I wish I didn't enjoy smoking.

Of course, I'm aware that it is a ridiculous habit. That to deliberately purse your lips over a slender paper-clad stick of doom and willingly inhale its wispy poisonous tendrils in one tiny tobacco-infused step after another towards an inevitable tar-choked lung-rattling death deserves no sympathy, only a self-righteous and entirely justified mocking despair. Tut. Tut. Tut. You are going to DIE and die HORRIBLY. And it's All Your Fault.

Yep. I know.

But the fact is that I do. Enjoy it.

I've read Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking For Eva and Eva Amen a couple of times now. The supposed myth-busting book about the realities of cigarette addiction that "reveals" to the reader that what they think of as a relaxing or social or mind-focusing or any other delusional-benefit habit is in fact all about one thing.

Nicotine addiction.

No shit, Sherlock.

Sorry to burst your bubble (or slash your smoke ring?), Allen, but I am in fact entirely aware that the only purpose of my smoking cigarettes is to inject a dose of nicotine into my blood stream. If I thought that simply inhaling smoke into my lungs gave me pleasure, I'd be crouched over the grill at every barbeque, or breathing deeply next to car exhaust pipes at traffic junctions, or stalking on-duty firemen for reasons other than their rather sexy uniforms.

I'm also entirely aware that it is, in fact, remarkably easy to stop smoking; that the actual physical symptoms of nicotine withdrawal are so slight as to be imperceptible; that it is indeed all in the mind.

However, I'm aware that it is also remarkable easy to start smoking again. And that, contrary to popular belief, you don't tend to take a puff and think ugh, how grim, I'm so glad I stopped this disgusting habit, but ahhhh, there it is again, my bittersweet friend, my naughtily seductive bit of rough, lovely Nick O'Teeeeeen.

It's like the bastard boyfriend you know is bad for you, but is just so goshdarnfuckingAWESOME in bed.

So, while I'm waiting for the Good Habit to come along that will finally and forever banish Naughty Nick from the blackening boudoir of my lungs and stop me from turning into a chargrilled corpse before my cancer-induced time...

...roll me another, Mr O'Teen. I'm not done with you yet.

*inhales*