Upon a Monday afternoon, I cross the great equatorial line into Seventy-Two Hours without any form of nicotine. In keeping with the tradition, I am fed nothing edible and broken on some humiliating racks of craving.

At the same time I ‘go back to work’, a laughably easy set of abridged assignments that nevertheless take hours and give me a whinging headache–is it the ridiculous vestiges of my stress reaction to wage slavery, or the screaming of addiction, who knows?

The most interesting thing is that they are offering me a different kind of payout.

It would extend my employer-based health insurance a few months.

But it would torpedo my chances to dip into the only reasonable unemployment system I have seen in forty years of working in this backward state.

So I will risk it, roll the dice on Massie’s Pure Trap Cheese.

With the work behind me there is still light. I could, and want to very much, ride down to the store, get the water, a drive would be

Good for you, liar, liar, addict.

Now it is night.

Tomorrow at this time I will have been rightly locked away for a solid week.

I will be past the four-day mark of zero nic.

The plausible reasons to go out will continue to pile up.

My character will continue to be brutally assessed by God.