Smoking..... weekly issue 3

[zeon]

Hello all,
I know im a little late with weekly threads which i apoligize about however since 8th december ive had 3 days off work and one was xmas day lol... This time round id like to talk about the topic of smoking... Many people have often ranted on about smoking in life... As a non smoker people dont want it in the space they are in and as a smoker you want the right to smoke freely... I myself admit i am a smoker.. I have smoked tailor mades and cigarettes only and worst side effect was vomitting after 4 cigs back to back in anger a few years back...

Now people in life seem to think smoking is something which can be turned off and on however its a deadly and lethal legal drug to be envoled with.... Many people believe the myth as a smoker that it calms stress down however this has been proven to be fake... Smoking is something which can harm you in some ways and in others not... For example nicotine itself is a drug which stimulates the receptors in the brain causing it to respond to a so called wonderful feeling which leaves you light headed on the first few cigarettes you experience however after that it wears off and before you know where you are.... Your out buying a pack of 20 tailors at a rip off price... Here in the UK for a pack of 20 your roughly looking at around £7-£8 a pack!!! I mean would you go to a local tramp and just give him or her that money and walk on??? I doubt it...

Many people who smoke ive asked why they started... Some say peer pressure, others say boredom and at times i often think why did I start it??? It wasnt peer pressure because i started smoking at 21 and i know it wasnt down to boredom... I realised i started over something so bloody stupid and typical of a so called NON SMOKER!! I took up a challenge that after a pack of 20 id happily quit there and then... Well after a pack of 20 i was hooked. I remember waking up the next day and feeling the most horrible feeling in my chest.. It was clogged a little where id smoked 20 in 4 hours and my mind was going slightly as i was in a stage known as craving... Smokers crave in different ways... Common cravings include comfort eating, anger issues, anxiety, etc... I know with me as a smoker i crave by feeling a tightness in my chest and take loads of deep breaths to try to push the tightness but it doesnt go and after ive lit up a dirty skanky cigarette im happy again as if i never had the problem in the first place...

l want to share some more understanding with smoking with a non smoker within this forum... When i started out i was on 20 a day for around 2 years at the time they were roughly £5 a pack ($10) Multiply that by 365 your looking at £1825 ($3650) a year and i then went upto 60 a day... Being that high and highly addictive it wasnt fun and im sure smokers here who smoke loads will easily understand and explain if asked how difficult it is to cut down and how easy it is to intake more...

My best advice on a final note is to an ordinary non smoker.... Dont ever even be tempted to take a drag of it... It is a horrible thing to be hooked on and once your there its so damn hard to come off.... l was often told what you dont have in life you wont miss and trust me this isnt something your want to take on board.... To the smokers.... If you ever think of giving up whether you win or loose its the taking part and trying again that counts as one day you will succeed....

Kindest regards

Zeon
Un offical agony aunt

[Pix]

When i started out i was on 20 a day for around 2 years at the time they were roughly £5 a pack ($10) Multiply that by 365 your looking at £1825 ($3650) a year and i then went upto 60 a day... Being that high and highly addictive it wasnt fun and im sure smokers here who smoke loads will easily understand and explain if asked how difficult it is to cut down and how easy it is to intake more...

You're smoking about 60 cigarettes a DAY? Does that mean you're continually chain smoking whenever you're not prohibited from doing so? :confused:

Non smoker here, though I've been raised by smokers and lived with them, though no one I know went through more than pack a day on a normal day (and a pack lasted most people I know a couple of days at the very least), but then most people I know were on a budget (and often with other expensive vices such as alcohol as well). (ETA: You know, I've never kept a careful count and it's possible the number of cigarettes smoked were downplayed, like by an ex of mine so that I wouldn't complain about the cost, and I've known people to go through a pack or so a day at times, but I presumed they were sharing their smokes with others when this happened.)

[Rainbowmum]

I love your weekly topics Zeon .
Please do not apologize for being late.

Smoking really is a personal choice.
I hold nothing against smokers , my husband smokes about 180 cigarettes a week.( the one thing I ask of him is to smoke outside.)

As for me I used to be a smoker, started at University , it was the cool thing to do.
Also at the time we used tobacco as spin while choofing the green stuff, it was not unusual to follow up the buzz with some spin.

I stopped smoking the minute I found out I was pregnant with my eldest.

Have I fallen of the wagon?
You bet I have. :biggrin:

I remember this one time I went out to celebrate New Years eve.( that was 6 years after I stopped)
Now I know this is hard to believe , but I simply forgot that I had given up, and kept pinching my friends smokes all night, boy did I pay for it the next morning.LOL

[Bowyn Aerrow]

When I started smoking a kid could buy them from a machine for 50 Cents (a full pack of name brand smokes). When I was a little younger my stepmother would give me a note to send me to the corner store with 40 cents to buy her a pack of Belair. Didn't really need the note....

People smoked everywhere, there was smoking and nonsmoking sections at restaurants, even the guy who pumped your gas had a smoking cigarette dangling between his lips as you told him 'fill it up'. Of course this is back in the day when they checked your oil and washed your windshield as part of the deal of buying gas.

