Cast
Steve: a lifelong addict.

Scene
My name is Steve. (pause) Goddamn newbies. Alright, so I’m here because I’m an addict. Always was, always will be.  I’ve submitted to a higher power over and over but I’m still here. Doing better these days but I’ll never get away.

Discovered what I was in early high school when I took my first drag of a cigarette. “Oy Steve,” my friend Bootleg said. “Got us some fags from my brother.” “Your brother sure does have a surplus of fags,” I replied. I’d just been to maths. I thought that was pretty funny. “I don’t care what you say,” he shot back. “I’m putting this fag in my mouth.”

Bootleg took a drag and handed it to me. I wiped his spit off and took a drag myself. Then another. Then I took the pack off him. Smoking did something my teenage body found itself compelled to repeat. I coughed and choked. It stank and tasted like the ashes from an outdoor barbeque. But I craved it even more than I hated it and I reckon I was addicted before the first exhalation.

After a month or two of smoking as much as I could get my hands on I challenged myself to smoke non-stop for a whole hour. All my mates brought their ciggies along and I didn’t take a single breath without my lips around a cigarette for forty-five minutes. I sat in meditation, eyes closed, slow deep breaths in and slow deep breaths out, over and over again until I woke up in hospital.

No one wants to see their kid smoke so my folks put me through every treatment they could find, from hypnotherapy to patches to lots of yelling. One day dad says to me, “Steve, next time you want to smoke, eat a piece of chocolate. Caffeine’s better for you than nicotine and it tastes a lot less nasty.” He opened the pantry and there was a twenty litre tub of Mars Bars.

I quit smoking and put on eighty three kilos, which made me almost three times my weight. It took a good few months before I no longer craved fags but I was deep in the Mars by then. I’d eat one in almost every class at school and I was actually going to Maccas to get nutrition. Most of the weight came on over the summer holidays and I came back with a body like a spinning top. People my age wouldn’t mess with me but I was a slow-moving target for the older kids.

I have a thick skin. Two older brothers, so I’d been copping their crap since I was a toddler getting pushed into the rose bush out front. These older kids started calling me names and I mostly ignored them, but one guy was particularly in-my-face about it on a regular basis. Told him where to go one afternoon and he says to me, “What you gonna do about it, boom batty?” and he shoves me into a fence. Laughs when one of the palings cracks under my fat arse. Doesn’t laugh so hard when I pick it up and slam it sideways into his knee and watch the joint go about ninety degrees in the wrong direction.

This was a bad move for more than one reason and it was suddenly in my best interests to get in better shape. I hit the gym. Walked for twenty minutes on the treadmill and made it two point two kilometres. Next day I did the same distance in less than nineteen minutes. Did five push ups, which wasn’t too hard on account of the minimal distance between the floor and my gut when I was propped up on my arms. Did ten the next day...
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