Do you smoke? - Page 3

Little John said 46 years now... and have quit everything else.
not going to quit this !
(smoking)

You know you are an idiot for saying this though hey?
Cancer is no fun. I'd rather die of burning.
So tell me - what exactly have you already given up? It seems to me that smoking is the first thing you need to give up, being the most harmful thing you probably used to do.

I started smoking cigarettes at eighteen. Strangely enough, I started smoking weed two years earlier at sixteen. I used to buy tobacco to mix with weed in my joints (so technically I've smoked tobacco since sixteen, but only in joints). Considering that weed is expensive, I would often be left with no weed but an abundance of tobacco. Out of boredom one day, I decided to smoke the tobacco (not having any weed at the time) and it really just took off from there. Why am I still a smoker? Simple, because I'm addicted to nicotine.

right, well hard to say what is the most harmful thing.... cancer is really bad, but as with a lot of folks, was looking at the more immediate versus the long run....some things back then presented a more clear and present danger.

maybe eventually I will gain the needed strength and motivation to quit, has not been the case so far.

To Inmate,
"Why am I still a smoker? Simple, because I'm addicted to nicotine."

I never met anyone who could not give up Pot at the drop of a hat.
I don't think pot is particularly addictive - if at all.
People who like the effect, like to repeat it. But with smoking - it is different.
Smoking give nothing, it takes everything; health and life.

True, pot isn't very addictive. I had given it up for a few months until quite recently and didn't find it difficult at all. However, cigarettes are a completely different ball game for me. You can find it extremely hard to stop smoking when you've been doing it everyday for years......especially when everyone your around all day has a cigarette between their lips.

I started smoking at about 15 with other kids my age because we thought it was cool or made us look older like the kids older than us who did it for the same stupid reasons. I didn't like the taste and it made me cough so I 'pretended' for a while but then it nicotine got it's claws into me.
I smoked off and on for years. Gave up when I had my first kid. Started again when I emigrated. Gave up again when had next kid. Started again when I got divorced. Gave up again when I felt like getting life back. Started again when had new girlfriend who smoked.
Stopped again a little more than a year ago after being really ill and admitted to hospital with pneumonia. Now every time I feel like a cigarette (yes the craving still remains) I remind myself of how upset my youngest son and daughter were because they thought I was dying due to smoking.
I regret the day I ever started.

Yes, my experience was almost exactly the same, except that I was 11 years old.
RIght now I have no had a smoke for 10 years, too late to stop me getting throat cancer though.

Hobbes, if you have quit, your probability of cancer is dropping rapidly. True, it will not be the same as those who never smoked. But it is nowhere near continuing smokers.

I think you misunderstand.
I was diagnosed with throat cancer five years ago.
The likelihood of getting it again, is high due to me having had it already; and simply getting older bumps up the chances too.
Thus my chances of getting it again are increasing.
Obviously if I was stupid enough to start smoking again the chances were rocket.

Hobbs, I did not understand. I am so sorry.

Forget about it.
I've been all clear for quite a while.
Once you've had it though, the spectre never leaves you, and as the treatment was pretty draconian, they consequences of discomfort are an everyday reminder that it can strike again.
In the UK we have a five year follow up, which includes a visit to the ENT specialist who puts a probe down my nose and prods me about a bit.
I'll be saying cheerio to him for the last time in Sept. - unless, or until, cancer comes round again.

Best wishes. My wife suffered through cancer, and still is not quite the same. I love her dearly. This does not mean that I have an understanding, for I was just an observer. But, I can claim sympathy.

Sorry about your wife, but really, for me, your sympathy is not needed.
We all have to die sometime and in a way the treatment was nature's was of changing me from a person that knew I was going to die to a person that KNOWS that I really am gonna die.

I'm not one of those silly people that claim cancer was the best thing that happened to me. Or that I was somehow lucky to be through it. Lucky means NOT getting cancer.
But there were some positive consequences.
A year before I was diagnosed my Mum had died and I'd got the house sold, and so had a bunch of cash (i was using carefully) lying about in the bank.
SO, I bought the Harley and the BMW!
Rather then be the richest man in the graveyard I got off by but and started to enjoy myself more. I also did a Master degree, took a course in Sculpture and another in Stained Glass .
I not sure I'd have done all that. But who knows?

I've been smoking since I was eighteen years old. At the time it was due to peer pressure and wanting to be cool. My stress levels have also never been normal so the first time I felt an outside influence reduce stress I was hooked. Now it's part habit and part 'I need a break.' I've tried to quit but I also live in a house full of smokers. Not that it's an excuse, just a variable that effects the quitting process. I would love to quit smoking but there are other areas of my life that are more important right now. So my mental energy is focused on that.

I don't smoke. I've maybe tried one lung full and other than that I've smoked a cigar once (which I liked for some reason, I think it made me feel buzzed or more relaxed or something).

I've always had an aversion to smoking because my father always smoked with I was growing up and and he and my mum used to have lots of fights about it. She didn't like him smoking or smoking around us kids and hence the fights. I used to have a heavy distaste towards smoking because of that - it's much less now than it used to be when I was younger.