Well, if her son is on the dating scene, I could see smoking as a huge handicap. God, that stuff just stinks.
Thankful, I have an incredibly mild form of Asthma. No inhalers, no issues, but smoke seems to activate it, so smoking was never an option. I believe I would be a smoker today if it wasn’t for that handicap. Or a marathon runner. Neither appeals to me.
Money angle is really good. Think of instead of buying a pack of cigarettes, putting that money away, and then taking a trip to Vegas or something cool like that. It really adds up fast.
This was a great reinforcement mechanism for me when I was quitting. For the first year, I spent the $$ on cool things every month. This was about $80/month for me. YMMV depending upon how many packs / cans you go through each week.
Money can be a good motivator: it worked for me when the price was going up to 4 bucks a pack (it’s ten bucks now) fifteen (!) years ago. But nicotine addiction is pretty damn strong. A coworker was complaining about him and his wife’s lack of money, and I explained they could save 600 dollars a month (1 pack a day for each of them, 10x2 x 30=600) buy dropping the cigarettes, and he looked at me like I was insane. Oh well.
Let me tell you how strong:
May 15, 2015 at about 7:00 pm, I had severe chest pain walking two blocks to my mailbox. It was bad pain, and was getting worse. I knew what it was even though this was my first. You can’t mistake it for heartburn, I’ll tell you that. I walk home, everything fully functional except my right shoulder and upper arm hurt bad. Not left arm, it can also be the right. This pain went on for almost an hour, during which time I took several aspirin, and the pain gradually went away.
Knowing exactly what I was dealing with, I still smoked a bunch more cigarettes that night, figuring if anything more happened, this might be my last chance. That night and the following day went without incident. I felt much better, and decided to forget about it.
The following night at about the same time, the pain came again. This time even worse. My girlfriend begged me to go to the ER. I refused. I took more aspirin. This time it didn’t help. I took a shower, and nearly passed out. I lay down on the bed, but the pain only got worse.
Why was I not going to the ER? I had great insurance at the time, but didn’t want to deal with the hassle of the paperwork, and fighting them over the bills. That’s right. Great insurance that I was paying for, and yet I refused to go to the doctor for any reason.
I put up with that shit for two fucking hours, hoping it would go away again. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I told the girlfriend, “You win. Let’s go.”
She drove me at high speed to the ER with me clutching my chest, barely able to breathe. When we drove into the ER, I had my door open before she got the car stopped. I ran to the desk, told them I was certain I was having a heart attack, tossed them my wallet, they pushed me into a wheelchair, and shot me into a room and got me onto a table, stripped me naked, and hooked me up to machines. I was instantly surrounded by about 8 people, one of whom was the ER doc, who began firing off questions at me as fast as he could. One of which was, “Do you smoke?” And hell, I was by then so scared, I could not lie.
I remember waving at my girlfriend, who was watching all of this from the doorway with tears in her eyes.
I remember one of the techs saying she must have the machine hooked up wrong; she wasn’t getting any reading. The doc told her, “No, it’s hooked up right.”
A nurse said, “He’s perspiring profusely.”
The doc said, “Give him some nitro.” I remember the little pill going under my tongue. Then I suddenly got extremely dizzy, and everything went black.
My girlfriend was there for the first shock. She said my body lifted off the table, and black stuff was foaming out of my mouth (the nitro I think). Finally someone noticed her and took her away. The doc told her later that they had to shock me several times to get me back, and that I was “dead for about 3 minutes”, whatever that means.
All of that happened within about 2 minutes of me arriving at the hospital. Any later, and…Well, I really shouldn’t even be here. My main artery had completely blocked. “The mother of all widow-makers” he called it. They shoved two large stents in there to keep it open. They are still in there.
I quit smoking that day.
Two months later, I had quintuple bypass surgery. That really sucked. They do a ton of them every single day at that hospital, that’s how common it is. It’s an assembly line. My surgery took 6 hours, and they cut open my breast-bone and stopped my heart to do the surgery. Knowing that ahead of time scared the crap out of me, but I made it. But I never want to wake up in that kind of pain again, with a big tube down my throat to my lungs, and chest drainage tubes coming out of my abdomen. Also, I could barely breathe because my chest hurt too much. I never wanted to see another cigarette again.
