Smoking, need ideas to kick it before I get really hooked

Bid to raise Hawaii smoking age to 100

Exploding vape pen kills a Texas man - CNN

 

2 1/2 years, still 100 percent tobacco free

 

You thinking about it? . Don’t do it!! You’ve come too far up to mountain.

 

Bradley, how’s it going for you? I hope well!

 

I think it's been close to a year since I've had a cig. It gets easier after 72 hours and even easier after 8-10 days.

Raisins are said to tame nic-fits. Or just chew some minty gum for a few weeks or as long as you need.

The best early indicator comes after about 10 days when your skins feels so much cleaner because you're not oozing tar and chemicals.

 

I'm not sure if this was brought up earlier, but I'm curious. For the smokers reading this thread, how old were you when you smoked your first cigarette?

I've never smoked one, but I'm from a family of smokers. My father started when he was 12. That is around when my older brother started, too.

 

My dad smoked and then my big brother did. I tried my first one -- Lucky Strike lol -- when I was 13 or 14.

Never became a regular smoker, just social. Then I became one. Quit. Started again. Quit. Started. Quit.

I'd still like one every so often but there's never just one so it's easier to have none.

 

I came from the same kind of family - nuclear and extended. I'm the one of the few in the extended who didn't.

My extended is the kind where the smoking picked up considerably whenever the card games started and the whiskey and scotch came out. (Beer was so omnipresent that it superseded smoking.) The basement after those nights smelled like...well, I suspect that had something to do with why I never smoked.

 

Both my parents smoked for 18 years, I never picked-up the habit myself. Probably have smoked a total of ten cigarettes (mostly when I was drunk) in my life.

 

My father died of COPD and was a smoker for most of his life. My mother died of a pulmonary embolism, no doubt contributed to by smoking two or more packs a day. You'd think I'd know better, but I still smoke socially when I'm drinking. I can go weeks without one, but if I have a few I still like to puff. It's a stupid, pointless habit, which I used to enjoy on the regular, smoking probably two packs a day in my early 20s. Now I just associate it with rewarding myself. I would never smoke at work. And smoking when I'm completely sober now makes me nauseous. I never smoke around my daughter, though I know she knows I have had cigarettes.

I smell people who come in from a smoke and think, "Jesus, is that what I smell like?" Unfortunately my gf (of nearly five years) smokes socially, too. And she will smoke even on nights when she doesn't drink, but only one or two (or so she says).

It's an inexcusable habit, but so are a lot of things.

 

CD, when did you start? The stories of how and why people smoke are certainly part of the topic, but I'm just curious when smokers try it for the first time. I've always been under the impression that it was when they were very young. I'm wondering if I am correct in thinking that most people start smoking before they are old enough to legally purchase cigarettes.

I tend to bring up my father's death when I talk about smoking as my justification for being a pain in the ass on this subject. (Insert joke about me lacking an excuse to be a pain in the ass the rest of the time.) He started when he was 12. His mother, a heavy smoker, died from lung cancer when he was 13. She was only 38. He often spoke about being terrified of suffering the same fate, yet he could never manage to stop smoking and he died of lung cancer in his early 50s.

That said, I must admit I was always judgemental regarding smoking. I remember a friend of mine who smoked socially, but knew how I felt about it, so she never did it around me. We both worked at the school newspaper. I found her in one of the smaller offices smoking with the editor-in-chief. I will never forget the look on her face. Based on the embarrassment, you would have thought I'd caught them doing something far more intimate than sharing a cigarette.

 

BTW, in case people wonder, I hit the like button because I like to thank people for bravely sharing stories.