It's all leveled out / The Chantix Diaries

The Chantix Diaries

Day number:  I've lost track, have no idea
Night number:  It's a mystery to me

So at this point I'm not really sure what to say?  When I began writing the Chantix Diaries I had planned to document each day what I experienced the day and night before and I was off to a pretty good start.  Well I stayed on schedule for one whole day and that's not too bad for me as I'm pretty much a screw up in general.  After my second post and rave reviews from the two prior posts, the wild ride of the medicine began to wane.  The dreams the first few nights were wild as hell and the detailed memories of them can only be described like if you closed your eyes and someone hit the play arrow and you watched it again like a movie.  I'm not experiencing that any longer.  Now I awake and find my first thoughts are of me desperately trying to remember what I dreamed of at all.

I was told by the doctor to do half the dose for a while and let it build up in my system so as not to hit me like a 2 x 4 to the side of the head.  I was warned that if I were to begin the medicine the way it is prescribed, the side effects could be so rough that I, like a great many people, would immediately stop taking it and just continue to smoke.  Smoking for me is not an option any longer so I followed his directions.  With each dose that I took, I found myself nervous.  I would swallow it and think to myself, "is this when the lunacy begins?"  Now I'm up to taking the medicine as prescribed because I am not getting any benefit from it that I notice.  The only thing that I am experiencing is the stomach pain and a fart here and there.  I never thought that I would say this but, I miss the "SUPER FARTS" and I can't believe it.  Yesterday was the first time that I started taking the medicine twice a day and hardly a fart is to be found!  Diane on the other hand is extraordinarily happy about this!

So now I've leveled out on the effects of this shit and I can't believe that in a way, I'm disappointed about it.  Who knows, I'm still only at half of the full dose so maybe I'm jumping the gun here and in 3 days when I start the full dose I'll be on here bitching again.  I'm still nervous about what this shit will do to my mind and how it may twist it, but for the most part and with all that I've read about how it affects the mind with depression and suicidal thoughts all I can say is that I feel as if I'm having the opposite reaction to it, go figure!  I do still find myself to be irritated at times rather quickly but that goes away pretty quick as well.

So this post really isn't that funny, what can I say, they can't all be side splitters but it is in the spirit of the blog, brutally honest.  I was told once by a long time stand up comic that you don't always have to be funny, you just have to be interesting and informative and that is what I try to do here with Jack Shit's World.

Until we see each other on the road again;

Keep the wind in your face,
Tits in your back and
The Man Off Your ASS!

Your Friend,
Jack Shit

Ass of FIRE! The Chantix Diaries

THE CHANTIX DIARIES

DAY 4
NIGHT 3

Well I've not died yet, I've not killed anyone yet and I have not felt like killing myself yet so I guess one would or rather could say, I'm off to a hell of a start!  The dreams have not been as wildly vivid and seemingly as long as the first night but they've still been a pretty wild ride.  If you did not catch the first post in this series, just below the photo on top of the blog page there are two tabs, one reads "home" the other "The Chantix Diaries", there you can read in pretty great detail the dream I had and what happened within hours of taking the first dose.  So now if you haven't read it yet, I would suggest hopping over there, checking it out and then clicking back over to this post to continue on.  If you are up to date on the first post, then by all means read away.

I was warned by the doctor that it would be a smart move to break the dose in half and begin that way so up until yesterday I was on the equivalent of 1/4 dose.  Since nothing in the opening line of this post had occured, I thought, "why listen to that silly doctor, nothing bad has happened, I must be immune to this shit"!  So I doubled up!

Chantix lesson number one that I've learned in this process is what I believe will be an important one to remember!  DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT if you ever decide to go on this medicine, eat MEXICAN FOOD at 11pm!  As one might imagine what Mexican food does to the insides of us GRINGOS, but now imagine what it does to us GRINGOS whose bodies are just getting use to a medicine that the most reported side effect is stomach pain or upset stomach?  Each night since I began this, I lay in bed hoping to fall asleep while trying to stay awake over an uneasy feeling of the "unknown".  Last night was the first time that all I wanted to do was fall asleep and I didn't care what the dreams brought!  As I lay down I could feel my stomach pain coming on.  You know when you are absolutely famished and your belly feels so empty that you think it's going to cave in?  That is what it feels like to me at least.  I sat around a campfire last night with a pharmacist and ran down what I've experienced so far and he just laughed at me.  Nice bedside manner right?  I also ran down some side effects that he had yet to ever hear about, so I've got that going for me!  Anyway, back to laying in bed and the pressure building up in my gut and the gale force winds blowing straight out of my ass!  I was sort of rolling around and pulling my knees up into fetal position and then pushing them straight and then rolling to the other side.  I had the added bonus having my mouth fill with acid virtually simultaneously with the anus RATTLING farts, so that was super cool!  I've been experiencing what one could only consider a 60 hour long fart!

