Cigarettes

Cigarettes - I gave them up last Wednesday and it's more or less 120 hours since I devoured one of my beloved Marlboro Gold 100s.

The 100s were longer than the average Marlboro Gold (really Lights but Marlboro are not allowed to call them that because that made it sound like a diet cigarette). There was a nice sleek, smooth sexual feel to slipping one out of the box and hear the paper brush against it's brother and sister smokes as it kept on coming and coming until it broke free from the packet in a climatic sort of "When Harry Met Sally" kind of way.

Great joy was taken from rushing it's camel coloured filter with the crisp, clean white inner to my mouth before enjoying the flick of the lighter and drawing long, deep and hard on the cigarette. Pulling the smoke as far down into my chest cavities as was humanly possible and then holding - Tantric like - until I just had to exhale and blow that grey, blue smoke up and out into the atmosphere and then wonder just how much that puff - indeed that particular cigarette - would contribute to my carbon footprint.

Would a pot plant purchased from B&Q once a year be quite enough to satisfy the environmentalist wheeler dealers and carbon Del Boys? Do I even contribute at all to Scotland's carbon footprint? I don't drive, I never fly and surely the emissions from a wee house like this can't matter a great deal - even though I am inclined to leave the telly on when I'm not in the room.

I am worried. Both about my own health and the environment - why else would I have given up something I enjoy so much. I enjoy smoking , a lot. But I am trained by the current climate we live in to worry about it.

Rather than just enjoy my cigarettes I would panic with every wheeze, splutter, cough and slight pang in my chest that I had caught something intractable. Every time I ventured out into the cold and the wet to enjoy a smoke I could swear I felt pneumonia coming on.

Even when the weather was pleasant and I could attempt to enjoy a smoke without the wind billowing around me and the rain soaking my cigarette until the tobacco fell away from the filter was I faced with difficulties.

Non-smokers - who had won the battle and the debate to reside indoors smoke free - were now outside complaining they couldn't get a gulp of fresh air for all the smokers camped in smoking gardens and streetside cafes enjoying a puff in the sun - perfectly legally too. Surely if smokers have to endure a Scottish winter outside they should at least be allowed some reprieve for the five minutes of summer this country is afforded without folk whingeing.

Since the joy I got from smoking was slowly being eroded by a series of measures I decided I might as well pack it in. I don't need even more worry in my life, worrying about my health, others' health, my finances, the finances of the NHS, worrying about all the cigarette doubts on the street and whether anyone will ever get round to picking them out. The wee ashtrays on the walls outside pubs and whether one day they will go up in flames as someone failed to extinguish properly and now all the butts have caught light and we have a mini-inferno on our hands.

The worry of my cigarettes harming the environment. The worry of the environment in itself . Why am I so worried about everything?

Why when I am doing the socially responsible and correct thing by not having a cigarette and then taking the bus into the city centre do I start to get pangs of worry - counting the folk on the bus to make sure there are enough folk on it to make it an environmentally viable bus? Why am I wracked with guilt when a whole squad of folk get off at Asda and then there is only me and the driver for the remainder of my trip taking me from the South Side to the city centre? Surely now my carbon footprint is fucked and I'd have been just as well to have had that bloody cigarette in the first place.

I am worried because someone, somewhere is telling me to be worried about all these things and alter my behaviour accordingly. I'm not entirely sure who, but whoever they are, they are doing a damn fine job of it.

Now I am worried about my mental health. I have just read the last paragraph and realise the extreme paranoia that is involved in the construction of a paragraph like that.

Relax, there is no need for a community psychiatric nurse. It's just the cravings for a cigarette making me feel this way, surely?

Ok, now I need some evidence that this lunacy I'm putting myself through has some benefits. A bit like a birthing mother having a quick check between her legs to make sure there actually will be a child as an end product.

I Google "benefits of quitting smoking" and get tonnes of websites telling me that within 20 minutes the healing process has begun and within two days my blood pressure and pulse rate will have dropped; the temperature of my hands and feet increased; I will have zero carbon monoxide and nicotine in my body and there's more oxygen in my blood. Thrown into the bargain is a decrease in the likelihood of having a heart attack, the re-growth of my nerve endings and my ability to taste and smell improved.

Whoopee! My own food tastes like shit, I fart a lot, my body temperature was quite high enough thank you and to be honest I'm not keen on living into my 70s or 80s with no pension and little prospect of being "turned" once a week in a piss stained bed in a state nursing home where the staff are paid about as much as what they care.

I have to check myself again, I must stop thinking like this - it's just the nicotine talking - what shall I do?

The website - the website has handy hints - that'll help me find ways of stopping me thinking about my craving for a smoke. I assumed the first website was a bit odd - so I tried a couple of other websites but they all suggested the same thing as a distraction to stop me smoking.

It seems paedophilia is one of the best ways to stop smoking. That and housework. On various websites I was advised that when I was feeling a little smoke "antsy" or "in a funk" I go borrow some kids.

A niece or nephew - one website even recommended I chap a neighbours door and asked if I could take their child out for the afternoon and get them an ice cream.

For those wondering I have contacted the Portugese Police with this information and they are drawing up a list of former smokers who were in the Santa Da Luz area around the time of Madeleine McCann's disappearance.

Whatever will I do if I cannot kidnap a child whenever I feel the urge for a smoke?

Well it would seem I should, empty closets, scrub floors, build furniture, clean the bathroom, iron clothes, the list of chores was endless. Where is the fun in all this I ask and what if you're a single mother with three kids and a house to keep, surely you had to do all that in the first place while you were smoking - what are they going to do?

To quote the site:

"Practice smiling in the mirror, crank up the radio and dance like no-one is watching, sing at the top of your voice, walk in an old graveyard, play mini-golf, do jumping jacks, go ride a few roller coasters, colour your hair, donate blood, take a shower, talk to God, run on the spot"

Giving up smoking is clearly a license to behave like a fucking loony according to these smug, shiny former smokers and I'm dreading turning into one.