As i was saying, I still miss smoking. The desire never really goes awy completely. I sometmes get a hankering for some good weed too, but that’s not as vivid as the cigarettes.
So my real advice is this: if you start smoking, you will mostly enjoy it. You probably won’t die from it and you might even look cool.
But once you get addicted, it’s a part of you forever, and hey, you might die.
It’s your decision, though. I’m not going to preach. Hell, half the reason I kept smoking as long as I did was because people kept telling me to quit.
Diogynes, you confirmed all the reasons I won’t quit. You gained 50 pounds, you have problems with cravings when you drink (I ain’t giving up alcohol for nothin’), and you still feel the little craving everytime you think about it. For me, that’s the cincher, I ain’t quitting. But it also is the point I was trying to make in my first post, that as you put it…
If we could just be honest about smoking and the addiction, rather than be bombarded by vitriolic anti-smoking crusading that ex-smokers spew and their Democratic toadies who just want to tax the hell out of it (I’ve got a GD coming soon about regressive taxation), well maybe we could reach a rational middle-ground conclusion about smoking. But alas, my crowd’s chants for personal liberties are answered by emotionally charged “so-and-so relative of mine died, cigarettes are EVIL” replies, and nobody gets anywhere in the dialogue.
Rexdart, not everyone has problems quitting. My dad just up and quit cold turkey when I was little (let’s see, he started smoking at sixteen, and stopped when he was, maybe thirty four? So that’s about 18 years).
Of course, my dad also had the will power of a goddamn rock.
I’m guessing your dad was quite the special man, Guin You’ve got a fair bit of spunky resolve yourself, so I shouldn’t be surprised
Most folks unfortunately have the perpetual problems with quitting that my dad had, and that Diogynes described, such that quitting is just too costly. Heck, I’m just never going to reach the weight I need to in time to put in my application for the Navy, quitting and the accompanying weight gain would just never be an option for me. Oral fixations suck (pun not intended, despite Navy reference, I can be asked and tell safely.)
I’m guessing your dad was quite the special man, Guin You’ve got a fair bit of spunky resolve yourself, so I shouldn’t be surprised
Most folks unfortunately have the perpetual problems with quitting that my dad had, and that Diogynes described, such that quitting is just too costly. Heck, I’m just never going to reach the weight I need to in time to put in my application for the Navy, quitting and the accompanying weight gain would just never be an option for me. Oral fixations suck (pun not intended, despite Navy reference, I can be asked and tell safely.)
Rex, FYI, if you go into the Navy you won’t be able to smoke in basic training anyway. After eight weeks, the physical addiction is gone, but the psychological addiction will still be there. It took me about six months before I really stopped thinking about it all the time.
The anti-smoking fascism is one of the only real points of divison I have with the political left. I never liked it when I smoked and I still don’t. As you can see from my first post in this thread the old smoker in me still jumps out with hearty “fuck you” sometimes.
To be fair, I think the posters in this thread are well meaning and are trying to give sound and rational advice. Smoking is addictive and it’s bad for you. It’s better not to start, but I also know that no amount of preaching ever worked on me, so I’m not going to inflict it on anybody else.
As broad generalizations go, this one isn’t particularly offensive, but that doesn’t mean it’s accurate, either.
When I was 15, I set out to become a smoker. I did it because everyone else was doing it and I wanted to be accepted. I did not, however, harbor any fantasies of being “that guy” that doesn’t get hooked and only smokes one cigarette every two weeks.
I had read that it took 20 years of smoking for cancer to develop, so my brilliant plan was to just get hooked for 5 years or so and enjoy the social benefits*, then use that nifty nicotine patch to easily quit. That almost was 10 years ago. I’m smoking a Parliament Light right now, so apparently my plan wasn’t so brilliant after all. :smack:
*As it turned out, it seemed to make me more popular at first because everyone was very friendly to me while they were bumming my cigarettes. When I finally got fed up and told them I wasn’t their damn cigarette machine, the social benefits of smoking dried up.
