I'll try not to Kill Anyone

Really. I promise.

I've been sort of half-heartedly trying to quit smoking for the past two months. Got it down to a half-a-pack a day - which is pretty good for me because I normally light them off of the butts, all day long. But then...

But then someone gave me an intervention. Oh joy. Just what I need. But actually, they gave me a package of some pretty neat ideas, and tools. Like always brushing your teeth with cinnamon toothpaste and rinsing with cinnamon mouthwash... this not only freshens your breath, but cinnamon is one of those tastes that, by itself is wonderful, but when mixed with that wunnerful blue haze of smoke becomes instantly putrid. I have to brush when I get up, and after every meal no matter what. Because eating always rings my next 'bell' to smoke, getting the taste of food out of my mouth helps. I am munching on carrot sticks and celery sticks and drinking lots of orange and grapefruit juice and taking vitamin C... because C apparently gets rid of the nicotine quicker. No more coffee or sweet tea, either - because those are triggers too. Popping cinnamon disks like, well, candy. Wellbutrin twice a day just to keep from wrapping my hands totally around someone's neck and choking the stinking life out of them just for saying "Good Morning" to me. (What the hell did they mean by that, anyway?)

They say this works in a week; seven days. I have not had any nicotine since Wednesday nite at 6:30 PM. It is Friday afternoon at 3:13. And this afternoon at noon it kinda scared me - suddenly I started shivering with chills. WHOA! A real withdrawal symptom! OK, I'm not sleeping well, and I have simply functioned on my "American Breakfast" of caffeine and nicotine for 27 years, so I'm sleepy and not at my best or sharpest right now. But I expected all that. DID NOT expect a real withdrawal symptom. Kinda creepy and yet it indicates that something may be changing... My throat isn't so raspy, now, and I'm not coughing as much as I used to... and has this entire area ALWAYS smelled like three day old sewage? GOOD LORD! Spring in the Lowcountry?? I may need a mask with Vick's Vapo-rub on it to survive!

I'm only scared of one thing. I have been smoking for 27 years. 27 years of having my capillaries, veins and arteries contract and narrow due to the nicotine. When they finally relax, could what happened to an old friend happen to me - could a blood clot suddenly break loose and coast down my newly racing InterThrobbing BloodWay and slam into my heart, my lungs, or my brain, turning me into broccoli?