2026: Chapter 19

I used to pick up a carton of Newport’s for like $63 (USD). This was back in 2010 or so. Up on 40th Street and Sierra Way in the north end of San Bernardino CA was the Bank of America I frequented, and right next door was the smoke shop. It was such a casual thing for me to get a carton of Newport’s and to get my mom a carton of her Virginia Slim Menthol Lights, which barely qualifies as a cigarette if you ask me but it’s nonetheless what she liked.

I went to New York in the summer of 2011 and I remember walking around Central Park with my friend Morgan and I came across a little kiosk that sold cigarettes, and my same pack of Newport’s was $12 a pack. I thought it was fucking crazy, but also cigarettes were something that I enjoyed and they could have charged me whatever they wanted and I still would have bought them.

Over the last 15 years California became much more like New York when it came to so-called progressive policies vis-a-vis the selling of cigarettes. Notwithstanding that it became federal law that one must be 21 to buy them — as opposed to only 18 which it had been forever — California jacked up the prices and banned the selling of menthol, which I imagine was designed to be an inducement for people to stop smoking. I’m sure it works. Like those ideas had to be proven winners or California and New York wouldn’t have adopted them.

Last night I had one of those rock bottom-type nights where I got fucking hammered and ended up losing a couple thousand dollars at the casino. And as has been my custom in both my pre-and-post-sobriety awakening, I’m going through with the usual Why Am I Like This spiral. Which is kind of where I am at right now.

It’s not about the money. I mean it is, but it really isn’t. The money is the money and the money is what appears on the giant neon sign that flashes in my head whenever I plan to make wholesale changes in my life. But much more than that is the cliché principle that everyone always talks about: It’s the knowing-better-but-not-doing-enough-about-it that continues leading me to the same place(s).

I’m drinking a couple tall boys (Corona Extra) right now and those are the last two beers I have on my person. I know I won’t be drinking anymore for a while after these are completed. That doesn’t feel like the challenge I need in my life for the time being. I have done it, I have proven it, and I know I don’t need it, etc.

My motivation currently is about a much more ambitious challenge: Giving up smoking. It’s so ambitious that, over the last 18 years — exactly half of my 36-year lifetime — I believe I have done a grand total of like seven days without having a smoke. Six of those were because I was being a very good boy after having oral surgery for a couple teeth that got extracted.

I am a math guy, so I would (briefly) like to make this a math equation — similar to how I did when I broke down how much money I would save by not drinking. I could fish out the article to find the exact theoretical number, which included the purchasing of alcohol, the purchasing of alcohol at local establishments including tip, and the potentiality of ending up at a casino and losing money further. I believe the annual figure came out to something in the neighborhood of $5,000. Factoring in casino trips, it was about triple that (if not more).

Cigarettes are a different ballgame, because it’s a vice that is a constant and irrespective of both drinking and gambling. Even though I have been sober for roughly 9 of the previous 14 months, smoking cigarettes is something I have done (almost) every day for the last 18 years. A carton may have cost $63 in 2011; a pack may have cost $5.50 in 2009; all I know is it has only gone up since my inception. And, currently, it costs me $30 for two packs of American Spirit’s.

If we take the most conservative number and argue that I smoke a pack per day, that leaves us with a $15 unit cost multiplied by 365 days per year, leaving us at a grand total of $5,475 annually. If we take a more realistic number, which is a pack-and-a-half per day, we can blackjack the $15 unit cost and turn it thus into $22.50 and multiply that number by 365 days per year, it comes out instead to $8,212.50 annually.

If we take away the casino, which is only there for me as a seemingly good idea when alcohol is in my system, the removal of both alcohol (~$5,000 per year) and cigarettes (~$8,000 per year) from my daily routine would be an incredible savings. Around $13,000 per year averages out, easily, to a thousand dollars a month in my pocket. It averages out to saving more than $30 per day on these vices. That is how much I am taxing myself on a daily basis.

And how great is it to have had such jobs over the course of my working life that have allowed me — in those terms — to let money seep through my hands as easily as water. Naturally when I made less, the cost of my vices was also less. During recent years where money has met me with much less effort, it hasn’t required of me even a second thought to indulge.

That’s the thing about these constants. They are always there; that is why they are constant. I do not have a problem with eating gluttonously and needing fast food; I do not have an addiction to Starbucks coffee; I don’t have a problem with women or sex and thus I do not need to purchase them, or it; my habits are expensive, for sure, but not so expensive that they have ever been a ‘problem’ for me financially.

In a weird way, I have generally viewed my vices not as a me-problem but as a problem for my vices. In other words: If ever I priced myself out of smoking or drinking or doing drugs, I wouldn’t quit the smoking or the drinking or the doing of drugs. I would just find a new job that was able to afford them. That’s how my arrogant mind has always functioned.

And yet I have never been confronted by such a reality. I have been blessed to smoke what I will and drink what I like and if I wanted marijuana or cocaine or painkiller medication then be that as it may because I will have it all. Never have I needed to drive Uber or deliver food to people for extra income. Always I have had exactly what it was I needed.

This choice, or idea, or aspiration of mine — to quit smoking — is entirely with me acting as nothing more than a volunteer. Need to do it I do not. As with drinking, I would like to stop it regardless of any external forces. I don’t need to come up with X-amount of money, and I don’t need to save this or that. I just think it would be kind of fun. I think it would be a challenge worthy of me and my time.

As fed up with myself as I am — and I am — never before have I been riding in the passenger seat of my own car on the ride home from a casino, bawling my eyes out and saying, consciously, that, ‘I don’t want to be here anymore.’ I’ve never said that before, because I haven’t thought that before. I mean I may have thought it, but in the moments when I felt like an overdose was on the table, I got scared, and I realized that I did very much want to be here (still).

Last night hit me differently, and I don’t know why. Probably because I was fucked up and I’m tired of getting fucked up. I’m tired of going through the same internal monologue that I have gone through dozens of times since I was a 21 year-old, leaving the casino with nothing in my hands and only regret on my mind. That was a big part of it.

Also I just don’t think I have ever been so close to Niña as I was in that exact moment. Like I’ve always understood why she did it, but not so much that I was ever thinking, again, in conscious way, just how much I understand. That life is hard and life is stupid and life is so meaningless in so many ways, and so at that point it’s not about what you think and what you feel but more about how no longer will you have to think and feel. And there is something beautiful about that.

I woke up today and thought it would would be cool to endure this life experience even longer. And when I think in that way, I think about the things that I can do to ensure that I live as long as I possibly can. The best way for me to do that is to quit smoking cigarettes.

And it’s motivating. It’s another in a long line of things that make life worth living. Working and making money and living with dignity; pretty women and smart women and women who are both and the prospect that one day, eventually, I can fall in love and get married and make some babies of my own; the idea that I can buy a house and/or go to law school, in whatever order; the challenge of quitting these vices that have held me back for so long. These items each and all get me excited to wake up in the morning.

I am also aware that so many times before when I have been in this particular mindset, where I want to make all manner of changes all at once, I have failed because I tend to bite off more than I can chew. As such, for the time being I’ll simply tackle my alcoholism — which I have done before. Once I give that a little time I will quite earnestly give cigarettes the honest effort that they have always deserved from me.

Just so we’re clear: While entitled I am to a moment of weakness, I do very much love life. I love being alive. I want to be here, today and always. I want to continue pushing over these dominoes one-by-one until I can look back, not to say that I have accomplished all that needs accomplishing, but rather as a stepping stone to my next set of dominoes that will surely require my attention whenever that day comes.