So I am an idiot

I've for the last couple weeks I've been moping around, wondering why I feel so out of sorts, irritated at these random coughing fits that I've been having, getting headaches and just generally feeling weird. Well, duh. I haven't had a cigarette or cigar in three weeks. Yes, I am a special kind of stupid - I didn't quit smoking on purpose, I just didn't get around to having a smoke anytime in the last twenty-odd days. It dawned on me yesterday when I noticed the patch of red skin on my chest has started going away (I'm really horribly allergic to the things, as was my four-pack-a-day father, the upswing of which is I get a huge buzz, not unlike how people who are allergic to alcohol get drunk quicker). If you are a smoker who wants to quit and can't you're allowed to hate me now .

In retrospect I can see how it happened. I started into the cigars when things were going well before the dot.com.bomb. It began as guilt about working for the anti-smoking Nazis. I indulged in weekly treat - I'd sit at the window of my old place overlooking the harbour and puff away on a $20 Haitian with a nice big mocha or a Guinness. Pretty soon I was smoking the Haitians at the pub with my friends a couple times a week and my weekend treat turned into a $100 Cuban. Then everything went tango-uniform in tech and I was mooching smokes in the smoke pit at Sanctuary for my weekend treat. Then I would buy packs to give back to the people I'd mooched too much from and started buying my own while I was at it because I was too broke to eat properly and a smoke or two would help with not having enough to eat. In between all that I had moved and the sitting in the window thing had stopped and the company my friends worked for had gone under in the dot.bomb and they bailed to Toronto for greener pastures to the weeknight pub things was also gone. Once I got this job I stopped smoking at home because I didn't need to quell my appetite anymore. I was still smoking like a chimney at Sanctuary and at the Railway Club with Brenda, but then I didn't go out at for a couple of weeks and stayed out of the smoke pit last Sunday just because of the mood I was in (which I now realise was ironically the result of my withdrawal).

Now that I've clued in I think I'll stay quit for a while and let the allergic side-effects get completely better. Even though it was never very noticeable, I'm tired of the red splotch in the centre of my chest.