Withdrawal

     I was a smoker on and off from the age of fourteen, and between the ages of 30 and 43 smoking was a full-blown daily habit. Mind you, I was never a four-pack-a-day-er, but one pack a day was certainly something to sneeze (or cough) at. Stress was my excuse, and smoking, so I chose to believe, relieved stress.

     When I accepted God's invitation to religious life, I gave up smoking -- just like that. The fact that I didn't experience any of those terrible withdrawal symptoms I'd always read about, told me I was never really addicted to cigarettes; I was just inexplicably stupid for a very long time. I have never even slightly craved a cigarette since.

     Once in the cloister, I gave up another habit perforce: sodas. My drink of choice for years in secular life was Coke, then, when it came out, Cherry Coke. I drank far more Coke than water or anything else. But in monastic life, soda is a treat reserved for big feast days and picnic days; it is drunk on fewer than ten days out of the year. Did I miss it? At first, yes. But now I'm happy to say that my time in the cloister cured me forever of my soda habit. Now I only drink it in fast food joints, which is to say, not often at all.

     During my recent two-week holiday with family, I was totally without a computer the first week. Did I miss it? Yes, but not sorely. I suspect that, were I deprived altogether of a computer of my own, and in times of necessity had to use someone else's, I wouldn't lament for long, but would adapt quite quickly and relatively painlessly. I would still want to write this blog and check my Facebook and Twitter accounts once or twice a week, but I really wouldn't miss surfing the net for long hours, or playing Word Drop, or doing crosswords online. There are, as my readers know, too many books on my shelves and too many unwritten poems buried somewhere in my mud-and-dry-leaf-encrusted depths, for me to suffer from the want of ways to occupy my mind.

     There was one thing, however, that I did very sorely feel the lack of during my holiday: Frasier. Or, more accurately, the brilliance of David Hyde Pierce. Now that, for me, is a true addiction, and I'm sure I would suffer deep and agonizing withdrawal, were I ever (God forbid) forced to give it up!