Ok, ok...

So I slipped. About seven thirty tonight I remembered a half a cigarette sitting in the ashtray of my car.

I managed to get one of the doors open, without causing permanent damage, and I smoked it.

So, slip number one from complete cold turkey.

I don't have any more butts in the car. The next slip is going to require that I go somewhere to get it. Which will make it easier to resist.

The bad part is, it seems completely sensible to slip. After all, quitting will be so much easier if I don't tax my body too much, a complete cold turkey quit is a shock to the system, and makes a person feel like complete crap, whereas a tapering off... not so much. So why make it harder on my body?

That is, it seems sensible to slip, until after I've done it.

Admission of failure, even a small failure, is a thing that comes very, very hard to me. I've physically injured myself rather than give up on something that I've made up my mind to do, before.

I'm very stubborn. Usually.

I think addiction makes us all weak. Which totally sucks ass, if you ask me.

Perhaps...

I should explain.

I re-read that last post and I realized that some of you out there may not have any clear idea of why I'm so touchy.

Maybe you've never seen withdrawals, or maybe it's never been clear for you, or maybe you just don't give a crap but typing this keeps my hands busy so sit down, shut up and bear with me until I'm done.

Nicotine withdrawals are relatively mild, don't get me wrong. Nicotine withdrawals don't make you physically ill, the way, say, heroin does. At least not to the fever, nausea, just-kill-me-now point.

However, I'm only a few hours into complete nicotine withdrawal, and I know the symptoms from previous attempts. Most of them, for me, are psychological.

I'm jumpy, I'm nervous, I'm paranoid and suspicious of everything, my mind keeps popping up images of cigarettes to taunt me with and I can't focus for crap.

Meanwhile my hands tremble whenever a craving hits, I get slightly light headed on occasion and I find myself wanting to punch something roughly every five seconds. If I were a cat I'd be the one that follows people around mewing piteously until they try to pet it, whereupon it turns and rips their arms to shreds, only to resume mewing piteously and not understanding why they chase it with pitchforks.

The worst part is, I know that all of these are irrational responses, that I don't really need the nicotine to be a happy person, blah blah blah, all of the usual crap. I know all of that.

Which only makes me more frustrated when I can't control them. Which makes me want a cigarette to calm down. Which starts the whole thing over again, only worse.

And all of this means that every time someone invades my personal space bubble in a way I can't ignore, I want to squeeze their heads like a pimple until gray matter shoots out the top and I get to fingerpaint with it!

No, really. That's what my brain wants me to do, just in case the adrenaline rush of running from the cops in some way resembled the light headed dizzy rush I'd get if I had a cigarette right now.

So, now you may have a better insight into nicotine withdrawals, or maybe I'll read this in a week and go "wtf was I thinking?!?"

We'll see.

My Resolve

Not to kill people is being tested. Some strange man came knocking on my door.

Twice.

If I wanted to talk to him I'd have answered the door the first damn time he was standing out there dancing like he was about to wet himself.

If he comes back, I'm not promising he won't be crying when he leaves.

I mean seriously, what's the point of locking myself in my apartment to keep myself from being a complete and utter bitch to everyone around me by the simple expedient of not having anyone around me, if they're going to not only interrupt my TV show with a knock on the door, but provide such tempting targets for viciousness as well?!??

Who could resist being mean to an overweight balding guy who stands around outside of strange women's apartments wringing his hands and dancing from foot to foot, while staring around furtively?!?

Either he wanted to attack me or it was his very first time approaching a real live female of the species.

I'm in no real condition to distinguish, at this point. I'd probably assume the first just because it would let me beat someone...

It's Official

I smoked my last cigarette at around two this afternoon.

The weather is conspiring to help me, for once. I went out to the car to get a book, earlier, and my doors are frozen shut.

So, I can't go out and get cigarettes. Unless I walk. A long way. In the cold.

All incentive to stay the hell inside and deal with it like a man.

Even though, you know, I'm not. A man, that is.

Well, I Was Going To...

I was going to go to bed. But then I realized, when I turned off the tv, that someone had very kindly ignored the laundry time instructions posted clearly on the wall, and was not only using the laundry facilities, but apparently making use of them to clean and tumble dry their brick collection.

Ten PM and it sounds like bronc riding on hardwood right outside my apartment door.

Problem is, I'm into the cranky phase of nicotine withdrawal, now. So, it's hard for me to distinguish what the proper response would be.

Figuring out who's shit it is and taking it to their door at three in the morning along with a gift of sense from my baseball bat sounds pretty good to me, but it's probably not very politic.

I'm sure neither is throwing all of their laundry out into the freezing rain, although it's tempting.

Oh, listen... someone else isn't happy about it.

Hmm. Interesting approach, just take the noisy shit out of the dryer, apparently. Of course, standing around yelling about it kind of makes that pointless, now doesn't it?

Ok, I'm going to go try to get some sleep now. Assuming another one of my kind neighbors doesn't decide to wash their rock collection at midnight....

