A love song to the filth we left behind

And the desperate crushing sadness of becoming more sensible

Photo by Altin Ferreira on Unsplash

I quit vaping a few months ago. I'm not very happy about it.

Honestly I'm not sure why I'm writing this. I suppose some of the recommendations might help someone who is trying to break an addiction. But mostly I want to talk about something which people never really speak about: the sense of loss that comes from quitting an addiction. We sing the praises of abstinence and self-discipline - two highly overrated qualities, in my opinion - yet we never mention that life without addictive drugs is simply less fun. It is riddled with these tiny perforations, these desperate little holes, barely noticeable, which serve to slowly leech the joy out of things.

The key to quitting a drug is to neutralise the associations. Obviously this is harder for heavy drugs than it is so for more moderate ones, but the principle is always the same. Your brain has formed very strong neural connections between certain activities and the drug. You must break them.

I've never tried a drug I didn't like, but the one which caused me the most difficulty was actually cannabis - precisely the drug you're told you can't get addicted to. Actually cannabis in general is probably more harmful than we make out. It's a wonderful drug which can enhance your life in any number of ways, but if you develop the wrong relationship with it it'll suck the energy and purpose right out of you. I've seen vital, dynamic people become a shadow of their former self, joylessly restarting their game on Playstation for the rest of their life, some intangible light within them dwindling in the smoke-filled air.

I didn't have that problem with it. I smoked cannabis every day for 15 years and my career and personal relationships were fine. But about a decade ago I decided I wasn't enjoying it anymore and I should stop. That turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated.

There was probably a two year gap between my decision to quit and my accomplishment of it. Those were not good years. Doing a drug when you no longer want to is humbling at the best of times. Doing weed when you've decided it's not for you is an exercise in self-hate. Every night the same: the anticipation of the spliff, the ritual of rolling it, the initial hit of nicotine from the tobacco, then the wave of the drug, and the ensuing disappointment with yourself, which you can experience at length through cannabis' slowing effect on time.

I began to suspect that the spliffs were the addiction rather than the weed itself. I therefore had to neutralise the association between the delivery mechanism and the drug. I bought a dry vape. Then I set myself a generous rule. The rule was that I could smoke as many spliffs as I liked. I was not aiming to quit, let alone setting a deadline to do so. But I promised myself to do a hit of the dry vape before I was allowed a joint. Just that. Just that one rule.

It worked. Once I had that hit of the vape, it removed my desire for the spliff. I was stoned and my throat was satisfied. The need for the joint was gone. I carried on getting stoned for another week or so and then just dropped it. Once the drug experience was detached from the delivery mechanism, the whole problem ceased. My real addiction was to the joint - probably to its nicotine, certainly to its ritual and associations, and perhaps also to its weird slovenly mystique.

All successful quitting attempts involve the rupture of associatory chains. We all know the cigarette triggers. Even non-smokers do: coffee, sex, a wait at the bus stop, a glass of wine, the conclusion of a meal. A couple of years after I quit smoking, long after all the difficulties had passed, I got a powerful sudden need to smoke. Where did that come from, I wondered. And then I realised: I was at my first wedding since I quit.

Nicotine has a way of breaking free from whatever limitation you place on it. You think that you associate it with a handful of activities, but soon enough it'll embed itself into any aspect of your life available and demand that you define it by virtue of its presence.

One of the most useful things I read about addiction was in Allen Carr's stop-smoking book, when he spoke about that sense smokers have of a cigarette making a moment complete. I can only really enjoy this sunset, you think, if I have a cigarette. It's a kind of madness that only a craven addict would believe. Humans have been enjoying sunsets since time immemorial. They did not need nicotine to make the experience peak. But it's a little devil, that drug, and it'll convince you of its necessity in the strangest of circumstances.

I quit cigarettes years ago, then took up vaping. Late last year I concluded that vaping had also become a bit of a problem. The issue was lockdown. I had been working from home for so long that there was no point in the day when I was prevented from vaping. I could do it from the moment I sat at my desk to work. And I did. I would estimate that, towards the end there, probably one in four of my waking breaths involved inhaling vape into my lungs. I was an absolute fiend for that shit.

