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 To counter the sedative effects, I needed a stimulant. I couldn't use NoDoz, because my tolerance for caffeine is quite high, since I'm a coffee drinker and a part-time trucker. But I don't smoke, so I thought my tolerance for nicotine would be extremely low. I decided on nicotine gum, the cigarette substitute which has helped nearly four people in the U.S. quit smoking. I thought about getting the leading brand, Nicorette Stop Smoking Gum, but Walgreen's sold a generic nicotine gum. Fortunately, this cheap nicotine gum had an eye-popping 4 mg of nicotine per piece. This was the hard stuff, meant for those who smoke "more than 25 cigarettes a day." Holy trachea. You have time to smoke 25 butts a day, you need to take up another career ... like smoking. The pay's lousy, but the health benefits are killer.  Just before bedtime, I climbed into my pajamas and shot back triple the maximum dose of Nyquil, which I will now declare the foulest-tasting substance on earth. Even an ass would go, "Man, that tastes like ass." It's made by Vicks, and I think they just melt down the VapoRub and call it Nyquil. "The nighttime coughy tired-head stuffy-sleep IT TASTES LIKE ASS medicine." That's what they should call it. It was so bad that I had to chase it with a pint of Häagen-Dazs just to get the taste out of my mouth:  Before the liquified pine freshener zonked me out, I ripped open the nicotine gum and shoved it all in my mouth, forming this enormous wad of mind-blowing chaw:  I felt a warm tingling in my mouth, which heated up to a furious burn. Saliva glands pouring, I swallowed cup after cup of raw nicotine juice. Within minutes, I had a speedy buzz like you wouldn't believe: the equivalent of three beers drunken out of a dirty ashtray. I sat down to type out notes for this article, and they read like this: Seriously man, I cannot even schhhzzznnarf. SCHHZZACCHHARF! Calamanopoppers. Is this what smoking is like? Because I BAM! BAM! KAPOW! My brain is fucking Jiffy Pop on the stove right now. Not literally, of course, because that would be a FIRE HAZARD! As well as PAINFUL to the PENIS! ZAM! I was the bizarre, cross-mutant offspring of Emeril and Rachael Ray. Within fifteen minutes, however, my mania turned to depression. I was crushed by an overwhelming sense of nausea and heartburn. Feeling I was going to throw up, I spat out the gum. My nicotine-overloaded body was fighting furiously against the Nyquil, but the bright green stink was winning out. An hour passed, and I nearly passed out. I shut off the computer and wobbled to bed, head buzzing, stomach churning. As I lay down in bed, the last thing I remember is the rapidly buzzing concentric rings filling my vision and then... ...The next thing I knew, it was ten hours later. Not only had I overslept by three hours, but I had actually turned off the furiously buzzing alarm clock in my sleep. Furthermore, I had slept through half an hour of a screaming infant, while my wife tried to nudge me awake. Apparently a group of screaming orphan children also came into the room and jumped upon my slumbering body, firing Roman candles at metal trash can lids. Conclusion: in the battle between Nyquil and nicotine, Nyquil is the shizznit. Or possibly the nighttime snizzling stiffling shuffling Pufnstuf achy-breaky itching chafing rashy feverish jaundiced plaguey polio scurvy mucous-loosening bloody infectious feel better to rest better shizznit. So the final results of the Drug Deathmatch:
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