Progress

Well. I'm on my last partial pack of cigarettes. All smoking items except for one ashtray which is sitting on the kitchen table where I can't see it for the pile of Ed's stuff, including that pack of cigarettes and my lighter, are in the back of the cabinet over the stove.

Today was a step down day. Half a cigarette, max, every hour at the minimum. Longer if I could do it.

I've managed just a couple of puffs every hour or so for the last few hours, and I'm making myself stand when I smoke. I would make myself go outside to smoke, but if i go outside into the cold it would be too easy to rationalize smoking the whole cigarette so that I wouldn't have to go back out into the cold as soon.

The hardest part so far is the psychological stuff. I'll reach for my cigarettes on the end table while I'm watching tv, and when I realize that they aren't there, and I'm not going to let myself smoke yet, the craving ratchets up about five notches, and I start twitching.

Tomorrow, I'm going to try for no cigarettes at all, but I'm not going to hate myself if I don't make it. I'm doing pretty good on cutting back (I was at a pack to a pack and a half a day, before I started cutting back) and that's definite progress. Besides, eventually, even with the strict rationing, that pack is going to run out.

Then I just have to stay in the apartment.

It doesn't all have to happen right now, and demanding that of myself would lead to frustration, anger, and failure.

As much as I would like to just flip a switch and never want a cigarette again, that's not the way it works. As long as I don't smoke more than I am at this point, I'm going to consider it a victory.

Considering the way my hands are shaking, just thinking about smoking now (it's been fifteen minutes since my last puff) I think it is a victory. It's progress, anyway.

Variable Star

Heinlein, ah, Heinlein.

One of my favorite writers of all time, the only author that I feel a need to collect all the works of not because I want to see the next part of the story (I do have a few that I collect because of the burning need to find out what happens next,) but simply because he wrote them.

I've read the majority of everything he ever wrote, with the exception of some of the short stories I haven't been able to find a copy of, and some of his political writings that likewise, I haven't gotten my hands on yet. I don't own them all, but the librarian at my high school had a running list of books to be begged, borrowed, or stolen from other libraries through interlibrary loan for me.

This, though. Wow. This book was supposed to be RAH, speaking from beyond the grave, through the medium of Spider Robinson.

I had some definite misgivings about it, to be honest. A Heinlein plot is simply not done justice by anyone but the Grand Master himself, and Robinson had only an incomplete outline and scribbled notes to attempt to do justice to a tale that stuck with Heinlein enough that he kept the notes, and kept trying to convince his editor to let him write it, even after it had been turned down.

My first reaction was complete indignation, when I first heard of the attempt. It was heresy, any tale not completed in it's entirety by RAH could only be inspired by the Grand Master, not carry his name as author, even co-author. Sacrilege.

Then I looked closer, and realized what the prize was. The plot was pure Heinlein, minus the ending, which was lost to history. Robinson merely had to fill in the blanks with the details.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple.

On to the book itself, now. Variable Star, as a story, is very good. Robinson is an excellent writer and the flavor of the book is one that is quite pleasing to the refined palate of a die-hard SF fan. The tone is part Heinlein, part Spider Robinson. It's written the way I imagine Heinlein would have written if he'd been born into our society today, wherein a few cuss words and vulgar jokes are nothing to get upset about.

Of course, Heinlein wasn't born into today's society, and his dignified way of putting across the dirtiest of jokes without once using a four letter word is signature. Heinlein had a grace with the English language that cannot be matched, only imitated.

Spider Robinson, thankfully, did not try to be RAH. He simply took a course plotted many years before, which Heinlein himself had never been able to sail, and took the journey, bringing us along for the ride.

The plot is very Heinlein, although I believe that Robinson could have made it more inclusive of the other Heinlein novels that tied into the storyline of Variable Star, if he'd wanted to.

The narration, the storytelling, is very Spider Robinson.

It's unique in the world. It is the last new bit of Heinleiniana. In a sense, it is a shame that it was corrupted by the touch of the hand of anyone other than the Grand Master himself, but if they had to resort to such drastic measures, Spider Robinson was the man to do it.

I cried when I finished it, mourning yet again what I had mourned as a young teen, that I would never be able to meet Robert Anson Heinlein and tell him personally how much light and enjoyment he had brought into my life, how much I learned from his works, and how very very much I appreciated those things.

His legacy is in the pages of all of his books, his steadfast belief that there are those among us capable of the fantastic acts, discoveries, and adventures that he wrote and shared with us, along with so many other beliefs and concepts that he communicated through his novels, which strike a chord in the most skeptical of hearts.

That legacy has been added to, perhaps not as he would have done it, but in sincere tribute.

A tribute which has the added bonus of being entertaining, and laugh out loud hilarious, as well as heart wrenching and tearfully touching.

If you're an RAH fan, and haven't read Variable Star yet, I urge you to find a copy. Just don't expect it to be Heinlein's ghost, commandeering Robinson's hands to type his own imaginings. It is, instead, a heartfelt honorarium, maintaining the underlying flavor of Heinlein throughout the overtones of Robinson's own personal talent and skill.