Okay…I’m a pretty heavy smoker. (Heh–pretty heavy!) I’m probably, oh, a two-pack-a-day gal. Do I like it? I do. I enjoy smoking greatly. It calms my nerves, it helps me think more clearly in times of anger or distress, it’s relaxing, etc ad infinitum. I don’t encourage people to take up the habit, by any means. It’s not good for you, but honestly, there’s a ton of things they aren’t. Red meat isn’t. Alcohol isn’t. Gambling isn’t. Marijuana (why can I never spell that fucking word?!) isn’t. Gourmet food isn’t. And so on.
Do I think it makes me look cool? Honestly? The majority of the time, hell no. Every great now and then? I think it does. I think there are aesthetics to smoking, no matter if it’s PC or not. I love the smell of smoke, I love the way it looks in dimly lit rooms. I’ll probably be one that never quits either. [bit of a hijack] If I do get ill from smoking, however, my medical problems and bills are my responsiblity. I don’t think anyone (consumers, tobacco company, whoever) should carry the weight of my choice. [/end bit of a hijack]
That said, if you don’t smoke, I wouldn’t personally advise you take it up. Then again, I would advise everyone to be healthy, animal-loving, well read vegetarians. So, what I advise certainly isn’t worth much.
Ok, fine. I guess there are a few people who actually try to get themselves addicted to cigarettes, I should know by now that there is always some fool in the world who will do anything to himself. But you admitted yourself that you still didn’t really realize what that addiction meant, you thought you would still be able to quit when you wanted to, just by using the patch. My point was (and maybe I should have made it clearer), that people who are smoking their first cigarette usually do not know what it really means to be addicted and try to quit.
I also want to point out (to RexDart and others) that many, many smokers are able to quit and not spend the rest of their lives craving, or even missing cigarettes. I don’t want to make it sound like it is easy to quit (it was one of the hardest things I have ever done and truly a test of my resolve and will), but it has been over a year now and I don’t spend my days mourning the loss. I just don’t want people who may be trying to quit or thinking about quitting getting discouraged and thinking they will have to spend the rest of their lives feeling deprived.
It’s anyone’s choice what they want to do themselves and how to live their lives, but I just wanted to share my experience. It is much easier to be a non-smoker than a smoker. I can’t say there were no benefits to smoking, but there are far more benefits from not.
FTR, I gained about 5 pounds when I quit and I lost it since then. It’s not like you balloon out to twice your size when you quit.
I realize now that my last post sounds harsher to neutron star than I meant to be. Sorry - I’m not trying to condemn you for starting to smoke, for whatever reason (hey, I know what it’s like to be young and not care about future consequences). I started smoking at 16. It doesn’t really matter what my reasoning was, because looking back I could justify anything.
I quit a little over two years ago. The cravings were kind of rough the first two weeks but it gets much easier. I might still get a craving every so often, as I did when I read RexDart’s post describing what it feels like to him, but they pass extremely quickly. They are also far less intense than they were when I first quit.
I gained about twenty pounds the first year that I quit, but I’ve since lost it and about twenty more on top of that . After a year, you’ll find that you feel better and you don’t get winded going up the stairs.
As for alcohol, you may have to cut back for a good while since smoking and drinking go together like ham and cheese. After two years though I was able to go out with my friends, get smashed, and not even think about craving a cigarette even though people were smoking around me.
Actually, this is all true except “In your statements, these people see themselves…” I was a lot more concerned about my health and still ended up smoking on and off for 15 years. I still keep nicotine losenges around, in case a craving hits. Moreover, I don’t drink–just to avoid that alcohol-nicotine synergy we all know so well.
Anyway, the kid is doomed with his attitude. He’ll quit when he first develops The Cough, or he won’t and it’ll kill him. Hey, at least he’s in good company. Some of the best and brightest smoked themselves to death.
Munch wrote a good post on the other thread that summarized how I feel about smoking.
Where I wrote “these people,” “themselves,” “they,” “they,” they," and “they’d,” please substitute “I,” “myself,” “I,” “I,” “I,” and “I’d.”
True enough. It drives me nuts to see someone in his position–i.e., not hooked and theoretically old enough to know better–go ahead and make the kind of decision that’s usually made by insecure 16-year-olds who think the entire world revolves around peer acceptance. But he’s been thoroughly warned now, if he hadn’t before. His call.
I’m having a really hard time believing that this guy is 23.
You’ve got a fair bit of spunky resolve yourself, so I shouldn’t be surprised 