For six straight weeks now, recurring, nicotine enhanced smoking dreams have shaken my world. I struggle through an ever more skewed sleep schedule to separate dreams from reality. I wake almost in a trance, wanting to smoke, yet feeling as though I already have. Nicotine courses through my blood 24 hours a day, delivered by a high-tech transdermal device designed to make my lifestyle more compatible with the moral majority. My biochemistry has taken a turn toward the surreal.
Smoking is cool.
But more important, it's a tremendous pleasure, a forbidden pleasure, especially here in health conscious Southern California. These are the scumbags who invented smoker harassment, who pioneered first non-smoking sections, then outright smoking bans in most indoor places. Now, the effort to ban smoking in all workplaces, including bars, has succeeded. Don't get me wrong. Environmental tobacco smoke definitely needs to be brought under control, the way we worked to eliminate lead based paint and asbestos.