! remained smoke-free for 4 weeks after I got home from surgery.
Then my girlfriend and I got into a fight, and the stress was too great. I picked up a pack. And here I am, two years later, STILL fucking smoking. That’s how addictive this shit is.
OMG Giles please stop.
I used to tell people that I was an expert at quitting. I quit 10-12 times a year for several years. Of course, it never stuck, until my last time trying which was July 4th, 2010. I guess you could say I suck at quitting now.
Seriously though, I’m going to tell you how I did it so maybe there is something in my story that can help you quit.
After a decade of practicing (my longest was about 3 months), I decided to make the upcoming July 4th my independence day. I decided this in about February. I don’t recall the trigger that made me look in the mirror, but I put that date down and I kept chewing (with the occasional smoke). I picked this date because my wife & kids used to go to her parents house for 3 weeks every summer and I had the house to myself and I knew I didn’t want anyone around the first 3 days because they are the fucking worst.
Subconsciously, I must have timed it perfectly because I was scraping the last snuff from can close to midnight. When I woke up in the morning, I went to work - mowing the lawn, washing my truck, doing some remodeling that I had put off for years, the point is I had to keep myself busy. I knew if I was idle, I’d be toast. So I kept at it and worked all day on shit, never once got in my truck (driving my truck was automatic smoke time). Took a nap, woke up like I was on drugs. The withdrawal I think is worse than the actual smoking.
With me nearly hallucinating, and heart racing, I figured I was already high, so why not have a bit of weed? For some reason this was the right decision for me. Weed doesn’t have nicotine, and it really settled me. I’m not a heavy pot user, but over the next few days, I had a few hits when it was really getting hard but otherwise I kept at being busy and worked on confronting my smoking triggers - playing games I’d always have a can and my spit cup nearby. I played & had a tall cool glass of ice water. That really helped. Over the next week, I conquered the physical addiction - most people know it’s only 3-4 days of physical addiction. The psychological addition takes years.
Anyway, my family returned and it took a few days for them to believe that I had quit. I had never been so sure in my life. It was tough - pulling up to a gas station and not walking it to get a can or pack of cigs was another battle, but I kept at it. I reinforced my decision by reminding myself I didn’t want to go through quitting anymore. I was done with it.
Two months down the road, I had to find a new job - the group I was in was splitting off and forming an independent company and I chose to look for a new job at my current company - fortunately I had 4 months to find one, and it went down to the last week, but I found another job at my company. Through all that job searching, I kept clean. No smokes. You can imagine the stress. I fought all the urges, rationalization, everything that fucking POS addiction threw at me.
You can do it. You really owe it to yourself. Addiction is crazy good at rationalizing why you should “just have one” or “let me reward myself with just one cig for staying off it for 5 days / 5 weeks / 5 months / 5 years”. I’ll tell you I still get the craving, here I am 7 years on. But you know what? I can taste food again, I don’t smell like an ashtray, I’m not having to make excuses to leave people for 10-15 minutes, and my truck doesn’t have any more burn marks.
Make a plan 2-3 months out. Write the date down. Tape it to your mirror. And do it.
I’ll add two things nobody told me before i quit, and I wish i had been informed:
First, smell coming back is theorically great, but not so great when you live in a town. Smelly people, smelly streets, it s like that Superman super hearing awakening moment, but with smell.
The other thing is that after a few weeks, your tonsils, or whatever those pulmonary hairs are named, start growing back. Personally, it was the worst coughing i ever had. a week without sleep. It was driving me on the border of sanity. But once it is done, it is done, and having read Giles’ story, i’d label it as a mild inconvenience now.
I was also more subject to colds for a while after stopping (the tabacco smoke kills you, but not many bacteria survive it either i guess).
Those are all potential excuses to pick back up the little killer. But i guess anything can be, as Tman said.
