Are you a smoker?

[Sundance]

Are you a smoker? Are you trying to quit? What I don't understand with all the warnings of the health dangers of smoking and the difficulties of quitting the nasty habit, why some people in this day and age still start smoking??

[alphanguy74]

I never understood how people could handle the smell. It's not like cigarettes smell like a bouguet of roses or whatever. If they smelled like hickory BBQ smoke, then maybe I could grasp it. That and the fact that it drains all your money. It also makes your children sick all the time if you have kids. One girl I worked with a few years ago.... one of her two kids were sick at least twice a month, between exposing them to 4 people smoking in the SAME HOUSE, she also knuckled under to those kids' junk food wishes and fed them a steady diet of hot dogs and pop tarts. No wonder those kids are sick all the time.

[ReddFoxx]

No, I've never even wanted to try it. My aunt developed COPD from years of smoking and died within three years of her diagnosis.

[applcin]

I'm not a smoker. I admit to trying a couple of times when I was a teen under a bit of peer pressure but I didn't like it plus I knew my father would beat the living crap out of me if he ever suspected.

I see people who have their cig in hand before they leave a place so they can light up as soon as they get outside. I know people who reek of the smell that it's on their clothes, on their belongings. We have someone at my job who works around toddlers and sometimes the parents complain of how she reeks.

It's an addiction. It's not something I understand but I think too many people need to find something that for them is stress relief (which they look for in anything from coffee, food, liquor, to gambling, electronic games or sites, etc.). And there are those of us outside of it who look at it and think how can they not know or care what it's doing to them? What I find incredible sometimes is seeing people in the medical profession smoking. I know morticians who smoke and these are people who see firsthand the effects. My boss' sister was on an oxygen tank, in a wheelchair, dying a slow death and she was still asking (make that demanding) my boss bring her cigarettes. One of my neighbors has lupus and she still smokes.

[EricMontreal22]

...stays out of this thread...

[Soapsuds]

Hmmm...going to bug you on Facebook and ask why..details...lol

[All My Shadows]

Oh, Eric[a]...

I hate smoking, and I'll never ever do it. I can't imagine spending the money on it, and the smell is downright disgusting. As a matter of fact, I had class tonight, and there's this one guy who always insists on getting in groups with me, and the smell makes me want to vomit every week. At work, I bitch at everyone who smokes. It's just a gross habit with no real benefits. It's worse than drinking, IMO, because most people who drink don't constantly do it all day every day.

[Mr. Vixen]

Every once in a while if I get really drunk I'll ask someone for a cigarette, take one puff, remember why I hate them so much and throw it out. Lol

[quartermainefan]

Everything has risks and to live life risk free sounds like it would be pretty boring. You have to be a smoker to appreciate it, and I admit all the downsides are true, but cigarettes can satisfy an urge like nothing else. Times are stressing you out? A cigarette can calm you down. A night of drinking? Cigs go great with booze. Want a cup of coffee and read the paper? Nothing goes with coffee like a cigarette. Doing some sort of logic puzzle and are stumped? A cigarette break will set you right. Of course, everyone has seen movies glorifying the after-sex cigarette.

There is no explanation for it and I do not recommend it to anyone, but cigarettes can scratch an itch like nothing else, and they are very versatile.

[DRW50]

I don't smoke, and although I do like the image of people on TV and in movies glamorously smoking, I know that in reality it is not anywhere near that (I've lost several members of my family in part through smoking). I try not to judge people who smoke, because it is a very difficult habit to break, and talking about how stupid they are really does not help anyone. I just try to avoid second hand smoke as much as possible.

[MissLlanviewPA]

I admit to being a militant anti-smoker. Never done it, never will. The thought just makes me want to throw up. I hated when I would go to my grandparents' house in the summer as a kid and my grandmother would start smoking in the living room. I would use that as an excuse to say I was going outside to play. Even now, when I'm around friends who smoke, I try to walk around if I can to avoid it coming my way. There really isn't any cause I care about more than to have people quit smoking or trying to prevent them from doing so altogether. The way someone can die from lung cancer or emphysema just breaks my heart.

I have enough problems with food--why add tobacco to the list, too? (I also don't drink much at all--I really only like red wine, and I've never been drunk. Yes, I am the most boring 24 year old woman alive. Why do you ask? )

That said, when or if someone quits is their business, I know that.

And--this is really strange, and I may sound like a major hypocrite here--but I do have a perverse fascination with cigarette ads from old magazines, specifically the 80s ads for Virginia Slims. I collect a lot of old magazines from that era, and those ads were sophisticated as hell.

[marceline]

Just to be clear, we're only talking about tobacco right?

As the child of two smokers who both quit, I admit to having a visceral hatred of cigarettes. I have friends who smoke and their kids are begging them to quit. I finally told one, "Do you realize that every time you light up in front of [son's name] it's the equivalent of looking him in the eye and saying "Fu ck you? In his mind, every cigarette he sees you smoke is you dying that much sooner and the message he's getting from you is that you don't care."

[applcin]

Across the street from where I work is a woman with triplets. Like clockwork, I would see her outside her door once or twice a day, taking her smoke. When she put them in preschool, she told the teacher she would prefer her children not be referred to as "the triplets" because they were all unique. I shook my head that the word triplets bothered her but not the idea that she is endangering her health and potentially risking them watching her fall ill and leave them long before they're grown. She's pregnant again now.

[applcin]

I'm twice your age so that would make me twice as boring. But I'm told I look younger so I must be doing some things right to take care of myself.

Although....I have to confess... if there is one thing I do crave almost every day that comes with its warnings...it's Diet. Dr. Pepper.

[allmc2008]

OMG. You reminded me of one of the most foolish things I have ever done!!

I once volunteered at a book store and the owner was a chain smoker. I really cared a lot for the owner and she told me she tried everything from electroshock therapy to hypnosis and nothing worked.

I then decided to steal a six pack from her and I emerged them in water in the bathroom sink of the book store. I am glade she didn't fire me and kept me there. We still talk and it has been 3 years.