cigarettes

A friend of mine called me the other day and we talked about his smoking habit and how I'd quit smoking several years ago.  His name is Bill and he's been a friend of mine for five or six years now.  He's smoked for as long as I've known him and he now wants to quit.

In our conversation, he said he'd talked to his doctor about it, but all his doc could recommend were pills.  Bill isn't sold on that idea, though he is still considering it since he's tried the nicotine gum and 12-step AA-style methods.  Both failed.  He's tried quitting a dozen times in as many years.  I can sympathize with that.

When I quit, which was about ten years ago, it was my third attempt.  My first try was two years before that when I tried quitting cold turkey.  What I managed to do was to go from studs (unfiltered) cigarettes to filtered smokes.  My number of cigarettes per day stayed about the same, though.  The next try moved me from filtered to "lights" and reduced my smoking habit by almost half.

At that point, I had figured out that I wasn't going to be quitting by just throwing the cigarettes away.  I kept going back to them.  So I started a regimen of lowering my smoking habit.  I stopped smoking in my apartment, stopped smoking at work except at designated breaks, etc.  Basically, I started making rules for myself about when and where I could and couldn't smoke.  Eventually, I got down to half a pack a day.

I used to be a smoker. I used to smoke almost a pack a day of cigarettes and I enjoyed it as an activity. I still like the smell of someone else smoking, but I quit almost two years ago. I quit for a number of reasons, including the health concerns, the rising cost of a pack of cigarettes, laws permitting smoking just about anywhere here in Arizona, the smell others near me had to deal with, and the effects of second hand smoke on others. It wasn't until after I quit that I realized the horrible lingering smell of a smoker that only a non-smoker notices. I bought a new car a couple weeks ago. It's the first car I've had that I didn't pollute with cigarette smoke and I "smoked" a SuperSmoker Blue electronic cigarette in it on the way to work this morning.

(Click here to view the whole set of images)

Benefits and drawbacks of an electronic cigarette

U.K anti cigarettes commercial from the 80's featuring Superman

Bookmark it!