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Post by imamess on Feb 7, 2016 12:40:31 GMT -5
My DH told me the tale of his smoking. By the time we met, he had quit. He started smoking at eleven years old, sneaking out with a friend of his. He was smoking three packs a day and getting up every morning and going out on the porch to cough and spit up. One morning he was coughing and spitting up and spit up blood. It scared him so bad he quit cold turkey, although his brother said it took a lot of peppermint candy He watched the childhood friend die of lung cancer and told me repeatedly how lucky he was. Every time he went to the doctor in his later years, the doctor would always ask him if he smoked. He would say that he used to. The doctor would ask "When did you quit?" DH would say "Before you were born." Then the doctor would say "When?" and the answer would be 1966. Like Fivecat, I grew up on a tobacco farm. I set it out, hoed and hoed and when I got big enough, sprayed and helped strip and grade back when you tied the leaves into 'hands'. My grandparents didn't smoke, my parents didn't smoke so neither did my brother & I. Our children don't smoke and I am very, very glad.
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Post by Ally on Feb 7, 2016 13:30:41 GMT -5
My MIL has just quit smoking after about 50 years of it. Cold turkey. SO don't give up hope. By the way, my mom never smoked a cigarette in her life and died from COPD. My MIL is healthy as a horse, so go figure. There is a hereditary form of COPD It might be a good idea for any descendants to be tested. It's caused by something called alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency. There are also risks associated with certain occupations that can cause lung diseases. Fivecat, I don't have anything against you. It's the cigarettes I can't stand. I know it's nearly impossible for some people to quit. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known to man. I'm sorry that you're struggling.
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Post by Harmony on Feb 7, 2016 13:30:54 GMT -5
Fivecat I understand what it is like to struggle with not wanting to smoke, although being unable to quit. I started smoking when I was in grade 3 or 4 and was up to a pack a day by the time i was 14, although no one bought them for me and I was already addicted.......so there went all babysitting money and much of my part time job earnings while in school to help support that habit. Started having lung issues when I was 14, although do you think it made me able to quit? NO!!! Do you think my smoking teenage boyfriend who told me if he got as sick as I did, he would quit... made me able to quit? NO!
It took me almost 20 years and an extreme amount of attempts, although it was a family member who really was distraught with my smoking that was another factor. I told them same as you, that when they went on about it or tried to hide my cigarettes...it did not help and made me want to smoke more BUT they were so upset and worried for my life they could not help themselves. They listened when I told them, although I got their point too.
I wanted to quit, so kept it at the front of my mind during the last year I struggled with quits. It is a tougher addiction than heroine researchers have found and had I known it caused cancer or was as addictive as it was when I started, I would not have done that to my body. When I started it was glamorized as a sophisticated feminine elegant and grown up act. By the time the truth was clear, it was not possible for me to just stop.
Your not alone and only 30% of smokers have successful quits and that is even with support and nothing major going wrong in the first year, as if it does....chances are the quit will not be able to be m aintained. Some want to quit and some do not, as my Mom has quit so many times due to landing in hospital....although after returning home would choose to light up(she has spent 6 months at once in there).....so she choose to light up. Many would give anything to get that far into a quit and not want to smoke after if at all possible. Personal choice there under those circumstances.
Am sorry that the very addiction that was promoted by society, paid the bills, is a huge tax cash cow for government and is next to impossible to quit has made you a social pariah....rather than there being understanding and support around being a nicotine addict. When I quit, I spoke to people who had been alcoholics that said quitting drinking was easier to do. People who had been addicted to cocaine, which again had been easier to quit. Where are the treatment centres and facilities to help smokers quit who choose to and want to be supported? None existent(maybe for the rich and famous...not sure?). That made me so angry when I got a handle on it during my quit as so many taxes are paid, it is totally socially unacceptable, and unhealthy...yet no support to assist a person when they want/need it. Am sorry it affects you so extremely on top of you hating it so much. I wish the best for you...
