kabatta on 15/7/2011 at 07:50
I am a smoker and enjoy every cigarette. A pack of cigs will hold for about 2 or 3 days. I've been smoking for the last 8 years.
Neb on 15/7/2011 at 08:21
I was a heavy smoker and I quit two years ago after trying for a long time.
The popular method of self loathing didn't work for me, and it helped to come to terms with how much I loved every cigarette. I set a date and actually bought a pack and promised myself I could start again at any time without guilt, because after all, everything in life is just practise.
No one talks about the dizzy spells, though. Fuck, I couldn't walk straight for two weeks. I think it might have been my blood purging the carbon monoxide and increasing the amount of oxygen it can carry. I once maxed out a carbon monoxide breath test, so it's plausible.
Yakoob on 15/7/2011 at 09:21
Never smoked, never will. My Ma pretty much made sure of it. She is a massive chain smoker, your see, and there are times when you would walk into the kitchen filled with a thick fog of smoke. If that wasn't enough (de)motivation, when I was about 8 or 9 she gave me a cigarrete to try with the words: "try it, after three puffs it tastes like candy!" Needless to say, one of the most traumatic events of my life ensued, and cigarettes have not touched my lips since. Quite a brilliant raising tactic when you think about it. Only one scary thing is, I'm not entirely sure she did it to dissuade me from smoking...
On the topic of tea or coffee - I never drank it either. Went through 4 years of college without a single sip in the morning. Shit just doesn't work on me. It just makes me wanna go pee. So now I am sleepy AND I need to pee. It's like a double whammy.
Until North Ireland. This past year, doing my masters in Belfast, and having British roommates. "Tea anyone?" was a frequently uttered phrase in our kitchen. And who says no to tea? That's how it started. Eventually I tried the coffee. Then it was baileys with coffee. Then different flavors, instant vs. brewed. Then I started going to starbucks to leech their internet...
A year later, I am drinking like 2-3 cups a day. I didn't realize how bad it was until I went on a 3 day trip to Scotland with my ladyfriend this past weekend, and made a stop each day at one of the cafes just to grab an Americano or Cappucino. I am positively addicted, but entirely in psychological sense; it still doesn't wake me up or energize me; but not having a cup while I'm reading my TTLGs just feels so incredibly... wrong.
kabatta on 15/7/2011 at 09:28
Funny enough i can cope better with no cigs rather than without coffee. I don't know why I listened to my mother and started drinking coffee.
Vasquez on 15/7/2011 at 09:39
Quote Posted by Yakoob
f that wasn't enough (de)motivation, when I was about 8 or 9 she gave me a cigarrete to try with the words: "try it, after three puffs it tastes like candy!"
Haha :D
A friend of mine got a less-funny parental impact. Her dad had smoked 30 years or so, and was diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer. He lived only 4 months after the diagnose, needless to say he was in horrible condition towards the end. Once when my friend went to see him in the hospital, he noticed her cig pack in her purse - she had been smoking about 10 years by then - and said "I don't want to preach, but look at me and think one more time if you want to continue smoking". She tossed the pack on her way out and never smoked again.
On the other hand, I have written articles on COPD and interviewed lung specialists for that, and they've told that even the possibility of imminent death can't make some people stop smoking. And I kinda respect that - if you truly enjoy smoking so much that living without it would be miserable, it's gonna majorly suck no matter which one you quit. After all, we all have our poisons.
(Although it seemed a bit hilarious when there was that
French fries have carsinogens!! -hubbub, and one heavy smoker was all "Omg I can't eat fries anymore!!" :joke: )
Kuuso on 15/7/2011 at 10:24
Stopping coffee would be hell of a lot harder for me than stopping tobacco (Which I did as said in the previous post), because coffee doesn't have even nearly as drastic adverse side-effects. No reason to stop even though I drink it quite religiously. Then again, it's a lifestyle and a job for me, so I drink the best varieties compared to the shit most people do.
On other note, I get why people smoke while drinking coffee or being in cafes, it's a nice image and they fit together. I couldn't do it though, at least before the coffee, because there's no better way of making oneself unable to taste the coffee.
gunsmoke on 15/7/2011 at 10:24
I smoke. Not going to quit, either. I don't do it in the house or around my daughter, and I try to give non-smokers plenty of distance (even outdoors).
demagogue on 15/7/2011 at 15:01
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Until North Ireland. This past year, doing my masters in Belfast, and having British roommates. "Tea anyone?" was a frequently uttered phrase in our kitchen. And who says no to tea? That's how it started. Eventually I tried the coffee.
That's how it was for me after living in Japan & Switzerland. I went to cafes in high school & college, but I didn't really see tea & coffee as a lifestyle thing until it was just everywhere around in those countries, and I picked up on it.
Also there was the whole mind-bending part, for someone from the US South, that tea should be *hot* and coffee *iced* (the ice coffee trend started in Japan a few years before it hit in the US). Exactly opposite of what I'd known, iced tea & hot coffee, and flipped my whole world around.
Stitch on 15/7/2011 at 15:09
Fuck health concerns, 95% of you should quit smokes because they make you look like copy machine repairmen doing time between joyless shitty beer benders.
The remaining 5% look like globe-straddling purveyors of stylish seduction, so keep at it, champs :cool:
Martin Karne on 15/7/2011 at 15:15
No I don't smoke, I hated every single smoke my dad blew us in our face when eating lunch and dinner.
I can't even breathe near that cancer stick, so I leave it far away from me, I don't smoke, not now, not ever.
