World's Weirdest Dreams

I had decided to quit smoking with the aid of Chantix, a prescription drug that comes with a wide array of side effects. It makes smoking taste like the armpit of an unshowered sumo wrestler. It fills you with more gas than the Hindenburg, with similarly explosive results. I even had to divorce my beloved beer, since beer made me want to smoke, and smoking made me want to puke.

Goodbye, my love.

There was one side effect of Chantix, however, that not only was tolerable but entertaining: the dreams. Long, detailed, epic and psychedelic dreams. Dreams that took me to reaches of the universe that I never could have imagined, dreams that reconnected me with hallucinations I haven't experienced since giving up recreational chemistry.

When I was in tenth grade, I used to have this leprechaun stalking me. He wouldn't exactly show up with a map to a pot of gold, but I would always catch him out of the corner of my eye during an epic bender. When I tried to focus on him, he would vaporize into thin air with a burst of maniacal laughter. Well, I was about a week into my Chantix regimen when my leprechaun and I were finally reunited ... in my dreams.

It wasn't the evil leprechaun that disturbed me, it was the assortment of other hallucinations that he brought along with him, along with complete backstories for each of them.

Take, for instance, the Domino's Pizza Noid, who had been laid off shortly after claymation was replaced by CGI graphics, but had planned well for his future and was enjoying retirement in Boca Raton, Florida.

The giant spider did not fare so well. He went to Hollywood and did a couple of B-movies but was unprepared for the sudden wash of fame that hit him after his role in Peter Jackson's Return of the King. Apparently he got swept into the Los Angeles party scene, blew his residual earnings, and turned to drugs after suffering the indignation of having to accept work in a couple of adult films to pay the bills. He's currently residing in the Lindsay Lohan wing of the Betty Ford Clinic.

After catching up with old acquaintances, Chantix tried to set me up with some new ones. One evening, it sent me to Thailand as part of an elite team of commandos charged with killing or capturing Osama bin Laden, who had reportedly infiltrated Pattaya Beach's surfing community. Even though bin Laden had spent most of his life in either a Saudi Arabian desert or the landlocked drought-prone nation of Afghanistan, he was still able to catch a wave while dressed in a water-logged bed sheet.

Another night I dreamt that while under general anesthesia for hemorrhoid surgery, the doctors secretly implanted a chip into my skull to download my brain. Many years later, they placed the chip into a robot so my brain could survive the long trek through space to find a suitable new planet for human existence. I was honored they chose me, but I refused to cooperate until they equipped me with a fully functional bionic winky. They eventually relented and gave me the six million dollar wiener, but it was of little help since there were so few women would could be seduced by a glorified toaster.

There were others, each more bizarre than the last. I dreamed I walked in on Barbara Walters playing strip poker with Al Roker. I dreamt that I had been impregnated by the creature from the Alien movies, which was probably induced by the gas that was clawing and mauling its way out of my intestines each night. I also had a dream that I was campaigning for president with Janet Reno and horrifically, the term "running mate" had a far more literal definition.

That last one should have been the last straw, but it took one more side effect before I began weaning myself from Chantix: my temper.