Angela
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*11 year thread necromancy* :kaioken:
It's very hard to fully quit smoking. I usually fall in and out of it. The problem is I never should have started in the first place. As I probably have a predisposition to liking nicotine. I can quit for long stretches of time. Nevertheless, if I go out for a few drinks with friends, I may sometimes buy a pack or "loosies" (single cigarettes). I currently have a pack that I regret buying. Perhaps its the inhibition from the alcohol that lures me to it. My GP told me that once the brain gets hooked on it, its impossible to stop the urges; but you must resist.
Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances you can do; ranked 3rd in the world. If you haven't done it, don't start.
Nevertheless, I can go several months without smoking, at a time. If I do, it's usually just a short day or two flirtation with it.
I smoked for a couple of months when I was around 20 and at university. I honestly didn't get much out of it, and I hated the way my fingers looked yellow and the ashes all over the place. (I'm a clean fanatic in terms of my living and working space.) I just decided to stop and never had any desire to do it again.
I must have my mother's genes where nicotine is concerned. My father was addicted to it virtually his whole life, from around 12, he said, until it killed him in his mid-70s, which was way too young in a family where they were very long lived. However, considering that when young he smoked Italian and Egyptian cigarettes, and then later sometimes two packs a day of Lucky Strikes, and after that cigars and pipe tobacco (and inhaled it all), it's a tribute to his immune system that it didn't get him earlier. He struggled so mightily with it, tried the nicotine gum, etc., but nothing worked. He was just miserable without it.
Now I have to watch my son struggle with it. I told him over and over again not to start, but he did, and he is well and truly addicted. He switched to the e-cigaretees and now to the vape, which I hope is better. I worry about it all the time.
Yet, perhaps because I smelled it for some many years, and smelled it on my father for so many years, especially pipe tobacco, the smell of it is far from unpleasant. After my father died, a friend of his came to see me early one morning to commiserate on our loss. It was winter and he had just come in from cutting wood, and he gave me a deep hug. The smell of the fresh, cold air, the wood, and the pipe tobacco which he also smoked, with the feel of his bristly, pre-shave cheek next to mine hit me like a thunderbolt, and I felt a sense of loss so profound that I burst into tears and my knees almost buckled. Even today, years later and as horrible as it is, the smell of tobacco, especially pipe tobacco, reminds me of my father, and so it ironically makes me feel safe and loved. Human beings are such strange creatures, or at least I am, I guess.