Sounds like me when I was smoker. I was a radical one, making a point of lighting up if anyone even slightly hinted that I should quit smoking. Just goes to show you really need to be ready in order to stop smoking. I decided I was ready. You obviously haven’t. But don’t make the mistake of assuming that just because you personally have not suffered any ill effects from smoking (that you know of), that it means no one suffers any.
I’ve heard that after x number of years (different numbers from different sources), you will appear to all tests to have never smoked. Any truth to that?
I smoked camel non-filters for 40 years, quit in 2011. Have been riding a bike daily for a year (not too fast and not too far). I always listen to music every while driving to work, and it started to sound so much better after I quit.
It took me a day to realize it was because I had always cracked the window when driving.
Great to hear all the stories.
I quit on my 35th birthday. I’ll turn 65 this coming July. I quit cold turkey, and it was a bitch . . . however . . .
The secret weapon is . . . Dr. Pepper! That’s right, when you chug it, it causes a sort of burning sensation in your chest, not unlike a drag on a cigarette. Helped me immensely.
This is what I found:
- In 20 minutes your blood pressure will drop back down to normal.
- In 8 hours the carbon monoxide (a toxic gas) levels in your blood stream will drop by half, and oxygen levels will return to normal.
- In 48 hours your chance of having a heart attack will have decreased. All nicotine will have left your body. Your sense of taste and smell will return to a normal level.
- In 72 hours your bronchial tubes will relax, and your energy levels will increase.
- In 2 weeks your circulation will increase, and it will continue to improve for the next 10 weeks.
- In three to nine months coughs, wheezing and breathing problems will dissipate as your lung capacity improves by 10%.
- In 1 year your risk of having a heart attack will have dropped by half.
- In 5 years your risk of having a stroke returns to that of a non-smoker.
- In 10 years your risk of lung cancer will have returned to that of a non-smoker.
- In 15 years your risk of heart attack will have returned to that of a non-smoker.
The first several seem pretty reasonable, as they have mostly to do with nicotine leaving your body. The last three probably vary a lot depending on how long and how much.
Someone who started smoking at 18 and quit at 25 (My friend Wendy), and mostly just smoked at parties, sometimes going more than a week without smoking, probably didn’t require 15 years to return to a non-smoker’s risk of a heart attack. However, the guy I knew who started smoking at age 12, and was up to 2 packs a day by age 16, 4 packs a day by age 20, and smoked those 4 packs unfiltered until he was 46, may need more than 10 years to return to a non-smoker’s risk of lung cancer.
Also, those only apply to people who haven’t done permanent harm. If you have emphysema or COPD, you’re stuck with it.
Question here (since I don’t like to rehash completely obvious points, and “successfully staying off an incredibly heath-wrecking, filthy, and stinky* habit is worthy of much kudos” is as obvious as it gets). Do you find it easier now to stay clean now that…well…the rampaging army of enablers isn’t there anymore?
No commercials. No print ads, with or without warnings. No sanitizing and glamorizing movies. No vending machines. No high school peer pressure, where the only choices are get addicted or receive hours of sickening abuse every single day (boy, talk about Scylla and Charybdis…). No NASCAR sponsorship. It’s not seen as cool, or manly, or subversive, or daring. The tobacco companies have taken so many crushing hits that they’re flotsam at this point. If you want to quit today, there’s an entire cottage industry and a plethora of nonprofit networks devoted to helping you do that. If you want to start today, you have do ALL the work: Find out what cigarettes are, find out what the damn point is to sticking an obnoxious smelling rod in your mouth and setting fire to it, find out a place that still sells cigarettes at all, go through the trouble of buying the damn things, which now requires ID, a whole lotta cash, and also a whole lotta patience since they’re kept in a locked cage…and then, of course, find a reason to keep going even though pretty much everywhere has outright banned smoking (Oh, did I forget that part? So sorry.), and if you complain about it, you’ll need an electron microscope to find the violin, if you catch my drift.
My point is, when society as a whole finally has had enough and stops putting an enormous amount of effort and energy into pretending that black is white, down is up, and an actor playing a bumbling dad on a sitcom is the moral equivalent of the My Lai massacre, the ship rights itself with remarkable speed. I’m not saying that quitting is a piece of cake now (I wouldn’t know), just that it’s easier to win a fight with a machine gun than a wiffle bat.