Nearly everyone smoked, we all knew tobacco was NOT addictive, and many of the adults knew that smoking was good for you, as per the ads they grew up with:



That BTW is my official brand, I have been smoking a pack a day since I was turned from Marlboro (Big Red) back when i was working on a company tobacco farm. The Farmer (my boss) handed me a pack and said 'This is what we smoke around here'.

That's 30 years ago.

My Parents smoked, my Father smoked Big Red, my mother smoked Kools (100's with that great menthol taste - yuck). My Mother's mother smoked Chesterfields (that's right, none of that filter stuff for her, she was a real smoker).

Why Chesterfields? Because that is what Lucy smoked:



My Grandmother died at age 78 due to a heart attack. Was it smoking - nope, fear not, her vertebra started breaking down after an accident when she was 23. By the time she died she was nearly doubled over, her lungs, heart, and other organs had struggled for decades being compressed. Her body went to medical science because she should have died in her 30's from that much injury.

My Grandfather was a smoker too (Chesterfields, his wife insisted) He died at age 33 - lead poisoning (too many bullets at one time) War is dangerous.

Their parents lived to see 100 +. My Great Granny smoked a pipe and cigars, her husband 'rolled his own'. Both smoked like smokestacks and both remained active and healthy until their body's gave out. He at 102, she at 105. Smoking didn't kill them, time did. On the other side my great grandmother (She was posh) smoked some brand that came in a gold fancy box and hers were always on cigarettes holders - she had many of those holders, long thin fancy tubes. Like I said, she was posh. She kicked it at age 106 - though she claimed to be 112, there was no birth certificate for her so the 'official' age is an unknown. No, she didn't die from heart disease or lung disease. Alcohol is what got her. I guess 90 or 100 years of drinking bourbon, vodka and god only knows what other alcohol on a daily basis is too much for the liver.

Her Husband died at the young age of 81, his diabetes caught up with him. No He never smoked, no drank....

My Father's side is also long lived, lots of smokers - again they did die, most 95+ years of life, none from 'smoker's lung' or from heart disease linked to smoking.

His mother died from lung cancer - mesothelioma, but then she worked the factories during WWII where she handled massive amounts of fire-resistant coating composed of Asbestos. His father silently passed sitting in his favorite chair at the age of 99 (a month before hitting 100), he closed his eyes and died sitting up right. His heart just stopped. He smoked 2 packs a day.

Aside from structural damage (torn joints, blown/herniated disks) smoking has only given me a morning cough - and most mornings that doesn't exist.

I am hard pressed to buy into all of this 'smoking kills' propaganda. My extensive family tree (When we start throwing aunts, uncles, cousins) has lots of smokers who lived a very, very long time without heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, and the like.

My sampling of the population tells me that while smoking is an expensive, and dirty habit (smoke ruins everything) it isn't the killer it is reputed to be.

[Pix]

I am hard pressed to buy into all of this 'smoking kills' propaganda. My extensive family tree (When we start throwing aunts, uncles, cousins) has lots of smokers who lived a very, very long time without heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, and the like.

I'm not that skeptical, though it wouldn't surprise me if some people have a much greater tolerance to it than others (and interesting question to me: how much does believing smoking is healthy or unhealthy affect the body?), and I think it's plausible to consider that many smokers claim to live stressful lives and maybe the stress is taking a toll as well. And I figure there are countless ways we risk our health, smoking is just one more way.

But I do recall when I saw a pic of the oldest woman on record, being over a 150 IIRC, and in the pic they'd taken of her she was holding a lit Marlboro. :o

And I recall laughing out loud at a McD's drive through window because the much older guy I was with was smoking (he just can't seem to remember that smoking is much less acceptable today as when he was young) and the lady in the window flashed the No Smoking sign at him. I was so surprised because I figured anyone working at McDonald's (who breathe in a lot of combustion as well as monoxide and are encouraged to eat their food) isn't someone who cares about their health and I laughed. And unfortunately for me his cigarette smoke was staying in the truck with us rather than (unlike his truck's exhaust) going into the lady's lungs.

My sampling of the population tells me that while smoking is an expensive, and dirty habit (smoke ruins everything) it isn't the killer it is reputed to be.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any idea why smoking got such a bad rep it didn't deserve? :confused:

[fenris]

I smoke... for many reasons... at first it calms me down and thats better as medication...

I have allergic lung problems.. before I startet to smoke I had 62 % lung capacity... since I smoke I have constantly 115 % capacity....

But... I don´t want to be old and maybe helpless with fibromyalgia... I want to live the time I have as good as it can be ... but not a week longer... so it don´t cares me if it is unhealthy.
It´s my decision of life.... but as healthy person... I can only advice: Don´t smoke mile:

[Craig]

I smoked for four years. At first I just loved smoking, couldntwait till my next cig. I loved heavy meals coz I knew I'd get to smoke afterwards and it would feel so good. however, after a while I started to realize that it had become more of a habit. It just does not give me the satisfaction it once did so I decided quit. It's been 3 months since my last cig now!

[Almac]

I've never smoked in my life, saying that, it's my understanding that smoking is an addiction like any other drug, so I have to admire those people who try to 'kick the habit'.