Notes from Nicotine Hell

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Wake up and put on nicotine patch to once and for all quit pack-a-day habit. Write a list of reasons: live 15 years longer, have healthy children, be socially acceptable. Tear up list and make a better one: look younger, have fewer wrinkles, get more dates, spite enemies. Decide to go out and buy carrots, celery, gum, orange juice, fruit, sugar-free lollipops, and rice cakes. Eat them all by 11 a.m.Try to work. Instead take all-day nap. Have a drink later with old boyfriend Peter, who says, 'Kissing a smoker is like licking a dirty ashtray,' then drinks seven beers and a cognac and comes on to me. Actually consider it, but can't face sex without a cigarette later. At 2 a.m. go out and purchase three packages of fat-free Entenmann's brownies.

Day 2

Wake up sick from brownies and cold caught walking 14 blocks to get them.

Put on patch. Buy Sudafed. Take two. Feel better. Feel delirious. Take a nap.

Try to work but can't concentrate on anything but wanting to smoke. One hour on exercise bike: Oprah's 'Mothers Who Want Their Kids Taken Away' puts problem into perspective. Read that schizophrenics and manic-depressives in mental hospitals commit suicide when their cigarettes are taken away. Ask brother, the doctor, for 65 more patches. Take another Sudafed. Is there a Sudafed group in the city?

Day 3

Put on patch. Have breakfast with friend Vern, who says that after he quit smoking, his concentration didn't come back for two years. Take 100 deep breaths. Breathing is overrated. Take a walk and count how many stores on the block sell cigarettes. Get more patches in mail from brother, along with pictures of cancerous tumors. Try to work. See a movie with Peter in which all actors smoke. Eat two buckets of popcorn. Peter suggests that I try Nicorettes because his cousin Janet quit in three days on them. I remind him that I tried Nicorettes once and threw up, then smoked two packs to get the taste out of my mouth. Don't invite him in. Read that nicotine's harder to quit than heroin. Take another Sudafed.

Day 4

Put on patch. Think of smoking. Brother calls to say don't even think of smoking with patch on, someone's fingers fell off. Lunch with Andrea, who coughed every time I took out a cigarette for 15 years but now says, 'I can't hang out with you when you're like this, you're too intense.' Bump into old colleague Dave, who quit smoking and gained 29 pounds in four months but thinks it was the smart choice. Consider heroin. Try to work but realize it's impossible to be a freelance writer, a nonsmoker, and thin in the same year. Sudafed losing its bite, check into Comtrex. Negotiate self-destructive behaviors: decide that taking sleeping pill, smoking a joint, getting drunk, or having sex with Peter one more time is better than a Marlboro or Oreos, though not all on the same night.

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