I DO understand despite having been lucky enough to get a solid quit(hardest thing I have ever achieved) and my sister who spent the last 7 years of her life after being diagnosed with cancer doing whatever she could to quit smoking, also understands. I think she was had a two week quit under her belt when she passed. I really wanted to quit and live and so did she, although she was not able to succeed that way and while I am sad about it and understand....am not going to feel guilty for both being unable to tolerate smoke(no friendship is more valuable than my or my pets health) or having been able to do it.
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Post by charis on Feb 7, 2016 13:33:45 GMT -5
I would join the chorus of nonsmokers saying that unfortunately there really isn't a way to acceptably disguise or mitigate the smell of smoke that has gotten a foothold in a closed space. I have a similar problem with the doggy smell in our multi-dog household. we've gone noseblind to a lot of it, and I worry about my ability to tell. I open windows, wash bedding and dogs, etc and think I have handled it. Then I leave the house for the day and when I come back it hits me the second I walk in the door I think that both of us have a responsibility to accept and own what we have made. You don't have plans not to smoke, I don't have plans to not have dogs. So if I have a guest who is allergic to dogs or just can't stand heavy doggy smells, my responsibility as I see it is to not get huffy and thin skinned about it and just accept that my house is not a pleasant place for them to be without turning it into "Eff you if you don't love me enough to hack and wheeze and go home smelling like a dog". That is turning it on them instead of owning it. Sounds like you already own it and aren't taking anything personally. Maybe arrange to meet people in their homes, or in public places, or make a nice outdoor space on a porch or lawn? It seems too restrictive a suggestion, but if you had to have nonsmokers in a lot and couldn't get around that, maybe having one place like a sunroom cleaned and repainted. A place that no one was allowed to smoke in, with no fabric furnishings that had ever been around smoke would be a solution. But I couldn't commit to that with my dogs, so I am aware that I am talking out of my hat here.
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Post by Harmony on Feb 7, 2016 14:06:21 GMT -5
imamess don't ever let him light up in your vehicle again! He may not know better, although you have to teach him that there is no smoking in your home or vehicle. I doubt many if any smokers would disagree with that. Very rude! I would like to think I would have stopped and offered him the opportunity to have his cigarette outside while sharing there is NO smoking in my vehicle....which in my mind would have been polite! Not in your shoes or know him, so maybe that was not an option....although just horrible and selfish really. No excuse to not know better these days....
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Post by Di on Feb 7, 2016 14:49:52 GMT -5
I have to chime in as well. I am HIGHLY sensitive to cigarette smoke (asthmatic) and there is no way to neutralize it. It is on your clothes, it is in your hair, it's on the walls and the furniture and even in the pores of your skin. If you smoke you can't smell it. It's sort of like cat owners who can't smell the ammonia from litter boxes. Just don't expect non smokers to be truly comfortable with it. Our storage room smells like CAT There is no way to eliminate it. I have swept, scrubbed, washed all cat bedding (the cats have a pet door into that one room) I have sprayed febreeze, used Nature's Miracle, etc. I am fairly noseblind to that smell, but like charis, when I have been gone for a day, I come in and cringe. I just have to invite people who are sensitive to cats to visit in the kitchen and dining room because there are 2 doors between that and the storage room. Of course if they are sensitive to the Small Bad Dog, we just have to sit on the front porch, because she shares my bedroom.
