It's my two-week anniversary!

Two whole weeks. It's thrilling; it's exhilarating; my life began anew two weeks ago.

(If you even think I'm referring to the anniversary of a relationship, your reading comprehension skills could obviously use a little bit of work. Or a lot.)

No, no. I'm not dating anyone. I'm still doing the world a favor by being single. When I get tired of being generous, perhaps I'll go back to doing what I do best: finding the wrong guy, ignoring my knowledge that he's the wrong guy, proceeding to build a dysfunctionally detached relationship that is devoid of all human feeling, and then screwing him over royally because I don't like the whole breaking-up part of the deal.

Anyway, I'm digressing. Back on track, today is the two-week anniversary of the first day in my life when I truly wanted a cigarette. Don't get me wrong. There were plenty of moments over the course of the past two years when I wanted a cigarette, but the solution was always simple: wait a little bit, then smoke. When the meeting's over, when the roommate decides to stop attacking my head with a hairbrush, when I remember that I still have to attend classes that are entirely lacking in substance, when I realize I'm going to miss my deadline (no pun intended--I hate puns) for the big myocardial infarction, when I realize I'm lost in a foreign city for the tenth time that year, etc. (How was that for a sentence fragment? Huh? Huh?! Screw you, eighth-grade English and your damn sentence diagrams!)

As you can tell, there were plenty of times when I wanted a cigarette. The thing was, I wanted a cigarette and then I smoked one. Very simple, really. Desire --> fulfillment of desire. Basic human tendency.

But two weeks ago, I decided to do something very different. I decided to say "No!" No more would I fulfill that desire to kill myself in small increments (except by not sleeping and gradually adding more and more stress to my life). No more would I willingly inhale carcinogens and toxins in such high concentrations. I did the impossible: I quit smoking.

And I quit smoking for a really fun reason. It's not so much that I wanted to. Ask anyone who quits; very few are going to say they were tired of having their feel-good neurotransmitters boosted by the nicotine contained in that deadly, disease-inducing smoke. Very few are going to say they were tired of that extra burst of stimulant inhaled with each breath. No, no. Smoking feels nice. (Despite what your lungs may tell you, just go for willing suspension of disbelief and believe me.)

So why did I quit? I wasn't sick; I don't have emphysema, chronic bronchitis, or cancer (that I know of (yet)).

I was reading about smoking. Before all of you activists out there get really excited, please note that I was not reading anti-smoking literature, nor was I reading research about the dangers of smoking. I was reading "The Ethics of Smoking" by Robert E. Goodin and "The Ethics of Addiction: An Argument in Favor of Letting Americans Take Any Drug They Want" by Thomas Szasz. And, funny enough, the authors of those two articles gave me the perfect excuse to keep smoking forever.

Goodin's reasoning veritably screamed out, "You can't blame the smokers! They're ADDICTED! Hell, they can't even give informed consent for killing themselves when they smoke. They're so addicted they just don't have a choice. Poor smokers, those schmucks. . ."

And I was pissed off. I'm reading. . . reading. . . still reading. . . and then thinking. . . thinking. . . still thinking. . . and then pissed off. How dare that guy say I don't know what I'm doing? That I'm too addicted to be held liable for my actions? Damnit, I knew what I was doing and I knew I was headed down a road toward a myocardial infarction and no one was going to take that away from me!

So what did I do? I got stubborn. I mean, I was already stubborn, but I decided to show it.

I decided to quit smoking. Not because I wanted to. Not because I was concerned about my health. Not even because I wanted to screw over the tobacco industry. But because I wanted to prove that I was not addicted, that I had control, and that those authors could take their arguments and shove 'em.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go make some coffee to celebrate my anniversary of non-addiction.

(You should find this amusing: I didn't go through any physical withdrawals when I quit smoking--no headaches, no shakiness, no increased appetite, no anything. But if I go three or more hours without consuming a significant amount of caffeine, I think my head is going to implode. How's that for addiction?)