Numbered days

Apart from the usual way of knowing what day it is, that of the calendar, for the last few days (four to be exact) mine have been numbered separately by a pill packet.  So the 13th was the 1st, 14th the 2nd and so on.   I've yet to look what it was originally designed for - perhaps its current purpose?  A previous drug, withdrawn before me joining this course was apparently designed for depression but had a curious side effect, people didn't want to smoke, and so some bright spark started to issue them as non-smoking pills.  It didn't last.  There were dark mutterings about it on the course.

This drug isn't a nicotine substitute, it changes neurons in the brain (flicks a switch or two) so that the desire to smoke is lost - all you have to do is kick the hand to mouth habit. 

I started in the days when it was still sexy, even though there was plenty of evidence to the contrary, halfway through my childhood.  It was everywhere, the manufactured seductive nature of it screamed out of every screen, of every interaction every day and I became another sucker, inhaling it all along with many others.  

It took me a week of looking at the packet before gaining the courage to begin taking these pills.   Feeling like one of Oliver Sacks' subjects (who knew what miracle might occur?).  One a day (a quarter of the final dose) for the first 3 days, followed by two per day and then two at double the dose from day 8.  You continue to smoke in the first week and set a day to stop for week two.

From day one (the 13th), each night was restless, with plenty of wakefulness and vivid dreaming.  I stopped them Monday (halfway through day 4, still only at quarter the regular dose) after blanking out momentarily in the middle of the day while driving.  Maybe it was a co-incidence but it would be horribly ironic should the thing that's supposed to save me contributed towards my demise instead.  I hadn't realised that I started them on Friday the 13th.