- This actually was the supreme dealbreaker for me from the beginning. THE STENCH. Hoo boy. I could smell those things from across a damn parking lot. As a somewhat overweight person living in a tropical climate, I definitely don’t need the help!
My “enablers” were all back in West Texas and to a lesser extent Albuquerque and Thailand. It may have been easier to quit smoking once I left those places, but really it was time. I had learned that researchers thought the truly irreversible damage started occurring after 20 pack-years – one pack-year is based on one pack per day per year, so for example two packs a day would be two pack-years over the course of 365 days – and I figured I was getting close to that number. Plus I was starting to get serious about the future Mrs. Siam Sam. Factors like those played a bigger part than enablers.
I can tell you I have zero cravings. Being around smokers does not make me feel like smoking. Once I got past the initial withdrawal symptoms, I never did get any cravings. Nor did I gain weight after I stopped, although middle-age spread is certainly catching up with me now. But you are right about the stench. The smell is awful. I think back in my day though, everyone smelled like that, so even nonsmokers back then were probably used to it.
Day 25 here and i smell the stench from my employees and am ashamed that just 25 days ago i was right there with them. I am determined. I am a former smoker but it’s not at all easy.
Hang in there, Buttercup. You can do it.
Yup. That’s great PR and I’m all for it but I’m skeptical about the bulk of those claims, as there are too many factors that can’t be “generalized”, such as, as you pointed out, the number of years a person has smoked; and also what they smoked,–filter, non-filter, cigars, pipes, etc.; then the hereditary factors that cannot be smoothed over, such as a family history of cancer, especially lung, esopogal,mouth, tongue, and obviously cardiovascular disease. Some of the damage done by smoking is irreversible, sad to say, but for younger people and light smokers those are good words. Actually, they’re good for all of us inasmuch as they offer hope; and for many, maybe most of us, the hope is well founded; and there’s truth in them thar statistics.
John B.
Timely thread for me, as I’m on Day One.
I quit in 2001 and didn’t smoke for 15 years, and then I had a weekend of weakness and was smoking again. In the meantime I’ve quit, and started, and quit, and started.
Today feels different. For the first time I’m not using the patch, or gum, or a vape pen or any other means of introducing nicotine into my system. It’s been about 16 hours and I’m doing fine.
All you aspiring nonsmokers, hang in there!
I smoked for 30 years. I quit by using the patch in 2004 after a close friend died of lung cancer. I felt ready to quit and knew I wouldn’t go back. Enablers that weren’t there at that time was socializing in bars. I brainwashed myself by making a list of all the reasons I wanted to quit and kept re-reading it. The first day was tough, the second day slightly easier, the third day not so bad, the fourth day easier and it kept getting easier until I one day I realized I was a non-smoker.
In 2011 I was hanging out with a new friend and he was a drinker and smoker. I had too much to drink and started smoking again. Quit again cold turkey in 2012 and haven’t had one since. I don’t socialize with smokers anymore.
People I worked with thought I would never quit. I didn’t think I would ever quit, but it’s doable. Now it’s great to not be a slave to nicotine and waste my money burning it away. I wish I had done it years earlier.
I am currently still smoking. I want to quit so, so, very badly. I have quit and started again 3 times in the last 2 years. I have enough patches for two months on my shelf from my doctor but I am not there yet. There is obviously a nicotine addiction but I know the patches handle the purely physical addiction very well. It’s all psychological now and that is the hardest part for me.
Reading this thread helps keep it in the front of my mind (I already think about how horrible smoking is every single day).
I’m only on day two, but the thing that helps me isn’t thinking of how horrible smoking is, but rather all of the things that smoking is keeping me from doing. I want to be in better shape, but it’s hard to exercise when you can’t breathe. I want to get back into long-distance backpacking, but don’t feel like packing 3 packs of cigarettes into my backpack. I want to see my children grow up, not die of emphysema when they’re in high school.
If you want to logic yourself to quitting’s doorstep, remember things like 1) if you’re ever gonna quit, you gotta go through the process of quitting at least once, so 2) why not do it now, while you are the least addicted you’re ever gonna be for the rest of your life, and 3) why not do it now, while you can realize the most benefits from quitting?
(Of course, actually quitting can be tougher than just logic. But logic helps.)
Come October it will be 40 years for me. Probably the hardest thing I ever did and it took three years before I felt I had it completely whipped. It really helped that Ms Hook didn’t smoke.
Congratulations to all you quitters out there. It’s tough and you should be proud.
That’s actually quite helpful, thanks!