I’m pretty ambivalent about being addicted to $60 nicotine gum.

I mean, on the one hand, chewing this gum lessens the chance that my lower jaw will fall off, generally calms my nerves about my lower jaw falling off and gives me a real nice buzz and reason to exist for about ten minutes every morning after my cup of coffee.

Conversely, cessation is expensive, my spit is a nuclear yellow 30 minutes after the chewing experience and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve got ribbed for pulling nicotine gum out at a party. Every weekend night, I’ll see a window at a party where everyone is preoccupied with their drinks or discussion or busy flaunting their socially acceptable nicotine products, and I’ll dig in my pocket and unwrap a piece of gum as quickly and quietly as possible.

But despite my cleverest intentions, sometimes when I’m really tight, someone will catch me. Sometimes people are just confused and think I’m rocking the new 5 gum to stimulate my senses, but most of the time I get the “Is that fucking nicotine gum?” or “You fag, Maus.”

I even turned to my own health insurance for help. About two months ago, three giant boxes of nicotine gum came for free as long as I worked through the whole traumatic experience with a Quit Coach. For a while there I was riding like a champion on a wave of off-white tablets batting away unknown numbers that were assuredly my Quit Coach, but now the end of that treasure trove is in sight and that’s why I feverishly wrote this. Quit Coach, where are you now?

I wish the stuff wasn’t so expensive, but what else can you expect besides leathery, overpriced gum when Big Tobacco runs the show? Last weekend I asked my friend who studies pharmacy over a drink if it was hard to synthesize nicotine into products like gum – to see if the production was the reason why it was so expensive – and he replied with a “No dude.”

When I have to direct my frustration somewhere, I just aim it at Joe Camel.

–Joe Maus 

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