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

I had my first cigarette when I was 17, the year I broke my leg and had to take a year off from basketball. Was very intermittent until I got to college, when I was just a full-blown smoker, lighting up with a cup of coffee as soon as I woke up and smoking as I walked between classes, etc. Back then -- mid 1990s -- you could smoke in bars and restaurants, basically anywhere really, so it was pretty easy to get hooked. Hell, I remember college professors bumming smokes off me. My parents didn't try to dissuade me. In fact, I distinctly remember my mother saying, "The most interesting people smoke." What mularkey.

I have three older sisters and none of them have ever smoked.

Sorry about your father. My parents were both 74 when they died.

I bargain with myself and say it's not that bad, but it's just a stupid, inexcusable habit. If I stopped drinking entirely -- which I should also probably do, given my proclivity to binge drink and make bad decisions -- I'd probably never smoke again bc I don't enjoy it at all when I'm sober. I think it's disgusting, which it is.

 

Thanks. It is amazing to me that it will be 20 years since my father died this December and he was only seven years older than I am now.

While I do find smoking disgusting, that's never been what disturbed me most about it. Smokers are shortening their lives. The old joke that the years they are losing are the crappy ones at the end doesn't hold up, either. The crappy ones just come sooner. I watched what cancer did to my father and my father-in-law, who was 65 when he died. He had bladder cancer, but the research shows a high correlation between that and smoking as well. I speak from first-hand observation about those awful days coming sooner.

It's not just about the smoker and I'm not just talking about the dangers of second-hand smoke, though those are very real. My wife was devastating by her father's death and it sucks to think that he could have been her longer if not for the cigarettes. My daughter never knew either of her grandfathers and she is very aware that she missed out. My father died long before she was born and my father-in-law died when she was only one. He loved being a grandfather, but he missed out on that with her. We should all do what we can to be there for the people who love us, and that means quitting smoking.

Of course, I can turn all of this on myself and say I need to put down the damn Pepsi and get some exercise.

 

Yep.

My daughter doesn't remember my parents at all, which pains me to think about. She was two when my mother passed, three when my father died.

 

The answer is yes. Yes, you do.

I say that as someone who averaged a pack a day for about a decade. But I quit cold turkey almost eight years ago. And the smell is awful to me now.

 

I believe we went to the same college, albeit 20 years apart. I remember smoking in classes in Ryland Hall, in the Robins Center concourse, at beer bashes in Millhiser Gym, and in the Refectory (old RC dining hall, Sarah Brunet Hall) after meals. And in the dorms and frat houses, of course. Marlboro Reds were $.35 a pack in the vending machine by the old RC post office, a carton was $2 at the Giant on Parham Road and just a little more expensive at the nearby 7-Elevens.

 

Yup, I went to the U. of Richmond for a year and a half and then dropped out, in part bc my drinking was out of control. Smoking in class? That's insane. They definitely still had cigarette vending machines, though.

 

The junior college I attended was nicknamed "high school with ashtrays"

 

I was five. It was a Salem, and my father gave it to me.

It did not go well, which was his hope. I didn't touch another one until I was well into college.

 

I was 7 first time I smoked.
Smoked occassionally as a very young child, cigarettes and cigars pinched from adults.
Started smoking pretty regularly around 12.

I still think about it pretty much every day, but I haven't been close to caving in quite some time now.
When my youngest is 18, I'll be 65 and I plan to take it back up then.

 

Like is not strong enough for this post. You sound like Alan Arkin in little miss sunshine. Don’t take up the horse though