Linked here from your other post, Giles. Let me tell you a story.
Both my parents were lifelong smokers. My mother is still alive, my father passed about 12 years ago. My father was a hell of a guy, the tall and lanky and dark haired man that was friends with everyone. He smoked constantly. As kids, my sisters and I really harped on my father to quit. It was his lone vice. He never drank that much, he walked and stayed semi-active, he was never really overweight either. But he smoked. He died after having his last cigarette, while on the toilet. He stood up and his heart stopped completely. Gone in an instant due to a massive myocardial infarction.
But he always had taken care of my mom. You see, she had a stroke about 5 years prior to his death. It was a somewhat major one. Though she recovered quite a bit afterward, it forced her to retire and remain on disability since. She too was and still is a pretty heavy smoker. She has quit probably a dozen times or more during my lifetime. Several times it was for extended periods, but she always came back to it. The addiction is strong. Like my father, my mother has always been trim, and semi-active (until the stroke.) Her doctors begged her after the stroke to quit. She did not, even when she was barely able to remember how to speak, her mind reflexively knew how to pick up and light a cigarette and smoke it. She knew her brand as well, and though she had problems saying it, she would write it. Just a lone, “Virginia Slims,” written on a piece of paper that she would pass to us for weeks after that stroke. Slowly she regained her verbal skills and ability to write more. But the cigarettes and the ability to know how to smoke, that knowledge was locked in.
She is still smoking. Late last year she had her third stroke. Her atherosclerotic disease is so advanced now that they gave her very low odds of being able to successfully have a quadruple aortobifemoral bypass surgery after the last stroke. The occlusion on the branches off her aorta are so great and so extensive that they just can’t find how or where they would be able to bypass them. the occlusion is throughout. Those branches control most of the rest of the blood flow for anything from the heart going down. Eventually, it is a terminal condition. Due to the odds given to her she has decided not to try the surgery. The doctor gave her about a year and a half to live based on previous cases. Still, she smokes.
Smokers know it can kill them. That’s never the motivation to quit. Why care if it only affects you. But it doesn’t just affect you. Your spouse, your family, your friends … that’s who smoking affects. Once my mother passes, it will be just be me and my siblings left. Smoking took my parents. They loved us, cared for us, and provided anything they could for us within their means while we were growing up. But they couldn’t quit smoking for us.
That’s how addictive that shit is.
What’s wrong with marathon runners (says the regular runner of the Chicago Marathon)?
I don’t like smoking, and never got into any smoking substances because as a runner it just completely messes me up to be around that stuff.
Also @Giles_Habibula that is quite the ordeal. I hope you find a way to power through.
This part of your story saddened me, to think that after massive trauma to the brain, the addiction was strong enough to persist.
It makes me think of my grandparents. Both were lifelong smokers. My grandmother died in '97, pancreatic cancer, but you know that had to be exacerbated by smoking. My grandfather died this past February. His heart gave out. I learned during the process of handling his affairs and estate that he had started smoking when he was eight. Sneaked his dads tobacco and papers, his under the porch and lit up. I mean that’s beyond addiction, that’s a lifelong companion at that point.
I know, but vices are like that. It isn’t just smoking. Hell, we could add drinking, eating like shit, never being active, etc. Smoking is just one that there have been more studies tracking the effects of.
And man, it was sad. When they were quizzing my mother post-stroke, my father was in the room with her and the doctor. And she was unable to answer the doctor on his name or who he was, when she was asked. I had never seen my father cry so hard and so loudly as that day. Very fortunately, sometimes the effects of a stroke wane over time. She regained a lot of her memories, her ability to speak, etc. But I think of that day and wonder how my dad found the strength to go back in the room after he cried his ass off, and then started taking care of my mom from that day forward.
Nothing if you don’t mind junky addicts chasing their runners high :).
I was a great runner in high school, but 5 k was about the limit of my attention span. ADHD and running was a odd combination, I really had a hard time focusing at meets that were boring (which accord to my peers were all races). Anything involving a track or multiple laps was my downfall. Hills and forest were great.