Given how much I was doing it, I associated vaping with pretty much everything. I was even vaping, relatively subtly, in cinemas and planes. But the core association I needed to break was work - specifically the act of typing or reading. As long as that association held I was in trouble, because it's how I spend the vast majority of my time.

I told myself I could start vaping at noon then set the deadline for one hour later each week, every week, until I reached 7pm. This meant I would only be vaping once the laptop and books had been safely put away. Importantly, I would also substitute the drug by taking nicotine pouches during the day - these small mint flavoured pockets you stick in your upper lip. What worked with cannabis worked here: weaning myself off a drug by satisfying the craving while swapping the delivery mechanism. This is the locus of the associations and the most important link to shatter.

Incidentally, those nicotine pouches will smack the fucking life out of you. They look all demure, but they're vicious little bitches. They'll serve you that nicotine on a large marble tray and then twat you in the face with it. They're very good and quite useful.

I also made a third rule, which I would later regret. I told myself to drop vaping when I got ill. That's the moment you're looking for, really. Your throat is sore, you feel dreadful, you don't really want a vape, you just do it for the addiction. That's the easiest moment to drop it. Annoyingly, I got ill two or three weeks after I reached that 7pm marker and that was it. Snap. I had quit vaping.

The weeks since that event have been primarily informed by diminution - a modest, micro-dosed prescription of loss. You get off the Tube and subconsciously experience a sense of anticipation for the vape you'll have when you leave the station. Then you remember that you don't get to do that anymore.

I have come to curse every association I allowed to develop with vaping. I curse the day I vaped while walking, because that was another association I had to defeat. I cursed the day I vaped with coffee, because that was one more. Everything is particularly difficult now, because of the weather. The sun reminds me of vaping. Drinking outside reminds me of vaping. A whole host of associations have emerged with the changing of the seasons.

Nicotine is a very particular kind of drug. It is, in a way, the ultimate drug, because it has such a limited psychological effect. Obviously it perks you up a bit, but it does not fundamentally alter your mood like alcohol or ecstasy. The only real pleasure it offers is the relief of the addiction it has itself provided. Obviously that makes no sense. To non-addicts it will sound completely mad, a circular logic of self-harm. But honestly it is very pleasant: a light sense of tension and relief, operating throughout the day, giving you these little euphoric bumps. An entirely sensual element to your life, complete with constant subtle rewards. Cultivating an addiction specifically to relieve it is its own form of delight.

Now that the associations are mostly gone, I notice something else about myself. I always felt that things weren't quite enough. Like the default factory setting of life was somehow a little disappointing. Not bad, just insufficient - as if Sainsbury's built a smartphone.

The Japanese have a phrase: kuchisabishii. It means your mouth is lonely. You want to be doing something with it - eating, drinking, smoking. Not for the flavour, or the need, but simply for want of something. I'm experiencing this quite intensely at the moment. But I think more generally it's at the heart of my relationship to most drugs: a sense that things might just peak if they had one small addition. That things are not at their best, but could be brought to that level with a modest alteration. An intangible, indefinable need for something abstract that might be temporarily alleviated if you keep on putting shit in you.

I've noticed the same with smokers and vapers my whole life. I used to love going outside to smoke because I would usually like whoever I met out there. We were always slightly alike: bit manic, bit needy, bit dry, bit naughty, with a lightly concealed sense of yearning and a willingness to prioritise short term gain over long term health. All the best people were always smoking outside the pub.

I see the same with friends who like to drink hard. We recognise each other. Most people in the room will be conscious of when they want to stop. But certain pals will gun that bottle of wine without restraint. ‘Ah’, you think, ‘you're one of mine’. Someone who doesn't necessarily think of sobriety as the greatest state and is rather interested in what we will discover if we journey away from it at speed.

The older I get, the more these pleasures fade away. I am very boring now. I am Choosing Life. I am quite literally choosing a fucking big television, low cholesterol and good health. I eat salads and I worry about how much fibre I'm getting. I own two separate objects which measure my health. Sometimes in restaurants I look at the calorie count on food and make my decisions accordingly. I have said the phrase 'gut-microbiome' without wanting to jump out a fucking window. I am, to a considerable extent, the person I once hated.

