CONGRATULATIONS Repo!!!

[bain_sidhe]

I learned in another thread that this is Repo's one year anniversary of quitting smoking.

So, I thought he deserved a little recognition! Come on, everybody, give the man a hand!

YEAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH Repo!!!!!!!!!

:toast: :woohoo: :fistbump: :yourock:

[Resuscitated Ethics]

1. aw shucks, I couldn't have done it without first spending

over $20,000 on the soft little fumars (c*cks-of-Satan ;)). They promised to love me and boy did they ever. I think about them every now and then, usually while entering a building through a cloud of burning ones, swearing and loudly exhaling. I will also blow in sidewalk smokers direction to keep the nasty smoke away from my throat. I once caught a rude look for that and had to thank the lung farter for the shared gas, somehow I felt closer to them.

I won't eat in restaurants that have smoking sections when I can help it. I feel it in my throat a half hour after leaving. It is insidious and real.

I am not a quiet ex smoker. Public smoking is assault. It's not as simple as giving up grape Kool-Aid than suddenly deeming every graper a sinner. I had no idea until the smoke cleared out of me for a few months how much tobacco smoke lingers. "Second-hand smoke" isn't just a false pious description of something someone dislikes: it is genuinely, palpably troubling and hurtful. I thought the OTHERS were just whiners. I was wrong on that because I had never cleared the smoke from my lungs for long enough to notice.

End of this sermon. Thanks for the shout out! And please continue your current abstinence-- it will be the norm before you know it.

[bain_sidhe]

2. Well, I'm a quiet one

I actually like the smell of cigarette smoke, as well as pipe smoke. (Not cigars though, cigars are nasty!)

But it's funny you mentioned being able to feel second-hand smoke in your lungs. I have to go through the room where my Hubby smokes to let the dogs out, and every time I do - even when he hasn't been smoking in there for several hours (while he's at work, for example), when I come back in the house my nose runs and my eyes sting and I get a little bit of a headache.

I look at it as a gift, to help keep me from starting up again!

[Resuscitated Ethics]

4. I never smoked inside my current house

Our winters are a little milder than up by the glaciers but still freezing miserably cold. I had a lean-to I would use in extreme weather, also walking the dogs back when we had dogs. They got walked when I needed to smoke.

I used to think my fiancee was exaggerating the need to hang her jacket and blouse out on the porch after a night out at clubs where there was smoking. But the "piety of the converted" argument I get from smokers who care to argue doesn't apply to smoking like it does to food, booze, and other "sins". If someone wants to drink lard it doesn't end up in my lungs.

Smokers are loathe to believe it and will fight the very idea with the focus of the addict: second-hand smoke is assault. It may well be unintentional but the outcome remains.

I remember being a smoker and not appreciating that my personal choice of smoking, outside, in a free country, was threatened by the anti-sinning do-gooders. I have learned by feeling the dry raspy pinch of old smoke right in the gullet. NOT the same as car exhaust, burning leaves in autumn, or any of the other air pollutions out there. There are more chemicals in cigarettes, added during manufacturing as well as bred into the golden light leaf than any of us can legally know. There are paper additives for even burning, glycerin, spices, gasoline derivatives, old tobacco worms, farm workers loogies, pesticides, machine roller lubricant, on and on and on. Not regulated like food. They can have you smoking ANYTHING and paying for the pleasure of more. And the marketing is sickening. Filters became popular in the fifties for the ladies to be able to smoke too, also it made starting up for teens easier.

Good list of some of the approved additives here http://quitsmoking.about.com/cs/nicotineinhaler/a/cigingredients.htm and some mention of the 4000+ chemicals formed by burning.

Best smoke-free wishes!

[bain_sidhe]

5. That About.com site is great!

And it works with Opera. I had to use Firefox to access quitnet, but since I hardly ever use Firefox, and I don't like it that much, I probably won't go there often. Thanks for the link!

[Resuscitated Ethics]

6. After a year the smoking is a vague memory

with no more physical tugs. I am told of "smoking dreams" years after stopping, and I know people who have quit for years and then just picked it back up. So I am guarded, I hope, for the long haul. If there were ashtrays around the house or if I partied a lot with smokers I wouldn't have stopped smoking.

I love the about.com site too. I remember using the internet to help: I never smoked and PC'd simultaneously so it was a natural. Chantix had an email service that would email me a daily pep talk. American Lung Association had a check-in area to use.

I could study all the autopsied lungs on the web and still catch a smoke break. I really don't think I would have stopped the cigs without the Chantix boost. My physician was kind enough to respond to some of my email rantings. Do you have a pep-squad like your health specialist at work/school or your doctor? They really act like they care right when you need someone to listen. After a few months the nailbiting drama is history. Never repeats. The only way to build up that intensity again is to smoke.

Just don't smoke for five minutes (the URGE is about two minutes). Then do it again.

I love the lists of what your body does after so many hours of no cigarettes:
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/subsite/greatamericans/Smokeout.asp
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/subsite/greatamericans/content/When_Smokers_Quit.asp

I am not a physician! Please be in touch with a health pro.

Yay! No cigs-

[mvd]

3. Congrats!

That's a big accomplishment! :toast: