the menthol scheme: the addict's logic backfiring

A small comic exhibit of how the addicted mind's schemes turn on it. Gately's plan was pure addict-logic applied to quitting: smoke only a cigarette you hate, and you'll smoke less and eventually stop. Instead the exposure did what exposure does — "now he can’t stand anything but menthols," a new dependence installed by the very strategy meant to end dependence, and on the worse cigarette besides. The theme's throwaway lesson is that you cannot out-maneuver a compulsion with a clever rule; the will that designs the trick is the same will the Disease has already colonized, so the trick just deepens the habit. (Cf. 069's Codinex-as-corridor-extender, the same logic at lethal scale.)