Most of the comments that were posted under my first SLOG, this past Friday, were very supportive of the quitting smoking, thankyewverymuch, but there were a couple concerns that should probably be addressed: why I’m taking The Happy Pills and why I’m trying to lose weight at the same time. After the jump is probably more than you’ve ever wanted to know about both the mind of a smoker and the reasoning behind a man-diet.

I've never been very fond of anti-depressants. I've never taken them and, though my distaste for them doesn't run along the lines of Tom "Shorty McCreepypants” Cruise, I do tend to expect the worst when somebody I know is on them. While I've seen anti-depressants genuinely help some of my friends, I've also seen many use them as a pacifier. So why not use the patch or the gum, as two of my friends are currently doing?
Well, those methods use nicotine. Which is the drug that they're trying to quit. The drug that they're currently addicted to. The reasoning behind those techniques seem to be that the important thing about smoking, to a smoker, is the lighting of a cigarette, and the use of the cigarette as a prop. Well, actually, no, even if that is enjoyable (which is kind of doubtful, considering how few people actually smoke those crappy herbal cigarettes,) the important thing about smoking, to a smoker, is that they are addicted to nicotine and the cigarette is their chosen delivery system. To quit nicotine using nicotine seems a little...suspicious to me, a step closer to falling off the wagon.
The Wellbutrin/Zyban/bupropion works to produce dopamine, which is a chemical that gets released when you smoke. The point of bupropion in smoking cessation is that it fills your dopamine receptors, so that the smoking's physical effects on the brain are essentially useless. Bupropion is kind of like the asshole in the sporty car who steals your parking space: basically, the pleasure caused by smoking is unable to take root in your brain. And then, after you've quit, the anti-depressant properties are supposed to lessen the withdrawal symptoms. In which case, I would really be feeling like shit right now, because my spine is about to curl up into a tight spiral and I have to pause for ten or fifteen minutes between typing each of these sentences, because I currently have the attention span of a crystal meth-addled puppy. I'm planning on taking The Bupe (as I've just now nicknamed it) for a month.
As to the weight loss: The thing about replacing one's urges for a cigarette with chocolate or gum or lutefisk or whatever is that you're replacing one craving for another, which gives credence to the initial craving. The "need” for a cigarette, you understand, is a symptom of withdrawal from cigarettes. If you eat every time you go through withdrawal, you're paying homage to the craving. The goal, it seems to me, is to not replace the craving at all, but to recognize the craving as withdrawal and to work your way through it. I want to see if I can replace the craving with healthy eating patterns, which is actually the more embarrassing thing for me to be admitting in public.
This book seems to me to be the most helpful in identifying why people are smokers and how they should quit; it's not perfect, but it is the best book available, and has cured one of my friends with a decades-long habit. Also, apparently, it's cured Anthony Hopkinsand Ellen DeGeneres of their smoking habit. Which, you know, is just...great.
More tomorrow, after I've completed my first full day of being a non-smoker.