Every morning when I wake up, I feel sluggish, mentally fogged, completely useless. I start a cup of coffee brewing, and while it’s brewing I roll one cigarette with Stokkebye Turkish Export rolling tobacco. When my coffee is ready, I take a sip and then light my cigarette and smoke it while I drink my coffee and check my email and catch up on everything. The change after the first few puffs of that cigarette is absolutely miraculous. I feel an instant burst of energy as the nicotine flows through my body - I can actually feel it making its way down my arms, all the way to the fingertips. Suddenly I’m a functioning human being and not a zombie. After that one cigarette, I don’t smoke any more over the course of the day. Not out of self-restraint - I just don’t have the DESIRE to do it.
It makes me wonder: how many other people do the same thing? And are able to not smoke any more after that first one? And how bad is this habit, really, long-term, for my health? I have no family history of any respiratory conditions. Both my (currently living) grandparents smoked at least a pack a day for decades for their whole lives up until 20 years ago, then they both quit. They’re now 88 and 93 and both in remarkably good health given how old they are.
I feel the same way about my morning cup of coffee and a B12 vitamin. Just the one morning cup and i’m good for the rest of the day. If I have a second, I usually regret it. I tried to quit the coffee a few times but didn’t find life worth living.
Cigarettes always had a subtle romantic temptation but I never went down that road because smoking always made me feel affected and self-conscious somehow.
Somewhere, and I have no idea where, I thought I read that when you hit about 20 pack years, that’s when you start to have issues. At one cigarette a day, that would take about 400 years. Your cigarettes are (I assume) unfiltered…lets call it 200 years.
And everyone is different. Many people smoke a pack a day for their entire lives and still die naturally at 90+ years old. Others smoke a half a pack a day and have a fatal heart attack at 50.
I feel the same way about chewing tobacco. I chew a bag over the course of a week twice a year, mainly when I’m doing a lot driving and I enjoy everything about it but once I get home I don’t have the urge any more. I wonder sometimes if that two bag a year habit will come back to bite me.
Of course, I managed to get enrolled in a giant tobacco use study and every year they survey me about my health and sometimes take blood and urine samples. I’ve been doing it for 7 years now and I think it’s funded for another 13 though I didn’t get surveyed this year I think due to COVID. I don’t get any results though which is a bummer. But at least someone will get to see how my minimal use effects my health over time.
I wad up a little piece of a cotton ball and put it at the back of the cigarette. It does function as a filter, as it visibly absorbs a bunch of the smoke, changing its color over time. Without that little filter, the tobacco is a bit too harsh.
I am the opposite, I sometimes smoke one at the end of the day to relax. Calms my nerves. But I have never smoked in the morning and almost never at work unless a coworker nudged me into one, it’s a rare occurrence.
I smoke when I drink also, but always at night and never more than 4 or 5. I don’t drink more than once a week anymore so we are talking about a half pack per week.
Up until relatively recently, I never smoked in the morning, it didn’t appeal to me in the least. My first cigarette of the day would typically be when I got home from work (or school).
Also, I can’t smoke if I really full so I’ve always been one to smoke before I eat instead of after. If I’m eating something and I think a post-meal cigarette would go with it really well, I have to stop eating well before I’m full.
Me too! I do not use tobacco and gave up coffee, other than the weekend. My mental fog clears gradually on its own. I blame my mental fog on all the cannabis I smoke in the afternoon and evening.
I know what the OP means. I always said my breakfast of champions was a cup of coffee and a cigarette. I quit 10 months ago, but every morning long for that first hit.
Been off for a year and a half now. Not the first time I quit, hopefully the last. Nicotine is an amazing drug, it rapidly makes it’s way to the brain and gives you a solid head clearing refocusing jolt. If not for the cost and the smell and its addictive nature and all the ways it destroys your health it would be fantastic.
I tried it once and found it disgusting. It leeches the acidic taste of nicotine into your saliva and your stomach, and I found that it made me want to puke, like the first time I tried “dip” in high school. Ugh.
I know. I had to quit after my stroke (thankfully it was mild) back in Jan 2019. The last thing I was was doing before the stroke was smoking a cigarette. Actually–I was smoking a cigarette when I had the stroke.
So I had to quit that. And I gave up drinking as well, as smoking and a beer go hand-in-hand.
I missed both things at first, but now it barely bothers me. And it’s been nice saving that $300 or so a month.
I thought I’d gain a ton of weight, but I haven’t. Even with pandemic, I actually lost weight.
I’ve never been a smoker, but this thread has me curious about something. Si_Amigo says a cigarette in the evening calms him down. Back in the late 1940s, a doctor advised my father to take up smoking to calm his nerves. Luckily, Mom didn’t like smoke in the house, so Dad never gave it a shot.
I assume smoking must calm some people’s nerves, then. How can it calm some people and stimulate others?
Oh yeah, we are not all the same. I liked nicotine gum almost as much as smoking, and I would abuse it until I gave myself the hiccups and made myself very uncomfortable every time I used it. Hopefully I’ll be able to exhibit some sort of self control next time I try to quit before the end of the year.
Well, not all drugs affect people the same way. Cocaine makes some people feel incredible. Other than the numbing sensation, it just gives me a headache and makes me lose all patience whatsoever. On the other hand, I can smoke weed all day and not really be functionally affected other than an obvious loss of short term memory. My wife can take two hits and she wants to hide under the couch.
I’ve mostly seen it stated that the calming effect is just due to dependence and getting your fix.
I’ve never smoked, but I have noticed that, when I get really tired, I also start to get jittery, like my body is trying to keep me awake. And doing something to help me wake up will sometimes help. I wonder if this might be something similar: your body has adapted to the nicotine, so it’s feeling low energy, and then tries to make up for it. Getting the nicotine allows that part to calm down.
And, then, of course, once that becomes a habit, your body also probably starts calming down with just the ritual. And that’s why some people still find smoking or something similar to be calming, even after they get rid of the nicotine. I knew a woman in college who used candy cigarettes, and another person who smoked those actual clove ones. They said it helped.