Giving Up Smoking - From A Smokers Perspective
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I have never smoked (apart from the one drag I had in school which almost made me vomit). It isn’t the fact that it’s hard for a smoker to quit that I find difficult to understand, it’s how they ever got started on the things in the first place. This article is written by me, but is from the heart, and in the words, of my man…a smoker.
At the age of just 6 years old I was sent to boarding school by my parents. If this wasn’t enough to cope with, I soon became the butt of everyones jokes when the nickname they christened me with became ’slug’ due to my size. To become one of the gang I did what the big lads did…and started smoking at the age of 11.
My mission was accomplished, but trying the ciggies wasn’t the only benefit of being in the gang. This was the early 70’s and there were lots of goodies being regularly smuggled into one of Britains top private schools.
All this was 39 years ago, and the long hair and platform shoes are long gone (so are the illegal substances that we all tried by the way!) but I am still smoking. I have tried to quit, although not very hard I have to admit, but never really got very far.
During the last 39 years I have smoked as many as 70 a day and as few as 5 a day. The 70 a day, as any smoker out there will know, were when times were stressful, relationships or business were difficult or money was tight (how do we manage to keep buying the cigarettes though??).
There have been other occasions, when I have been in hospital for example, and have only managed to sneak 1 or 2 in. I have dangled precariously out of bathroom windows, nearly bursting stitches, just so that I could have the ‘fix’ that I so desperately needed.
In recent years, where every darned place is anti-smoking, I have risked imprisonment and probably capital punishment so I could have a puff on my little best friend.
I have tried to stop smoking 3 times.
I had a partner a few years ago, who was also a smoker, so we decided to try and quit together. We started again roughly 2 weeks later before one of us killed the other.
I tried to quit for the second time around a year and a half ago but failed due to lack of willpower I guess. I had promised my new girlfriend - a non smoker - that I would stop, but after a fortnight of a stinking attitude (mine, not hers) I chucked in the towel.
Then I had a heart attack last year. Time to get serious thought I. I managed 3 weeks, but, like an idiot, I gave in to those darned cravings. It seemed that I couldn’t think of anything else; especially with being forced to rest and sit around. My Cardiologist had a few stern words with me…I had bumped into him sitting in the sunshine outside the hospital cafe. He told me to stop the smoking, kill the fat intake and ditch the caffeine…and all while he sat there eating a fried egg sandwich, drinking a strong black coffee and SMOKING A CIGARETTE!!
My parents were both heavy smokers but managed to give up when they both got chronic smoking related illnesses. My father has emphysema and my mother died of cancer at the age of 68.
I have more than enough reasons to stop smoking, and I know it. I have already had one heart attack, I am 50 and overweight, but the fear and anxiety of even thinking about packing up scares me so much.
On a mature conscious level I know I have no choice, BUT, if I can cut down to, say 10 a day, will that be alright??
In every other aspect of my life I am in control but, my God, I hate these things that I seem to need as much as the air that I sometimes struggle to breathe.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
I was able to quit after 30 years, it was not easy I ate a lot of charms pops and listened to ac-dc full blast when I had a fit. It was pure hell for a month for me but three years later I am still smoke free, accept for a joint now and then. The bottom line was that I was tired of being a drug addict and that is simply what a smoker is a drug addict, decide what you want and do it that is the big secret to quiting smoking just quit and no matter what do not smoke even a single fucking puff, or smoke your self to death that is it, you decide right now this very second and go with your choice.