Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

they say you are always an alcoholic always
addicted to nicotine that after you cease smoking desist drinking 
each day starts from scratch and when you see someone
else drinking or smoking or
doing those things they do when they need
a drink or smoke
you get that itch in your gut or lips and can't scratch it it
irritates and you twitch and fidget and smell
it and taste it and remember how good it was before it
got bad and then you get kind of distracted
because you know if you keep thinking
about getting some of that good badness back by scratching that
match to light a smoke or knocking back
a shot of alcohol you'll do it—really do it HOLY
SHIT—and then where are you stuck 
back addicted again with a burning throat
and dry eyes and now that you've got a new
ticket on that train quitting was never
more difficult which is why, you see, after what we had we
just can't be friends.

I’ve run into so many ran­dom con­ver­sa­tions about addic­tion late­ly, from the woman at the beach from AA who was hav­ing a cell phone dis­cus­sion with some­one in need of sup­port, to Ask MetaFil­ter threads about cocaine addic­tion, dis­cus­sions on smoke breaks [their smoke break, not mine!] with cowork­ers, to weblog­ger chitchats about quit­ting cigs… that is where this came from. Of course, I still tried to put my own twist on the end. How does it do ya? Any sug­ges­tions?

4 thoughts on “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”

  1. no, no sug­ges­tions at all.

    imho,it’s fuck­ing awe­some adam.

    i met a girl at mich­fest and we talked for over an hour about her addic­tion to alco­hol and drugs, and how it actu­al­ly dom­i­nat­ed a rela­tion­ship she was in. what a chal­lenge it is and you real­ly detailed it nice­ly.

    your “metaphor” (if i may call it such) is quite fuck­ing strong, because unhealthy rela­tion­ships can be just as addict­ing as crack or booze. how frail the human spir­it is when vul­ner­a­ble to addic­tion.

    i think you’ve writ­ten some­thing that is both insight­ful and cre­ative.

    cheers, adam, using a rasp­ber­ry beer that i just had last night, which hap­pened to be the best fuck­ing beer i have ever had thus far in my short beer-drink­ing life! 🙂

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