I have gone 3 days without a cigarette.

Before that, I went 0-0-1, 0-0-1, two days without in a row followed by a day of 1 morning cigarette.

Poverty has certainly helped me to quit smoking, although I wouldn’t recommend that route to smoking cessation for everyone. It has certainly worked wonders for me. Poverty has also caused me to cut down on the number of hours lived in a day. 24 hours is much too many to be poor and awake, so I try to sleep at least 12, sometimes up to 14 hours a day. I can’t afford to be awake much longer than that.

You’d be amazed what I can accomplish in my sleep, though.

In addition to not smoking while asleep, I have been quite productive.

Lucid dreaming is a much more frequent occurrence.

I have even taken on some students attempting to teach them how to fly. I told one of my students to just lift up her legs, but she refused, screaming at me that she would certainly fall. I demonstrated the leg lifting technique several times to her to no avail. I guess you can’t fail if you don’t try.

And we were starting average human height from the ground. It wasn’t like I was asking her to throw herself from a cliff~~ as I have done now several times since becoming too impoverished to stay awake the normal number of hours.

There are some interesting characters one meets when one is forced to sleep too much.

I’ve met enough of them lately to lend credence to my theory that dreaming is more important to our collective human experience than it is given credit for. I have much more freedom when I am asleep than awake, especially lately.

Maintaining a regimen with 12-14 hours of sleep every 24-hour cycle has been the single most useful exercise to keep me from smoking.

It’s difficult to light a cigarette while asleep and even harder to smoke it. The second most useful tool has been Nicorette gum. It has the same nasty aftertaste as a cigarette, tricking my mind into believing that I just smoked.

The few cigarettes I have had have been disappointing and nonclimactic enough to make the effort of attempting to acquire cigarettes just that much more unappealing.

It’s one thing when society frowns on smoking. It’s quite another thing when you spend 12 hours in the pursuit of a cigarette to have the smoking of it be a gigantic letdown. Nicorette gum also comes with the fun side effect of a temporary case of the hiccups, which is quite entertaining.

The heatwave is the third best factor in hindering my quest for cigarettes.

It’s just too darn hot outside to bother going out there to get any. So, for nearly a week now, I have held onto the same $8 I have set aside for a pack of uninspiring cough sticks. It’s amazing how much $8 is when you have nothing that you need to buy. $8 hasn’t lasted a week for me since I was 16 years old (39 years ago).

The daily delight that my dad takes every time I don’t ask my wickedly evil stepmother for a cigarette is the fourth most influential factor keeping me from smoking.

I like to see him smile and prefer to be on his good side in his eternal toxic war with her. Every day that I don’t smoke is another arrow in his quiver to fire at her and her stubbornness. He is just as stubborn but in the right in this particular battle. I am enjoying being his consistent second choice among people he blames for his not so crappy life.

Related to the fourth factor is that my wickedly evil stepmother is looking more and more like the stereotypical wickedly evil stepmother every day.

Her long, disheveled gray hair and the accompanying cough of someone who has smoked for 50 years just solidifies that stereotype while making smoking seem all that much more unappealing.

I don’t know if I will succeed in my efforts to quit, but I am slowly coming to realize the benefits of not smoking.

My voice is noticeably stronger, louder, and clearer than before. My blood pressure seems lower, and although I still have no income, I have the same $8 that I had last week.
Even in my increasingly lucid dreams where I could easily smoke a cigarette, I seem to be much more interested in the pursuit of hot dream sex than smoking.

That says something.

Smoking Cessation, Poverty and Lucid Dreaming was originally published in ILLUMINATION on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.