Five months and counting for me. Though, I don’t actually want a cigarette anymore, I do still feel a void. I refuse, however, to let that monkey back on me. My mother has emphysema and must use oxygen daily. She coughs and has terrible problems with phlegm. My husband had a nearly fatal heart attack in July. The writing was on the wall in 15-foot letters. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be to quit. I used the Nicoderm patch. When I think of all the cash I burned up, I only wish I’d done it sooner.
I know, this just makes a lot of smokers defensive, but - good lord, people, my aunt probably won’t see another Christmas. They found the cancer a few months ago and two rounds of chemo later already they’re basically just giving pain relief. She stopped smoking a few years ago, but it’s killing her anyway.
I hear a lot of people use that as an excuse, “well, the damage is already done” - but a friend of the family had a heart attack a few years ago and had to have bypass surgery. He was in ICU for a week; my dad had quadruple bypass a few years before and only been in for a few days. Our friend was a smoker; they said if he’d only stopped two weeks before the heart attack his recovery would have been much, much faster. He’s quit now.
Best of luck to everyone trying to quit. My dad smokes…has smoked on and off for over 25 years. A couple of months ago my parents went on vacation and I was stopping by to check on my 16 year old brother, and found him in the back yard smoking with one of his friends. Your behavior has an effect on your kids, and my brother learned that smoking is perfectly okay. Keep in mind that next time you light up your children, nieces, nephews, cousins, etc are watching and learning how to be an adult based on what they see you doing now.
I, right now, am tobacco-free. At different periods in the last 6 months, I’ve either been tobacco free, or an “I’ll smoke a pack every 2-7 days, depending on how much I’m around other smokers” smoker. You know that when one smoker lights up, everyone else has to, also.
My mother died of congestive heart failure and lung cancer ten years after she quit smoking. My dad died of emphysemia, and couldn’t quit smoking even after he was diagnosed. When my oldest daughter started smoking at age 15, I was beside myself with fury. She’s 18 now, and still smokes.
For anyone who thinks there’s no use in quitting because the damage is already done: my FIL quit smoking (after being a smoker for almost fifty years) after his first heart attack, nearly 20 years ago. Just before Thanksgiving, he had a triple bypass. If he hadn’t quit smoking when he did, he certainly wouldn’t have survived a surgery like that, if he had lived long enough to need it.
My best wishes and hopes for success go out to anyone who’s trying to quit!
LOL, Well, truthfull anyhow. You never smoked Kools™.
Light one up and watch it burn. Strange things are going on there. Kinda scary if you look close. They have some strage stuff in them for time to time.
he he he.
I quit in Setember of '04. I did have one smoke in about April or May and I threw up. That was a good thing since it made me realize how toxic nicotine really is, and it cemented, for me, the desire to never smoke again.
Earlier in 2004 my stepmothers sister (step aunt?) died of lung cancer due to smoking. Earlier this year my old boss had a stroke, brought on, in part at least, due to smoking. I can safely say that smoking was the dumbest thing that I ever did in my life and quiting was one of the smartest.
We are such an illogical species. A few years ago my mother, a smoker since she was 12, was in hospital a few years ago with trache tube and hovering between realms as a direct consequence of smoking. She was in a hospital wing that was strictly for people with severe breathing disorders, where people with lung cancer and emphysema and all other manner of severe health problems brought on by tobacco struggle for air and pray to die everyday. No exaggeration: at least half of the respiratory therapists and nurses who tended these people who saw spotted lung X rays on a daily basis, smoked. My mother, who went in for a fairly routine gall bladder removal that was supposed to be outpatient and came out two months later when her system had almost complet shutdown due to problems with the procedure coupled by her corroded lungs (she was on inhalers and had emphysema even then), had a cigarette, her first in more than 60 days (well after the nicotine had long left her system), before she was home a single night.
She also has the bad example of her father, a man who ate red meat and drove fast and drank hard liquor and, of course, smoked and lived to be 86, most of it in good health. It’s impossible to convince her that she’s also half the daughter of her mother, who had umpteen health problems and died a very old and senile 72, and she has known many centenarians in the family who have outlived most of their children- longevity isn’t an assured inheritance. But, c’est la vie.
What pisses me off most at myself was that I kicked the habit for more than three years, then started back when I thought I could handle just one about four years ago. I’ve smoked ever since. To any reforming smokers,
YOU CAN’T HANDLE JUST ONE! DON’T E’EN THINK ABOUT IT!
All right! All right! I won’t think about it, I swear!
I started smoking in 1976 and tried to quit several times, but only lasted a couple of months at the most. I used to wake up in the morning with my lungs full of sludge and I had coughing fits that made people wonder if I was dying. My family, friends and co-workers were always bugging me to quit. My doctor told me I MUST quit. I finally quit smoking 3 months ago (Sept. 6th) with the help of Quitnet and I used nicotine patches for the full 6 weeks.
Yeah, I hated people lecturing me and bugging me to quit. But it’s still the smartest thing I ever did in my life.
Best of luck to you tomorrow Sampiro - YOU CAN DO IT!!!
My grandfather (mother’s side) died of emphysema at 74. All I remember of him is that he would frequently cough himself into a blue fit, often while smoking, but never would put out the cigarette until he was done with it. He died in his sleep, and my grandmother was a ghost for the remaining 15 years of her life. Too bad, because both of his parents (my great-grandparents) lived well into their 90’s.
