Irritability And Nic Fits? Where Do I Sign Up?

I quit smoking about a month ago. It has been the hardest month ever - hard for me and maybe harder for my friends.

Around the time I quit, I sprouted an alter ego. We'll call her Eryn, for the sake of argument. It's hard to tell us apart, because we look alike and it's tough to miss a girl with spiky red hair, but our diverging temperaments are usually the way that friends know the difference. While I am normally roses and sunshine all the time - a disposition I learned to fake during my year and a half working in retail - Eryn is the devil incarnate.

Besides my newly found affinity for chewing gum and hard candy, not to mention the inevitable cavities and diabetes I am likely to develop, I have developed a desire to yell at people a lot. The thing is, I'm not clever enough to be hurtful, and I know it; I just need an outlet for my anxiety. I called a kid I work with "Pee Pants" the other day, for no particular reason. It was just the right amount of "mean" to satisfy a cigarette craving, but not enough meanness to make him cry. Check and double check. Okay, maybe my level of "mean" is comparable to people that short sheet beds and call it a "prank."

I'm probably not truly Satan yet, but the last month I have gotten irritable, crabby and particularly strange. It's like I don't quite know how to act in social situations anymore. I am socially unbalanced. I don't know what to do when friends come over or what to do while waiting for food at a restaurant.

Bars? Forget about it. I lose all willpower there. That's been where I've slipped up in the past month. Admittedly and slightly shamefully, I haven't gone totally cold turkey. There have been puffs off the occasional cigarette, and I know that this technically defeats the term "quit," but I feel like it's the distinction between common law husband and actual groom. It's just a technicality. It's like buying a bag in New York City that says Kate Spade. It's so close that who is really counting? Honestly, there is truly something wonderful about holding a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. But I guess there's also something wonderful about not dying from cancer.

I wonder if this happens to all people who quit smoking. I mean, if you take away something that people love to do - in Buffalo, it might be the ability to drive poorly - they need time to adjust. You could have a whole group of people just sitting in their cars, with no idea what to do since bad driving was taken away from them. What if we took away hockey? Hordes of Buffalonians would be silently sitting in sports bars. It's the same for me. I feel like I've given up a tiny piece of my soul.

I guess I don't know what it is about a little cigarette that balanced me out so much. There was no Prozac in them, because if there were, I probably would have been paying a lot more for them than six bucks a pack. They made me cough, made my throat sore, damaged my breathing and yellowed my teeth. And even writing about their harmful side effects makes me want one. Oh, the blinding powers of addiction.

And so I bet you are all thinking, "Wow, Erin, this sounds too good to be true! You're mean? You're a social leper? You chew gum like a cow gnawing on cud? Where do I sign up?"

Well, my friends, here is the sure-fire way to quit - catch pneumonia. Yes, it is better and less expensive than the patch. There's no step-down craving control, and there are no bitter tears during the nicotine withdrawal. I was too busy fighting for my breath and coughing up my lungs to even notice that three days had passed and my physical dependence on nicotine had subsided. It was genius. I recommend it.

You know what is nice, however? Waking up and taking my first breath, without my lungs burning from the night before; being able to work for several hours without going into the freezing Buffalo cold to have a cigarette; the extra cash in my pocket because I am not buying a pack every other day.

Quitting smoking is not fun, it's not easy, and, truthfully, I hate it. I think at this point my co-workers would throw a party if ever I wanted to start smoking again. They've got secret bets going to see how long before either I buy my first pack or lose it entirely.

Half of me wants to tell smokers never to quit. If given the chance again, I don't know that I would. But the other, meaner, crankier, ruder half of me is glad that I did.