>>>Emily literally yelled at me from the upstairs balcony when we got home. As angry as I have ever seen her. Allie yelled at me this morning.
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>>You need to train the other hand to slap the first one whenever it reaches out to take the glass, and slap it hard. Helped me... with eating, not with smoking. Smoking was easy.
>
>The aggravating thing is I know I can do it. I have been sober most of the time this year. I just haven't gotten to 100% yet.

I'm actually still the same I was most of the time of my life - a stable smoker. It's just not eighteen cigarettes a day, it's eighteen days a cigarette. Though I did keep a zero for a number of months.

My parents were worried that I'd turn to drinking, because I did have the capacity while at college, and a bit after that. But I guess I was lucky to have my gut lose it before my head did, so I'd get sick before I got high, which made it quite unattractive. Then I taught myself how to drink, i.e. start strong, then take a break, then add a little just to keep the atmosphere but never cross the point where I'd go ironic ("throw the irons" - puke) or moronic (say something I'd regret). Then, gradually, the parties grew fewer and farther apart, and nowadays I still have some of dad's moonshine that we brought from home (the most recent trip was two years ago). We even decided to give domestic industry a chance and started trying out the whiskies - at the killing pace of about three bottles a year.

"Drink little, drink good stuff."

At least that was the advertising for "Cezar" vinjak (pronounce vignac - neat trick of Yugoslav distilleries, as name of cognac was protected), and while that thing wasn't bad at all, I rather took the message seriously. Taste matters, experience matters, smell matters, quantity does not. As they say (another Chinese - don't you hate how often they get it right?), "first a man takes a drink, then drink takes a drink, then drink takes the man". Just stay on the left of the first comma, and slap yourself hard when you think you may forget when to stop. There's nothing new in the next glass, it's just more of the same. More is not better, it's just more.