Rambling thoughts with gratuitous references to Alice's Restaurant and Star Wars.

We all have our story. and we like to share them. We've quit smoking, we've cut down our nicotine intake, we're cleaner, healthier... We've rehabilitated ourselves. and we're proud of it. We have every right to be.for many of us our success comes after years of failed attempts.

So we share our stores
Sometimes it's just adding a signed cigarette pack to the wall at your favorite B&M to show that we quit.

Other times it's more like the story of the Alice's Restaurant Massacre, With Full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all 

and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, did you ever Go to court?" And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten Colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on The back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want You to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's Where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after Committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly Looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father Rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And They was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the Bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest Father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me And said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench There, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I Said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, And we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, Father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the Bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of Things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it Up and said.

"Kids, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna- Know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing- You-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting- Officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and talked for Forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had Fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there, And I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it Down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the Pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the Other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on The other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the Following words: 

KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?

and that's it isn't it. As smokers we were all made to feel like Group W, and at times it felt as if all that anyone wanted to know, unless they were sitting on the Group W bench with us, was if we had rehabilitated ourselves. well, we have. So why are we still sitting on the Group W bench?

Aw... do you wan't a cookie?

No. We don't. Look, we're not asking anyone to reward us with a cookie just because we quit smoking., and we have cookie flavored vapes if we want the taste of snicker-doodles or chocolate chip... we're just tired of being treated like a wretched hive of scum and villainy. We thought that we had left the Dark Side when we quit smoking. It's a bit disheartening to find that the rules have been changed and our success is met with a frown of disapproval. Although... the more I think about it, my Innoken 134 does look a bit like a lightsabre, and sith lords are cool... so if, from here on out, you'll kindly refer to me as 'Darth Vaper' I'll be far less prickly about the Dark Side thing and the Group W bench.

but let's be clear... when it comes to vilifying ex smokers who switched to vaping your'e being a bit disingenuous. You can worry about our nicotine after you've delt with your sugar addition, and your caffeine addiction. You an criticize its use as a mood stabilizer when you get over your political correctness and also criticize the use of carbamazepine, divalpreoex sodium, gabapentine, lamotrigine, lithium, lurasidone, olanzapine, oxarbazepine, paliperidone, quetiapine, riluzole, risperidone,sodium valproate, topiramate, valproic acid, or ziprasidone (that list quickly got longer than I expected). You can treat us like drug users when you treat everyone that uses the aforementioned addictions and mood stabilizers the same... and everyone that uses alcohol. You can complain about the smell when... wait? what? It can't possibly be about the smell, even if it is, when incense and aromatherapy, and poeple dousing themselves in a gallon of overbearing cologne/perfume becomes illegal, then we can talk about the smell.

I would like to be able to walk down the street or sit outside and enjoy a vape without someone going into some sort of epileptic interpretive dance convolution as they try to wave away a few wisps of vape cloud. ...and it is a few wisps, I'm an off-the-shelf coil, tank using vaper. Every time I encounter someone treating us like we're blowing clouds of pure evil what I really want to do is yell "fuck off you teetotaling twat", well, that or force-choke them.