This might sound completely stupid, but during this long period of financial stress I have been unable to quit smoking though I tried several times. Nicotine, I am convinced, is the most addictive substance on the planet. If it were illegal, people would rob, cheat, and kill to get it. They could raise the taxes until it cost $20 a day to smoke, and people would still smoke.

In my defense, I rolled my own which ended up costing me less than $2 a day. If you must smoke, I definitely recommend the roll-your-own route. You can buy one of those machines for $3.99, a hundred filters for a buck, and enough tobacco to last a week for ten bucks. Plus, rolling your own slows you down so you smoke less.

Best not to smoke, though. That's easier said than done.

Once nicotine gets its hooks into you, it won't let go. The standard smoking cessation literature will tell you that your brain unravels the mess within 21 days, but I have never found that to be true. I never feel like the "real me" after quitting. Once I quit for five years, and it wasn't until I started again that life felt normal. Those five years stand out for me as "The Unremarkable Years" or "The Years of Zero Accomplishment." I thought it was a five-year writer's block, but looking back on it, it probably had something to do with my brain not functioning properly due to lack of nicotine. To this day, I still find non-smokers very boring compared to smokers -- and I'm in the process of trying to become a non-smoker. Smoking is a stupid habit. Every smoker knows it. Every smoker also knows how empty life can seem without smokes and how you feel like you've had a lobotomy for weeks, months, even years on end without them.

There's the addiction talking -- trying to get me to rationalize myself into lighting up, but I won't do it because I'm determined to quit this time.

My case might be extreme because my mother smoked when she was pregnant, and both parents smoked. Everybody smoked back in those days, and they smoked everywhere. By the time I started smoking, I already had 16 years of passive smoking under my belt. I've been addicted to nicotine since before I was born.

I've tried everything -- cold turkey, hypnosis, acupuncture, Wellbutrin, Chantix -- and nothing has worked. This time I busted out the heavy artillery -- Wellbutrin AND Chantix -- and it worked pretty well for the first couple days, after which I literally started to go insane. (Any drug that can compete with nicotine for brain dominance is dangerously powerful stuff.) Now I'm cold turkey and I just feel stupid and agitated. It's been five days. I'm going to make it this time, even though I don't see much point in extending this miserable life, even though I'll probably end up spending that $10 a week on something just as bad for me like potato chips or pizza, even though I feel like my quality of life is GREATLY diminished in the absence of tobacco.

Shut up, addiction! You tricky bastard.

I'm going to quit this time, and I suggest you do the same, especially if you're unemployed and not rolling your own. There is no way you can justify the expense, for one thing, and for another you can't afford the risk to your health.