On quitting smoking & kissing pretty girls
Unhoused Update Day 3
This will be a short one (update: I lied). I woke up a little bit hung over (hot trans girls bought me drinks last night), I’m tired, I haven’t showered yet, and I’ve spent most of my creative energy today on other projects.
I am excited to share I will be launching a pilot program for a new service beginning next month. I’ll have a video and more information up as soon as I can!
Even though I am now homeless, I feel much more deeply aligned with my life, my values, and my soul’s mission. One indicator of this is that I was able to successfully quit smoking in all forms in December. I’ve known for a long time that habit was holding me back, along with the people associated with it.
I started vaping nicotine in 2023, and it was one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made. Instant addiction, and harder to kick than weed ever was. I started smoking weed in 2020 and it was a big part of my life until recently.
Around the end of 2024 however, I got a clear message from my spiritual guides that it was time to let go of smoking. It took me a year of increasingly severe heart palpitations, severe vertigo, and difficulty breathing to listen to their prompting. Smoking was killing me slowly, and I rode that line as hard as I could for as long as I could. Historically, I’m the kind of person who tends to avoid changing until it’s forced on me by external factors. This is why I’ve become such an avid student of transformation—it’s historically been hard for me to enact change in my own life.
Aside from the obvious detriments to physical health, smoking and vaping were keeping me in a holding pattern in my personal development. Specifically, those habits were helping me maintain stasis around wounding in my voice.
What I’ve learned over the years is that addiction is self-medication for unconscious suffering, and the medication we choose tends to be close to the wound. For example, I tend to overeat when I feel hungry for relational intimacy—which “feeds” the lower chakras in the belly and abdomen. I smoked to substitute for using my voice and expressing myself authentically—which is associated with the throat chakra.
While a smoking cessation aid was suuuper helpful for getting me off nicotine (it took me about a week on Chantix), practicing consistent and authentic self-expression is what has helped me sustain a smoke-free life (both weed and nicotine).
I went to a queer bar last night with my friends. The last time I was there, I was smoking cigarettes outside all night, yet I was also incredibly antisocial. The instant I arrived last night, those memories came back and I was instantly craving. I immediately told my friends, “Do not under any circumstances offer me anything to smoke, even if I ask when I’m not sober later”. It worked, and leaving not having smoked (even while some of my friends were smoking) felt like a big win.
I was drinking, of course. For one, my spirit guides said quit smoking, not quit drinking. I trust them. For two, strict sobriety standards feel puritanical to me, and alcohol has never been an issue for me like smoking has. My body can’t handle much alcohol (especially after starting HRT), so I’ll be throwing up in the bathroom before I ever black out, and I hate throwing up. So, it’s a lot easier to self-regulate my alcohol consumption.
That being said, drinking makes me want to smoke. But instead, last night I focused on authentic self-expression. Namely, letting a more confident version of me out to play, making conversation with new people, and approaching the blonde girl with defiant, sultry eyes, in low rise jeans and a black crop top that said “I <3 emo girls”, who dominated the pool tables all night, and asking her what it felt like to kiss someone who had a split tongue. (Spoilers: she showed me. no regrets.)
It was so much more rewarding and enjoyable than a nic buzz that hits so hard I can barely breathe or stand up for the next hour.
Self-expression (and trusting myself enough to know how and when to do so) has been one of the most challenging life lessons I’ve learned, at extremely high costs to my own well-being. If there’s one mistake of mine that I wish you, dear reader, could learn from, it would be shutting up to make other people happy. Be a bitch if you have to be, but speak your truth. In the long-term, the cost of expressing your authentic self is way lower than the cost of being fake.
Like I told the cutie I brought to the bar on a leash, “use your words”. It’ll change your life. We are all powerful beings, but if we silence ourselves or cater our voices for others’ comfort, it’s like having a million bucks in the bank but never swiping your card for anything. A closed mouth never gets fed, as they say. Using your voice is how you cash in on your personal power. And as I’m sure you can tell, I’m learning that can be a lot of fun. It doesn’t always have to be serious (looking first and foremost at myfuckingself as I say this). Sometimes, it’s just about making healthier choices and asking pretty girls for a kiss.
OwO is me