Sorry Shayna, I have to take issue with you here. Smoking certainly does alter the mind. Cite:
Are you confusing some vague notion of illegal drugs causing hallucinations with the concept of addictiveness? If so, then why is LSD or THC so much less physically addictive than heroin, speed, coke, alchohol or nicotine, but far more likely to have you gazing at your belly button and saying “wow, the colours, man…”
Nicotine is highly addictive, and - perhaps not in your case, in which case I congratulate you - it can certainly cause you to lose perspective (otherwise why would you do it? It kills you. I have seen doctors having a smoke outside a cancer ward in a hospital. If that’s not a loss of perspective I don’t know what is).
Having said that, doesn’t mean you’re not a wanker for trying to sabotage someone’s quitting attempt. During my last failed attempt to quit, when someone offered me a cigarette - I was already extremely tense from quitting - I got so pissed off that I snatched the whole packet violently from his hand and crushed it into his beer, thinking he was being obnoxious.
It then turned out he genuinely didn’t know that I was trying to give up. DOH! :smack:
I wonder just how old BrightnShiny’s friends are and how long they’ve been smoking. I remember behaviour of this sort from when I was in my late teens/early twenties. Now, at 31, most of the people I know who smoke (i.e. most of the people I know) are as worried about it as I am, and just as addicted. Generally the attitude is to be supportive if someone tries to give up.
With all due respect, trabi, the fact that nicotine “depresses the ability of the brain to experience pleasure” has nothing whatsoever to do with perception and rude behaviour. It does notcause people to lose sight of the fact that they’re acting in an abhorrent, socially unacceptable manner. It does not, like heroine, affect one’s perception of reality (which is what I said!). That is what I took issue with, with regard to London_Calling’s post. Therefore, your cite, while good intentioned, is completely meaningless in this context.
Thanks for your support guys. These people at the bar who were doing this aren’t really my friends. It’s just that since it’s a local bar that I’ve been patronizing for the past five or six years, everybody knows everybody. At the very least, I didn’t consider them my enemies until last night. Now, I must use the money I’ve saved from cigarettes and come up with a plan to annihilate them.
I probably won’t be going down there much anymore, anyway. Last night I realized that with my tastebuds back to normal, I really do not like the taste of alcohol.
matt_mcl, I live in Los Angeles. The only way the police are gonna come out is if I’m being murdered or if I’m jay walking. My hopes of getting someone charged with assualt with a deadly cigarette are slim to none. But it’s a fun idea to think about.
Strangely enough, when I quit drinking nine years ago, my drunk friends were all very proud of me, and very encouraging. I think that has gone a long way in explaining why I can now hang out in a bar (I’m in a band) without feeling compelled to drink. Everyone knows that I no longer drink, and they’re fine with it.
Shayna, my comments were only meaningless in the context of your very subjective and narrow interpretation of “losing perspective to the drug” and “mind altering,” whereas my point was that the effect of the drug (i.e. how it makes you feel/behave when you take it) is not the issue that London_Calling raised, which was the nature of addiction per se.
Nobody thinks that nicotine causes an irrational urge to go around jumping of cliffs or forcing other people to smoke, and nor does taking heroin, in itself, cause people to to impulsively go around sticking needles in people.
It’s just possible, however, that a group of heroin addicts would behave in the same way (and for the same reasons) as a group of smokers when one of their number decides to straighten out…
Of course these people are behaving like pricks. I wouldn’t give them the time of day. But it’s a pretty common phenomenon.
BrightnShiny is not the only person to have experienced it, I have, it’s been documented in countless “quit smoking” literature (and is well known to heroin addicts, alchoholics, etc. who have tried to give up) and the reasons are definitely - at least to some extent - rooted in the addiction that these people share and the role that this plays in the dynamic of their particularly peer group/social circle.
Wow . . . in LA you could smoke in a bar? I thought the whole state was smoke-free inside.
Having said that–congrats on quitting, hang tight, and stay away from these people. I quit when I was pregnant, and I had friends (well, one friend) who kept asking me if I didn’t want just one little puff from her cigarette. I could see where she was coming from and I did want just one little puff, but I figured that could lead to my downfall, and I had convinced myself that even one puff would result in disaster. So I avoided her.
(Then I pissed her off because I wouldn’t let her hold my baby because not only did she smell like cigarettes but she had on too much perfume.)
Oh, I guess I’m being excessively pissy this week, because of the lack of cigarettes. I need some place to vent, though.
To clarify, the people who were offering me cigarettes were doing so as they went outside to smoke. There were a couple of people who did not know that I had quit smoking and mistakenly asked me to come smoke with them, and I don’t have a problem with those people. But there were several people who knew full well that I had quit and came up and tried to get me to smoke.
As to the guy shoving cigarettes into my mouth, I had to go to my car for a minute. Most of the smokers congregate outside the front door, and as I was leaving the bar, he tried to shove the unlit cigarette into my mouth. When I was returning, he tried to shove the lit cigarette into my mouth.
I stopped by the bar tonight on my way home, and nobody bothered me. I guess it was just last night when all the assholes were out.
BrightNShiny, it’s cool that you’ve quit. I had my last one 12 days ago. I’m doing okay with it. I’ve already stopped coughing so much.
I chose to quit because my lovely 16 year old granddaughter had started smoking. She had always wanted me to quit and we have an agreement not to smoke until next April. At that time we will consider our options.
I have never heard that before. Do you have a cite for that? Just want to know more.
When I seize control of the universe, I will lock you in a dungeon and force you to watch episodes of “Full House” 24-hours a day. And you will get nothing to eat but wheat-grass juice and tofu!
That is complete and utter crap. If you really and truly think that cigarette smoking alters your perception so much as to render you blameless for abhorrent social behaviour – which is what London_Calling said and to which I took exception – then remind me to stay as far the fuck away from you as I can possibly get. Clearly the one thing he was right about is that you, smoker, “just don’t get it.”
I wish you and your granddaughter the very best of luck! It’s great that you have each other for support. If it hadn’t been for my wonderful husband, I probably wouldn’t have made it this time, either. You’ll be so proud of yourselves when April comes around and you’re still smoke free that you’ll never want to touch another one as long as you live (which has the added benefit of probably being much longer now that youv’e quit poisoning yourselves)! You Go, Girls!
I come home tonight to smell that my new roommate has smoked inside the apartment, despite the fact that I told him when he was moving in that I was quitting and smoking is not allowed inside the apartment (and even when I was smoking, I never smoked inside anyway).
AAAAARGH!
Well, on a nice note: I have no way to prove this, but I swear that my previously receding hairline has started to come back since I quit smoking.
