Smokeless Morning #1

Last night began my attempt to quit smoking via transdermal nicotine patches.

Since applying the patch at 9 PM, I’ve already noticed several intense effects:

• My usual tics and tremours have intensified to the those expected of a chipmunk with cerebral palsy trying to do an impression of Michael J. Fox, no offense to palsy-suffering chipmunks or Michael J. Fox.  Walking is a laughable and whimsical goal.  I should give up on that one.
• Sleep is simultaneously the most hateful, unattainable and coveted thing on the planet.
• My attempt at sleep may or may not have worked.  I’m not really sure.  It was less what I would call “sleep,” and more of what I would call, “Whoa!  Where did that hour between 5:00 AM and 6:30 AM go?  Did my clock (and the sun) mysteriously jump ahead without my permission?”  Experts have informed me that there is actually an hour and a half between 5 and 6:30 in the morning, but since I was not there to witness this phenomenon, I am inclined to doubt their claims.
• My mouth tastes like I have been sucking on copper pennies—as if there was any other kind of penny.  And not clean, freshly-minted pennies, either, but the kind of pennies you find coated in greenish-brown sludge at the bottom of a drawer in a second-hand armoire that may or may not have previously belonged to an old woman who allowed her multitude of cats to use its moulding drawers as a litter box.
• Okay. Poop is decidedly not coming out now.
• My pulse is no longer keeping a steady beat.  It is instead pulsing the syncopated 7/8 rhythm of “And The Money Kept Rolling In” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita.  The Mandy Patinkin version, not the terrible Antonio Banderas travesty.
• I am actually deeply offended that my spell-check did not recognise the surname Patinkin, but amused and overjoyed that it did not recognise the surname Banderas, which is only given to talentless prettyboys.  I know that the instantaneousness and intensity with which these emotions overcame me is not normal.
• Food smiles at me in the most repulsive Cheshire Cat way.  I wish to eat the food, but it constantly evades the sharp stab of my fork and I know that eating it will not make that sickening grin disappear.
• My skin itches and burns as if a thousand tiny larvae, not unlike those who are currently munching on the least of the Baldwin Brothers, are burrowing under my skin.  Scratching the itch is impossible as the moment my fingers touch my skin, the itch moves ever-so-slightly out of the way of my fingers and intensifies, giggling inaudibly at my futile efforts to achieve the ridiculous and fabled result of “comfort”.
• There is a tightening in my throat, not noticeable enough to cause serious medical concern but noticeable enough to make me want to perform corrective surgery on it myself with a hatchet and my severely shaky and unstable hands.
• Okay.  Poop is coming out now, but never in my life has poop wanted to leave me so quickly and urgently.  I’m interpreting its hasty and hateful exodus from my body as a personal insult to my gracious hospitality that allowed it to stay in for longer than I had anticipated it would.
• The remaining cigarettes in what should be my last pack ever have actually and literally turned into menthol-infused maggots.  I want nothing more than to burn them and punish them for the personalised Guantanamo Bay they have forced me into, but the very idea of inhaling their fumes as they blister and crackle to their painful death is less appealing to me than having prolonged sexual intercourse with this very NSFW individual.  You have just been StankVagRolled™. Pass it on.

I can safely and unequivocally say that Nicoderm CQ is a dreadful product that is almost certainly comprised of crystal meth and Post-It note glue.  Lung cancer is looking pretty good right about now.  Is this how being a non-smoker feels?  How do you people put up with this madness?