Interlude.

I woke up this morning with the intense desire to have a cigarette.

For those of you keeping track, I'm currently in the midst of the second attempt at quitting smoking since June of last year. I had given up the butts at the beginning of June, but some unplanned-for stretch of stress came up in September, and I fell like Lucifer. I gave up again in the second week of November, and here we are.

I'm usually pretty good about maintaining a course of action once I decide upon it; I'm also fully aware of the idea that you can never...really...QUIT anything. You can simply stop, and work to keep stopped. But the intensity of the desire to have that cigarette was surprising.

Most of you know that I'm a recovering alcoholic, and since the time I decided that I had to either quit or die, and in the ensuing moments of failure, I have never really had the desire to drink that was not fueled by stress.

But alcohol is different (in my mind) than cigarettes. I realize that they are both health hazards when taken in the doses that I used once upon a time; but the chief difference (in my mind) is that I never did anything stupid after having too many cigarettes.

I'm not under undo stress just now....that will come later, as it always does. So, I don't really have an explanation for the craving, other than the human mind seems to object to deprivation of any kind. Perhaps it's just some leftover nic-desiring synapses that invaded the sub-basement of my mind, and that's all there was to it.

I'm not going to go out and buy a pack of nails.

I may need Oreos, though.