sleep more than four hours in a row if I am both physically and emotionally drained. Insulin shock helps mightily.

I am no longer using the herbal preparation which got me through the first four days. I don’t really want to do that.

Old, old neuroses are back. I mean, like teenage angst and stuff. My biological circulation is better, even in my third month of pregnancy. I am waking up with evidence of this improved circulation regularly after not having done so for at least ten years. Although I still don’t have any particular desire for the sort of company who might appreciate such things.

The sensations of life are different. I am getting some of my literal breath back. My mind is different now. I could not say better, but different. Do not let anyone tell you nicotine isn’t a real addiction. In synopsis: I am still solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short and quite fat. I don’t really think anymore and am frustrated by pretty much everything.

but I am not smoking cigarettes.