Or when driving cross country in those long boring stretches. Or on a cool evening.
But I’ve made it past the 6 month mark now, longer than I’ve gone in years. And there are only those moments that I want one - which come much less often. And for the record, Chantix really worked for me, if anyone is considering using it.
I’d love to be one of the few who can have one occasionally - just make sure that you are able to keep it to occasionally. If you start physically craving them, stop immediately, seriously.
While I was never really much of a smoker, for approximately the year 2002, I managed to work myself up to a couple pack a week sort-of-habit. About a week into 2003, I just didn’t feel like paying for another pack just yet, and just didn’t bother again. Sure, there were the occasional times I’d bum cigarettes from others, generally while drinking with them (and knowing several smokers, I’d sometimes join them outside for a smoke rather than sit in the bar drinking by myself), but the next time I felt the urge to buy a pack was just a couple months ago, during a particularly stressful workday. I made it through half the pack in about five hours, and it felt damn good. Then I gave the rest away, and have had (I think) 2 cigarettes since.
So, I think I’m part of that 4% (though that number strikes me as curiously precise). Certainly, I see no reason to worry about my nicotine habit. At least as compared to my alcohol and caffeine habits.
This is utter BS. Most people cannot have a smoke ‘once in a while’ without getting hooked (again). Cigarettes, unlike nearly anything else, are highly addictive and extremely unhealthy.
And please tell us how much you smoke, or which company you work for. A sane non- or ex-smoker doesn’t use words like ‘hysterics’. They use words like ‘addicts’ and ‘cancer’.
From a risk standpoint, 2 cigarettes a day are pretty minimal. It’s just that so very, very few folks consume that sort of dose of that particular carcinogen.
As for the 4% figure for folks who can take or leave nicotine, I recall reading it in more than one American Society of Addiction Medicine article, but I don’t have the cite handy at the moment.
I quit every year so I can start training for my yearly timed run, so I’m smoke free for 2-3 months of the year. I’m able to go cold turkey every time. I need to quit for good and I think that it will be mostly a matter of avoiding friends who smoke, which sucks cause some of my best buddies are my smoke buddies.
I have watched friends try to quit smokeless tobacco and the hell they go through. I’ll never touch that stuff for that reason. Makes me feel better about being a part-time cigarette fiend, though.
Also, since I started smoking to feel “cool” and am rapidly losing all pretense to being cool (getting older, losing my hair, not caring about new music, etc…), that helps me walk away every time. But sometimes, nothing (nothing!) beats a smoky treat and a good beer.
No one is saying that cigarettes aren’t highly addictive and extremely unhealthy. But some people can smoke them without becoming addicted, so can keep their intake down to a minimum. The key here is if you can do it in moderation. Very few people can, but it’s not impossible.
Speaking of smoking in moderation, I am one of those people. Sometimes it takes me two weeks to smoke a pack, sometimes a week. If I’m in for a good night of drinking, I’ll smoke 10 or more. Usually the next few days after drinking I won’t have one at all. I’ve always been like this. Both of my parents were smokers (a pack or more a day), and my older siblings were smokers as well, so smoking was always happening in my house. I wonder how much that has to do with it.
I tried quitting and proved to myself that I can (didn’t have a cigarette for over a year), but once or twice a day, I enjoy a smoke… usually during the ride home from work.
If you still think about how long it’s been since you “quit,” then you have a long way to go. And at 5 months, you’re still entitled to obsess about it, in my book.
At some time I realized I wasn’t thinking about how long it had been, and then I felt more confident that the quit had taken. But I know what year I quit (1990 or 1991), and I wouldn’t have another smoke for all the tea in China.
I’m a one or two cigarette a day person. If I splurge and go over three in a day, I usually don’t smoke for a day or two afterward. If I run out, I can go a couple of days before I want another cigarette badly enough to go out and buy a pack. My friends hate bumming smokes off me because they think my cigarettes taste stale, I have a pack for so long. I personally don’t notice a difference unless I’ve had a pack opened for a couple of weeks. I guess I’m used to smoking stale cigs by now.
I’ve never been a heavy smoker though. I would guess that it’s probably difficult for a heavy smoker to go to being an occasional smoker without slowly drifting back into that pack-a-day territory. I don’t eat meat, and I know that I can’t even have a once-a-year special occasion steak or the very next day I’ll be at McDonalds ordering a double quarter pounder. Maybe beef is my nicotine?
Not at all. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to smoke. I know how it is, having smoked so long myself, but I say if you’re going to stop then stop; if you’re not going to stop, then you’re only fooling yourself if you don’t think you’re a smoker.
I would agree that anyone who smokes with any kind of regularity (be it ten times a day or once a month) is a “smoker”; just to varying degrees. But there are obviously reasons for people to smoke. Whether you find them better than the reasons not to smoke depends on what your priorities are.
Fooling myself as to what? In your previous post, you said “if you’re not going to stop, then you’re only fooling yourself if you don’t think you’re a smoker.” I’m not denying I’m a smoker. My point was that it’s problematic to say there are no reasons to smoke. You might say there are no good reasons to smoke, but I think it’s weird to say that people smoke for no reason at all.
Well, fine. Call me a “social smoker” or “casual smoker” then. Makes no difference to me. There’s no “good reason” to drink alcohol, but if someone only drank once or twice a month, I wouldn’t consider them a “drinker.”