My father, on the other hand, smoked from a teenager, through my entire growing-up years and well past them (he used to always smoke after every meal at the table, even though he knew I had asthma - none of us in the 50’s or 60’s made that connection with 2nd hand smoke). I’m not sure exactly when he quit, because he claimed to have quit and then went back and did it “secretly” so I estimate he smoked for 40 or 50 years. Now he is 83 and very healthy, so some people get lucky. Thanks, though, Dad, for the chronic asthma…
I tried to smoke a couple of times, before I was 21, and it made me so sick I figured out my body must be trying to tell me something. Then I smoked a pipe (no inhaling) for a few years in my 20’s, but that was just an affectation. Tobacco holds no appeal for me, and I am grateful for that (an unhealthy relationship to food has been enough of a problem).
Not much point to these stories, so I will just add my voice to the chorus of those urging everyone to quit because chances are you won’t be one of the lucky ones.
Quitnet Sorry, still learning to code.
Let me applaud those of you who have quit! I have my own bad habits and know how tough they are to quit - adding a physical addiction makes it even harder. Go you! All of you!
And again, those who are trying to quit: Hooray for you too! Go you! 
My best friends dad, despite having never touched a single cigarette, has emphysema, caused by his parents’ 3-pack-a-day habits. (He likes to tell how his father used to smoke while shaving) He also had terrible asthma as a child.
My maternal grandmother quit cold turkey when she got pregnant with my Mom. Apparently she’d read something about the early studies linking tobacco to cancer and decided this wasn’t something a pregnant woman should ingest. Her doctor yelled at her for “stressing her system” and told her to resume smoking.
For the rest of her life she sought out and shared the growing evidence that she’d been right, though it took her another 20 years to get my grandfather to quit. (She died in 1985 of lupus. Grandad went back to smoking and drinking and was dead of a stroke within six months, which is probably how he wanted it anyway)
Though grandmom must have spun in her grave, I picked up smoking in college. Quitting has been a bitch. For a while I was really hampered by the lack of support from my non-smoking friends. It’s not that they didn’t want me to quit, they did very much. But the attitude was: “It’s so horrible for you! Why are you doing that? Just STOP already.” If anyone out there is trying to support someone quitting, the MOST important thing you can do is to get over your disgust and acknowledge that this person (most likely) enjoys smoking. I know I do. I love it. I miss it. It has not had any negative effect on my life, and I really get pleasure from the act. I need someone to be able to say, “Congratulations on resisting a cigarette today-- that must have been rough,” and not, “Well, it’s about time you quit. Why would you even want one in the first place?” Let me make this clear: I do not want to quit. Not even a little bit. But I have to anyway.
What seems to be working for me (what I needed) was immediate concequences. In my case, I had two teeth pulled. Three days later, I developed dry socket. Now the fear of lingering severe pain and a festering, possibly infected hole in my jaw that won’t heal is a right-now reason not to have a smoke. I worry about that in a way that I don’t think someone my age is yet capable of worrying about cancer at 65. I’m learning to live with cravings and re-order my everyday habits to cope with not smoking because I have no other choice. I don’t think I’d have been able to muster the willpower otherwise. I’m hoping by the time my sockets are healed I have not smoking as a habit of it’s own, and I’ll just go on. I hope. (It’s been 16 days so far)
I really wish there was some sort of something you could take that made your body react badly to cigarettes. I think that would help a lot of the instant-gratification types like me quit. It seems these days that everything will kill you, from your carpet to the sun.
PS. When I was in a defensive mood, I’d point out that my non-smoking crusader grandma died at 63, and my pack-a-day grandpa on my dad’s side is still kicking at 90, but even he’s quit now. And I believe research is showing that I will have MY mom longer because her mom quit, so I do owe grandma that.
I gave up smoking in 1979. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done; I was a nightmare to live with for three weeks, if not longer.
I no longer miss smoking but my mind does like to play tricks on me. I frequently have dreams in which I’m smoking, which makes me wake up in something of a panic in case it’s true.
The problem with it all is the exceptions. Lawyer I know was good friends with another lawyer ( go figure ) who cam from a long line of no smokers, had never smoked and was not around second had smoke, asbestos, carbon -tet or anything. Was a marathon runner as a hobby. Ate all the right foods…
Died at 42 from lung cancer…
*The World is Round,
It is Not Fair,
It is Just Damn Round !!! *
My grandmother died of lung cancer.
She never smoked a cigarette in her life.
Actually, I was just reading a magazine article (Woman’s Day, maybe?) that says that 20% of people who die from cancer are non-smokers. But that means that 80% of them are or were smokers. Considering that smokers make up less than 50% of adult American society, that’s significant.
No that is silly. Saying that smoking is a cause of cancer doesn’t mean to imply *it is the only cause of cancer.
- There are many many things that cause it. Your lawyer friend ran into one of the other causes.
I’m just tired of hearing the stop smoking pleas. Tired of having people try to lay on a big fear-of-death trip. Tired of the assumption that I need to keep hearing from total strangers that they know what’s best for me. Tired of people thinking that whether or not I smoke is up to them, or that they have any business trying to influence the situation.
They don’t go into McDonald’s and tell everybody who eats Big Macs about their loved one who died of heart disease from too much cholesterol, but apparently getting in a smoker’s face is A-OK.
That’s because people around you at McD’s aren’t forced to eat your leftover Big Mac Value Meal. Second-hand smokers aren’t as fortunate.
–Q.E.D.
Smoker for 20 years, nonsmoker for the past 2 1/2, and counting.