Omnicide

I hope you don't take offense, but I'd like to kill you. It's not that I have anything against you personally, it's just that I want to kill every single thing on this planet, with the exception of dogs. Now, you are probably thinking that this just sounds like a typical day in the life of Mr. Sunshine-Rainbows-and-Kitten-Farts, but I can assure that is not the case.

The cause of current foul mood can be directly attributed to the fact that I have not smoked a cigarette in over 4 days or approximately 345,600 seconds. It is said that smoking is as difficult to quit as heroin. Although heroin may be cheaper, I don't plan on taking up smack to conduct a thorough comparison. Thus, let it suffice to say that the last 4 days have sucked copious volumes of unadulterated ass.

Fortunately, I have employed the a smoking cessation strategy, otherwise known as drugs. I have been taking a new prescription drug called Chantix (varenicline) for the previous 10 days. Chantix works via a 3 pronged strategy:

1. One of the side effects of Chantix is that it induces nausea nearly immediately after consumption. Nothing quells the urge for a cigarette like the urge to vomit. On the upside, I've developed a new sport, similar to Geocaching, which I like to call Puking for Points. Once the nausea wears off, though, I'm back to my willingness to kill a few drifters solely for the purpose of extracting the nicotine from their blood.

2. A bottle of 56 Chantix (1 mg) tablets, which is a 28 day supply, costs $130. For reasons that nobody can explain to me, neither my previous or current employer's benefit plan covers this medicine. (Of course, if I continue to smoke, they will cover the chemotherapy and associated lung cancer treatments.) The bottom line is that it is just expensive to buy Chantix as cigarettes. Thus, my thrifty, partial-German heritage has proven advantageous, as there is no way in hell that I'm buying both.

3. The packaging and delivery scheme of Chantix is conducive to smoking cessation. The tablets are minuscule, which makes them easy to ingest and particularly difficult to keep lit. The genius of Pfizer's packaging design is illustrated in the following picture:

On the left side of the package, you will observe two rows of Chantix tablets, with two pills per column. Each column equates to a daily oral dosage, so a full week's regimen is in pictured. If the patient slips up and smokes during this period, they have to administer the "Punisher," which is the cayenne pepper suppository pictured on the right. (I don't know what smokers who are into BDSM are supposed to do.)

Thus, it looks like after 20 years of smoking, I am on the path to clean living. That's not to say that I am prepared to swear off the occasional Macanudo. I admit that every once in a great while, I enjoy a good cigar and I can't see any reason why I should stop. Sure, I'll no longer be able to do so orally and I may even refrain from lighting them first, but I'm sure that this is a strategy that's guaranteed to pay off in the end.