Sure, I was just ruminating that it seemed cruelly ironic given that many mental and physical abilities were lost (even if only temporarily) but not just the need but the ability to lift and drag from a cigarette remained.
Yeah, it was both uncanny and deeply sad.
Thanks for your touching story, Skipper. And thanks to everyone else for your moral support and to everyone in this thread for participating in the conversation. All of this has been gently pushing me toward the day when I can muster the effort to do it. I am not quite ready at this moment. However, I can feel the day is coming.
What I have been doing for the past several months is seeing how many days I can go without. Or how many hours. It started with 24 hours, which I managed. A week later, I did another 24 hour stretch, and at the end of that 24 hours, I decided to go a few more hours, just to see if I could. Turned out I could, and extended that stretch to 48 hours. The following week was too stressful, so I skipped it. The fourth week, I went to 70 hours, two hours shy of three days. And every week since, until now, I’ve managed 24 or 48 hours each week, but never 72, my next goal.
We’ll see what happens, and I’ll post an update when I take that final step, or hell, even when (not if) I hit the 96 hour goal, which could be a while, but I do believe it can happen. Thanks again everyone for all of your stories. They have all served as encouragement to me, and hopefully others who read this thread and are trying to quit.
For what it’s worth, Giles, I didn’t mean that story to be so heavy toward you as a smoker. It’s just that your story of the heart attack and hospital brought those feelings back out for me. Sorry, man.
Do what you need to do. If that doesn’t involve quitting, so be it. It is your life, Giles, and some random internet story shouldn’t be what changes things. You and your situation require that you pick your own path. Best of luck, no matter what you decide to do, man.
Dragging this from the depths as it recently occurred to me that I had participated in this thread long ago and it kind of faded from memory.
So back when I did manage to quit for a significant amount of time, but as isn’t all that uncommon I lasted for about a year until my wife at the time fell off the wagon so to speak. I was pretty much hosed then as for me it was not possible to live with a smoker and not smoke again.
Fast forward to last August and I finally got curious enough about the mysterious creatures known as e-cigarettes. I recalled someone mentioning them in this very thread and a former coworker years ago had one of those shitty Blu type devices, but the rest of it seemed weird possibly difficult. But I did some research and came to the conclusion that the actual devices and variety available had seemed to have massively increased and decided to give it a go.
Turns out it was not only a good idea, but possibly one of the best decisions I’ve ever been fortunate to have made. Aside from the brief spans of quitting previously, I’d smoked approximately around a pack a day for roughly twenty years. I tossed away my last pack about four days after I started using my first vape kit (which was not even a very good one).
Now I’ve kind of fallen into the nerd hole of it all, but the important thing is that I have had zero urge for a cigarette and I am finally convinced that I am forever an ex smoker. I now get to save a substantial amount of money, experience a much healthier and more pleasant habit and discover again how amazing it is to be able to breathe normally and taste things as they should be.
So if anyone here is still smoking and weirded out by the idea of vaping, or the by turns goofy and ridiculous press that idiot media outlets seem to love so much I’m just going to say that it’s absolutely worth it to try.
By that token, I just got my first rebuildable atomizer and wound my own coils and I feel quite comfortable with all of the basics and things that are understandably weird from the outside in. So if anybody wants to give it a go and has questions, I am happy to point you to some good info sources and help however I can.
Are you going to try reduce vaping and maybe quit some day, or happy just to not smoke for the rest of your life?
My sister and brother-in-law have similar stories to you, both quit, one went off the wagon, and that was it until they took up vaping 3 years back.
Hard to say.
At the moment I’m literally just enjoying the fact that I got the giant monkey off of my back forever and content that what I am doing is not necessarily without any risk, but the closest thing that reasonably exists.
I could envision putting aside the vape stuff and the thought is far less stressful than the idea of quitting smoking ever was. I enjoy it, but I don’t feel like it has me by the proverbial balls in the way that cigarettes did.
Kind of a noncommittal answer, but bottom line is I’d absolutely consider it but I’m content for the time being.