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Post by imamess on Feb 7, 2016 18:56:04 GMT -5
imamess don't ever let him light up in your vehicle again! He may not know better, although you have to teach him that there is no smoking in your home or vehicle. I doubt many if any smokers would disagree with that. Very rude! I would like to think I would have stopped and offered him the opportunity to have his cigarette outside while sharing there is NO smoking in my vehicle....which in my mind would have been polite! Not in your shoes or know him, so maybe that was not an option....although just horrible and selfish really. No excuse to not know better these days.... It was an emergency, I asked him to help me pick out a pistol after the robbery. I was so glad he went to the store with me I wouldn't have said anything unless I was about to pass out. He did crack the window and that helped some. Store owners in my small southern town take advantage of women, and since I did not know anything about pistols, I needed a large male who did know his guns to accompany me on that little adventure. Smoke bothers me a lot, but I drop in on him and his wife. It is their house, not mine and I invite myself and they make me feel welcome. If I don't want their company, I don't have to stop. He doesn't smoke in my house, but doesn't visit much since DH died.
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Post by italianlady on Feb 7, 2016 19:02:08 GMT -5
I honestly think that in total, everyone here included, the number of people we know who don't smoke is literally five. Maybe six. None of them are ride about it because it's our house and you don't go to somebody else's house and complain about what they do but you also don't let people in and the make them uncomfortable either. And it's not others who say anything about the leftover smell, I know its there even if I don't smell it all the time but sometimes when lots of people have been over, the next day I can smell it even. That is what I don't like.
I have taught all my kids that when you have company you bend over backwards if you need to. You never smoke around a nonsmoker in an enclosed space and no matter what you never smoke in a nonsmokers vehicle I don't care how many times they say you can. It's not like passing gas. It doesn't just go away after you light a match.
My younger daughter had some friends who stayed here last year for a bit when we had a spare room and while they didn't smoke, all their friends did and they even let their friends smoke in the house they moved into recently. Of course he is IN A BAND and plus they are hipster so I think it's required to let them. Who knows.
Also I don't think anybody wants to quit, we want to have already quit. Smoking is enjoyable and if it didn't kill you then nobody would quit. We want to not enjoy it but without welbutrin or a horrible hangover or extremely bad pneumonia, that doesn't happen much. Welbutrin makes me not enjoy it and makes it feel and taste gross so I can quit. It ticks me off a little when that happens but otherwise I'm fine. And smelling a cig doesn't bother me then. I kind of vicariously enjoy it. It's when I'm in a place so full of smoke that it is thick that it's just too much. It can get like that here during parties and card games and even smokers go outside to breath but we all understand.
What I hate is when I can smell it in my house. And I hate knowing it's there even if I can't smell it. Also I can only open the windows in the back part of the house, the dogs get out of I open the front ones and will get hit by a car or shot.
I'm sure I'll quit again some day, like when I get depressed and need meds again, or maybe when the Dr says "We just got your xrays back". Or maybe I won't. I don't know.
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Post by jean on Feb 8, 2016 3:19:38 GMT -5
Mynicehome At least you are a very considerate smoker.
I grew up in a home where my father smoked. My Mum never did. Dad smoked at a time when it was socially acceptable. My sister and I always told Dad his cigarettes stunk. We both found it hard to breathe around it and it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that I probably have an allergy to it. I never knew finding it hard to breath around smoke wasn't normal. Dad smoked till he was 58. He had a heart attack and quit cold turkey. I married a smoker. Once he told me he had quit smoking but I knew he didn't as I could smell the smoke on him. He eventually quit. Now it has been 23 years. Now he is one of the worst people to complain about the smell of smoke. We go to visit his neice and she and her dh are chainsmokers as well as her dd and sil if they are there. Neice and dh used to smoke inside after their daughter was born and she had a problem for a while with her breathing. We come home and need to change our clothes and shower. Dh's sister is very considerate when she visits if she smokes. She will smoke outside and make sure the smoke is not blowing my direction. She stays at his other sisters home. Although I don't like smoking I realize many started at a time when people didn't realize the dangers and it was socially acceptable. It is something that is both physically and emotionally addictive. Jean
P.S. I hope I don't offend anyone by my comments.
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Deleted
Joined: January 1970
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2016 11:56:51 GMT -5
Yeah, I can smell my cats litter box just fine. speaking of which it's time to clean.
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