Oh my my, I nearly forget to mention the true gift that comes from all this farting.  I've got so much room on my side of the king size bed now!  I need it for all the rolling around I do throughout the night but mostly I have that extra room because Diane is laying as far away as possible from me with her extra pillow over her head and the down comforter pushed so tightly around her that no air can pass through it.  I believe that it may work and no air passes through but apparently GOD AWFUL SMELL OF DEATH is not considered air because she just can't seem to get away from that.  Have you ever seen your dog right after it farts and it looks back at its own ass like "wow, did that come out of me"?  Almost immediately, the dog gets up and just walks out of the room leaving that dead goat smell for you     to savor.  Well I'm not the dog so I don't get out of bed and go foul another room, but I am very much like the dog when I actually look down at my ass and think "that could not have just come out of me" and before I even have a moment to ponder that question it is answered by the next rolling wave of stomach pain and chemical warfare emitting from my already sore from the violent vibrating sphincter! My asshole is shaking so hard that there is no way that it's not burning calories from the workout, so hey, got that going for me too!

I won't even get into the most recent dreams because they were not as amazing as my evening fighting lions on the back patio of TT's Roadhouse here in Arizona with nothing more than a bar stool.  I will say that I had no idea that when you are up in Payson and it is freezing cold and snowing like a son of a bitch out front of the house, if you want to go for a ride on the bikes, all you have to do is walk out the back door of the house where the bikes are lined up and sitting out in the bright Az sunshine!  Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't ask, it gets insane from here on out!  I will add however that the most amazing idea that I've ever had for a television show came to me that night courtesy of my hosting friends I love and one epic piece of shit in my dreams!  I'll let you know how that goes!

So tomorrow I begin taking the medicine twice a day, the only thing that I look to the heavens and pray for is that my ass can handle all of this.  Okay, not the only thing I can ask for.  I'm also gonna ask that Diane does not become so completely and totally disgusted by me that our new sleeping arrangements last any longer than they have to!

Until we see each other on the road again;  Have a happy, healthy and safe new year's eve everyone!  I've cancelled all plans, I'm just not up to hosting a party and for that matter, I'm not even up for going to one so it looks like it will be just Diane and your pal Jack just burning a hole in the couch from his epic ass of fire!

Keep the wind in your face,
Tits in your back
and The Man Off Your ASS!

Your friend,
Jack Shit

All Great Runs Must End!

Every day in life we are forced to make decisions, some simple and some truly epic, many of which we don't even realize we are making, they just become second nature for your mind to make them on its own.  Other decisions can be monumental and the choice you make will have tremendous effect on the lives of all those around you.  Just as they say that dropping a pebble in the ocean in Australia can cause a tsunami in Hawaii, I believe this theory.  Every thing we do, whether we like it or not has a direct effect on those that surround us.  In my 44 years I've made some of the best decisions that a human being could possibly have made and on the flip side of that coin I've made some of the worst as well.  I won't get into listing all the good and I'm sure as hell not going to list ANY of the bad!  If you know me, then you probably have a good idea of what these were and if you know me well enough, you probably had a hand in helping me to make those bad decisions!  A single choice we make 10 - 20- 30 years ago that seemed so insignificant at the time can lead to catastrophic results later on down the line.  This is why now, as I grow fatter with each passing day and not giving a great flying fuck about the next for so very long, I choose to make a decision that will hopefully bring me many "next days" for a long, long time.  I've lived my life at throttle wide open, scraping a knee in turns, balls to the wall and one foot in the grave for the better part of my life.  It seemed the more dangerous the activity, the stronger my attraction was to it.  The sole fact that there was really no way to determine exactly what the outcome of a decision would be pushed me faster towards making that decision with a devil may care attitude.  The problem with running with one foot in the grave is that eventually you slow down a bit and realize that you no longer have one foot in the grave but you've sank all the way to the knee or even mid thigh and the thrill of it all begins to take a back seat to the reality of it all and better yet, THE GRAVITY of it all.

