So i bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked two. My neighbor was in the store when i bought them and said he was worried about me and offered to buy me a chocolate bar if i would not buy the cigarettes. Then the convenience store owner chimed in, "Because we love you!" It was all very moving and i am grateful but i bought the cigarettes anyways.

I seem to be craving substances more and more since i started withdrawing from benzos. It started innocently enough with caffeine. Then alcohol. Now nicotine.

It's not ideal but i feel it is just a "moment" for the nicotine. I've smoked very briefly, like just for a few days here and there over the years as an adult (55). I smoked for eight months when i was 18 and quit effortlessly. I just get overstimulated and have a few cigarettes, maybe five or ten and then it goes away for a dozen years. It happened in London, England in 1987 and in Kingston, Ontario in 1998 and here in my own city in 2009. It's just a brief maladaptive coping mechanism when i've exhausted all my other methods and life is still going too fast.

This will pass.

I just have to adjust to a lifelong benzo addiction at 2mg Valium and i'll be fine, stop drinking, smoking and be back to my regular self except WITH feelings and not sleeping 14 hours a day. Benzos were ruining my life too. Being in a chemical straight-jacket is no solution.

I just need to indulge for a moment and i will be okay.

Pat got back to me about my silly birthday card and said i was "very thoughtful and a true poet." So that was nice. If she thought it was vaguely sh_!!y it didn't bother her. She's a mom of three so hopefully she thought the child-like quality of it was charming and not amateurish and embarrassing and shameful. I don't think she would lie. She would have just said "Thanks," if she thought it was lousy. She wouldn't go out of her way to say it was "thoughtful" and that i am a "true poet" if she didn't think those things.

I love her!