The He/Hims are Back in Town
I’m sorry for not posting this month. We have a new book, The Lifestyle Zoo, coming out in the next few weeks and it’s will ease the absence felt over the past few weeks.
I’m not a big sleeper. I don’t sleep much. I am not saying I have insomnia or whatever, I just generally have a hard time going to sleep but an easy time waking up.
I don’t sleep, I don’t dream. I suppose they come part and parcel - that would make sense, yeah.
I don’t have much do to in real life right now - it’s early winter on the east coast, which means that it’s fucking cold and pitch black at 4:30pm and i’m fucking too depressed to move - so I thought I should quit smoking again.
A quick backstory: i’ve been smoking for ~17 years, i’ve ‘quit’ once for about three months, and I love smoking more than anything but it’s hurting my Vo2Max.
In short, i’m getting old and my body gets angry at me for smoking a pack while idling in front of my computer. My body doesn’t understand why I would go to the gym 5x times a week and eat very controlled macros but also chainsmoke constantly. I try to explain calmly to my major organs that it’s all good, don’t worry about it - but they always seem to win the argument with unspecific stabbing pains.
Yeah, quitting smoking - okay. Quitting smoking fucking sucks. It feels physically bad, your brain turns to rocks, and you can’t do anything you used to do. Forget going out for beers to watch the basketball game. You’re not going to the bar after work. You’re staying home and sucking on Jolly Ranchers until your tongue is bleeding.
I’ve made a conscious effort to try and smoke ‘less’ for the past year or so, but that’s also bullshit. I pretty much do whatever I want - so if I say out loud ‘i’m smoking less’ that’s much better than my inner monolog whispering ‘I still smoke a pack a day but I would never say that.’ I’d just rather lie about it, to be honest. After all - who cares? It’s my body, my choice. Right? Right?!
Ok, yeah - quitting smoking - bad - hard. I decided to get some ‘medical assistance’ by the way of varenicline, a stop-smoking wonder drug that boasts a 60% success rate.
It just also makes you want to kill yourself, but we’ll talk about that later.
The more common side effects are nausea and nightmares, both of which nailed me immediately. You pretty much want to puke immediately after taking it which is a fun way to liven up a day at work, but the nightmares - the nightmares are pretty intense.
I would compare it to the shadow people of an accidental Benadryl high combined with a Sutter Cane novel. My brain was putting together a highlight reel of shit I wasn’t even aware I was scared of. I felt like a nine year old watching ISIS beheadings.
But! I got used to the nightmares quickly. All of a sudden, I felt like a nine year old watching ISIS beheadings - very excited to consume very based visual content.
For the first time in my [redacted] years on this Earth, I was genuinely excited to sleep. Every night I was greeted by horrors I couldn’t invent. Every night was a Hellraiser sequel (Clive Barker only) - I was reaching limit experiences every day. This was a subconscious utopia filled with immediately forgotten terrors. I have never experienced anything as fun as these horrible dreams now that i’m expecting them. I feel like Chris Redfield 24/7.
The pills make me nauseous. The pills make me tired. The pills make my brain an exciting place for eight hours a night.
I have stopped smoking for about six days and I haven’t added any weight to my squat, but we’ll see - if I don’t notice an improvement soon, I will abandon this project and move on to something else… maybe I will work at a bank or something.
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Oh yeah, I forgot to post that I was on the DCG podcast a few weeks ago.
Oh yeah, I also forgot that I was on the 8pl8s podcast as well.
I’ve been forgetting a lot of things since ‘deciding quitting smoking will improve my life.’ This project sucks.