A month or so ago, those of you who are friends with me on face book or those of you who subscribe may remember me making a post asking about Chantix and asking people to offer up their first hand experiences with it.  That post quite possibly may be the most commented on post that I've ever put up and the response was an overwhelmingly bad one at that!  The stories that I read and the comments that were posted were enough to scare the living shit out of me and I don't scare off often nor easy!  I realized that if I wanted to quit smoking I was going to have to do it on my own and I would begin by cutting down and then walking away from it all once and for all!  Well I have cut down but you know what?  That insignificant decision that I made 30 years ago when that friend said try this and I did may be coming back to haunt me.  I also realized that nicotine patches are not only expensive but a total crock of shit.....   I could have stuck them to my eyeballs and not felt a damn thing.  I also realized that I don't have the willpower that I once had and that 30 year habit was quite a bit stronger than I had ever imagined.  The funny thing is that it is not for me as much about the smoke as it is the smoking.  Does that make sense to anyone?  Get in the car, light a smoke.  Finish eating, light a smoke.  Wrap up some sweet, sweet love making, light a smoke.  Wrap up some awful love making ( my fault of course) and you guessed it, light up a smoke!!!!  The time has come and I realized that I could not do it on my own and I don't have ten years of trying to quit, quitting and then starting right back up again and repeating this shit over and over.  I HAVE TO GET A HOLD OF THIS NOW AND DO IT RIGHT and pay the price and hopefully, I won't have all the awful reactions and side effects that everyone told me about.  I filled my prescription for Chantix and today, I took my first dose!

What I decided to do was document this process and hope that it gives me strength to push through and stay clean if you will.  If I don't cut these fucking things out of my life, I may not have a life anyway!  I'm not ready to go anywhere so my decision has been made.  I just hope Diane doesn't kill me in the process.  So what I'm going to do is right here and right now create "THE CHANTIX DIARIES" and keep track of what happens to me while taking it and share it with you all and hope that maybe if it goes well for me, then it may help one of you to quit.  If it goes bad for me, I'll know just when it happened and if it goes really, really bad for me, perhaps I can at the very least use the Diaries as part of my defense!  So look forward to the one thing that you will always get from me without fail, brutal honesty!  No matter what happens, good, bad, success or failure, you will know it and you will share that shit with me!

So let's begin;

Dear Chantix Diary, someone told me that when you take YOU, there is a chance that it will upset the stomach.  Today with my first dose, which I cut in half by the way hoping to build up slowly in my system before going full on into Chantix insanity, I began to experience a bit of pressure in my belly.  As I sat on the couch, lap top open and on, I could feel a less than comfortable sensation and it would rise and fall like a roller coaster.  I had to go with Diane to our nieces town home to drop off some material for her construction that is going on that Diane could not carry herself.  While carrying in the box of tile I felt that roller coaster climbing to the top again.  Once I carried in the vanity top, I began to feel that coaster racing down hill and into its first loop!  Diane had gone up stairs to check on the bathroom.  Now understand, the place is empty except for material and tools and when I tell you there was nothing to deaden the sound I mean there was nothing to deaden the sound!  I let out what quite possibly be the most powerful, longest lasting, strangest sounding fart of my life!  Now we have a running joke around here that my farts don't smell, my feet don't smell and even after working outside in the AZ desert heat and not showering, I DON'T SMELL but God made up for it by giving me a child size penis!!!  Oh well, at least I don't stink right?  I've got that to be thankful for right?  Well let's just say I use to have that to be thankful for!  Not only in what seemed to be a split second after the actual rocket propelled fart ended and my anus began to feel like someone had jammed the neck of a broken bottle straight up my ass from my sphincter vibrating so hard did I realize that in all my life, all the food that I've eaten, all the partying that I've done, I've never in my life had a fart smell like this!!!  The smell filled the entire first floor of a town home instantly!  The place was engulfed!  It was as if the enemy had just released chemical weapons upon us!  I was both ashamed and oddly proud in that moment!  Diane came down the steps and said "holy shit, was that you or is there a dead hooker in the closet"?  I said "yes, it was me and no dead hooker in the closet, I think there is one in my ass"!  Now I have not farted again since this relationship changing fart and for that I am grateful but one has to wonder, if this was half the dosage on the very first day, only hours after taking the first dose, what the hell do I have in store for me?

So that was it, my first Chantix Diary post.  I don't know what making this decision will bring to me or what effect it will have but whatever it will be, it will be right here on this silly friggin blog!  The reason that I used the photo at the top of this post was because I'm hoping it will be the last drawing, photo or video ever taken of me with a smoke in my hand!  Wish me luck!  Thank you Ms. Pinky Pancake from Sacred Skin Tattoo for the drawing, I love it!

Until we see each other on the road again;

Keep the wind in your face,
Tits in your back and
The Man Off Your ASS!

Your friend,
Jack Shit