I was jogging in the park the other day when I saw a bunch of teenagers smoking a joint on the grass. I wanted to shout at them: 'This isn't really me, you know. I'm one of you really. I hate the joggers too. They're wankers.' So absurd. But the feeling was very strong. Instead, I ran on, oppressively sober, panting my way towards longevity. I wanted to be on the grass with friends, saying something silly, laughing too much at something I'd forgotten, going to the corner shop and getting paranoid that someone was staring at me.

Outside of these moments of foolishness, I am perfectly happy. But I feel the loss of my previous naughtiness. I feel its absence and, more pertinently, the reduction in my sense of self by virtue of its absence. That's what it is: not just an alteration, but a reduction, in the same way that I would be reduced, in a minor but tangible way, if I had never been to Paris. It is a part of myself which is now gone. And now, without it, I feel like I am a less complex sight. I have fewer angles and those that remain are of more predictable dimensions.

If you go on social media, half the posts are about living an alcohol free life and building muscle mass. If you read a glossy magazine, many of the features will be about living healthily and losing fat. And that's all fine. That's perfectly sound. But it would be nice if we occasionally mention the downside. If we were honest about the sense of loss that comes with quitting an addiction. The poverty of being sensible, alongside its riches.

Odds and sods

This week's i column was on the betrayal of Ukraine by the coward Donald Trump. He is a fucking godforsaken pig of a man and my hatred for him grows by the day.

Both episodes of our Origin Story two-parter on Partition are now out. This is probably the most work we've done on a subject. It's endlessly complicated, but also there's a heavy moral obligation to try to get everything exactly right, which is impossible.

I think it's the most important subject we've ever done. It is a story that can unite the nations which were involved - Britain, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh - and the people who come from them. But it can only do that if we are prepared to have an honest conversation about it, which almost no-one is. For all the talk of empire, we are seemingly incapable of describing a tragedy in which the British empire is culpable, but not entirely responsible. No-one wants that kind chat. They want the empire to be entirely justifiable - an insane view - or to blame it for everything, which is a more sensible view, but still a simplistic one.

Also, and this seems a good moment to say it: Gandhi really is a super freaky guy. He comes out of it well at the end, but there is an awful lot of very disturbing paedo Hitler-love before we get there. Here’s one clip, to give you a flavour.

And here’s another…

I watched Hoard this week - a small British indie by the disgustingly young writer/director Luna Carmoon. It is the first film I've experienced for a long time that I approached primarily through my sense of smell. That film reeks. It's as if it's seeping through the screen. There's also this grubby, beautiful, reprehensible tactility to it, a way of communicating through tensed muscles and scrunched toes and tears in bin bags. It reminded me of that quote by Orsen Welles about how he could only make Citizen Kane because he had no idea how to make a film.

(Incidentally, and this is off point, but I really do encourage you to check out that clip in full. He's fucking magnificent: Half-cut, clammy brow, bulging eyes, baritone voice, great wafts of cigar, utterly authentic, utterly real, utterly unapologetic, a great hulking triumph of a man.)

Needless to say, Hoard is not as good as Citizen Kane. But it is the work of someone who does not know what they do not know and therefore has no fear. It is all the things you want a film to be when you see something from a new British talent. It is the kind of film that would kick you to death in an alley without thinking twice about it later. It's the kind of film that will leave traces on you afterwards, dangerous signifiers of a terrible encounter. It's a film that has things to say about the extent to which we are made, at an early age, well before we are able to know what's happening, and cannot entirely unmake ourselves from what follows at that moment. It's about what it is to be free, and how that can come from an acceptance of what you are as well as a defiance of it. It will put a cigarette out on your arm and laugh about it afterwards. It is really, really, seriously good.

Finally, please do check out this Blue Sky post. It is the funniest and most charming thing I have seen for some time.

Have a lovely weekend. See you next week. Piss on carpet.