When they sponsored the football, research in Australia showed in each State the minors smoked overwhelmingly the brand their football advertised. Smoking is shown in about 45 percent of films even though only about 20 percent of people smoke. In the Superman movie a truck with Marlboro covering the whole side was smashed up. They also have cunning ways of getting into social networks. The cigarette companies need to recruit new smokers to cover the ones dying all the time. They have no morals and are now attacking third world countries with a vengance.

I grew up with two parents who were heavy smokers and my father had two smoking-related strokes. The dirty ashtrays are what turned me off at an early age. If that hadn't done it, watching him struggle to recover from the strokes would have for sure. There were stroke victims as young as 35 in his unit. I don't smoke and I live with a virulent anti-smoker. I am always surprised at the numbers of people still smoking here in France and find that it is more often women than men. Nearly all my female friends smoke and none of the males.

Yeah.. I started smoking more than 15 years ago and was very well aware of health risks (in all honesty, I have never understood all those group litigations against tobacco firms especially in recent years. )
Also, none of my friends knew for ages while I had told my (obviously not very happy about it) parents almost straight away. I tried it and liked it and sneaked in morning cigarettes on the way to school from approx day 2. Which is scary - I wish I had done it to impress someone instead of just instantly really wanting to smoke.

I have tried to quit a couple of times and the attempts were pathetic but even now the thought of giving up terrifies me.

I love smoking, but I hate how much control it has over my life! I come from the smoker-friendliest country in the EU and live in a pretty strict country now (at least that helps curb it a tiny bit). I am 31 now and a baby might be on the horizon, I am fairly sure I can give it up for a pregnancy (but stick to it afterwards, I don't know? Fingers crossed)

Meanwhile, I am just seriously enjoying my cigarettes and hoping that I'll be wiser anytime soon.

cairnster, if you can give it up for the length of a pregnancy, you've beaten it.

My experience was that the physical addiction took about five days - I felt like I was running a low grade fever. Then it was just a matter of coming up with new habits to push the old ones away - that took about another couple of months. By the end of nine months, it was just occasional urges, sometimes days apart. If I stayed away from smoking "triggers" - I found another place to go on my work breaks, I had my morning coffee on the way to work rather than while reading the paper, etc - it was even less than that.

Don't go through all that just to have to go through with it again in a few years.

Yes . let's think positively now. Ways to give up that worked for you?
For me: I smoked my first an hour later every day. This works well when you are on holiday from work. Well it did for me. There were times when I took one puff and threw it out for a few weeks after the first step. But in general it was the leaving it later method that was best.
My mum saved every penny of what she was not spending and bought her dream gift, a poodle. That worked for her.
What worked for you?

Over the years I tried all sorts of things to quit, limiting the number of cigarettes each day, nicotine patch, just plain cold turkey - nothing worked for longer than short periods. This year my doctor suggested I try Chantix, a medicine that makes you think you just had a cigarette and so don't need one. The mental gymnastics issue aside, it worked for me. I took it for two months and have been able to face each day since.

It helps me that I'm retired now and don't have work stress to deal with in addition to everything else. If I get a craving I either work through it or tell my wife so she can talk me out of it. But I still have the urge most days.

For anyone who wants to quit, I wouldn't recommend waiting until you retire! But it's something everyone has to decide for him/herself.

I think what stopped it become a full blown permanent habit for me was that I had to smoke outdoors, and by November every year, it was too darn cold to go outside "just to smoke". So if you live in a cold climate, maybe setting a rule that says, If you want to smoke, go ahead - but must do it outside. You might change your mind about wanting that smoke!

Since my mother smoked for 40+ years, I never thought she'd be able to quit. When she began to have symptoms of emphysema, she was frightened enough to make a serious attempt to stop. What worked for her was a combination of acupressure treatments and hypnosis. Whenever she had an overwhelming urge for a cigarette, she listened to a tape from her hypnotic sessions and that seemed to make the biggest difference. I think whatever you think might work for you is well worth trying!

For me, to be perfectly honest, it was setting up petty rules for myself, very much like the rules all smokers have to follow now. I did that for a couple of weeks - made myself go outside, wouldn't have a smoke in the morning until I'd left the building, etc etc. By the time I got to the date I'd set for quitting, I was fed up with all the nonsense and happy to be done with it.

I'm not very patient with pettifoggery.

It costs quite a lot to smoke in the UK these days. Around £7-40 for a pack of 20 now isn't it? I used to roll my own cigarettes. That cut the expense down but apart from that, I thought hand-rolling tobacco provided a better smoke. I used to buy it in 2 Ounce tins. A 50 Gram tin is about the equivalent now and I read the cost of this is around £15-00. Wow!

Not even a tin - a 50g pouch will set you back nearly £15. Add about £1 if you want it in a tin.

You can pay less if you look around. For instance, I found a "Che Shag Smoking Tobacco (25g Pouch)" - a red pouch with a picture of Che Guevara on the front, and shag inside - for ONLY £4.30.

It comes with a warning that it attracts a lower rate of tax because it's pipe tobacco, and it's illegal to use it for hand-rolling. So obviously nobody is going to use it to roll cigarettes with, because that would be illegal. Just checking.

Huh? How could a METHOD of smoking a legal product be illegal?

I grew up in a large family. My siblings who smoked are all gone now. The rest of us seem to be living to a "ripe old age." Just saying...

You can call it illegal till your face turns blue, and you still won't be able to enforce it. Here's what it says on the website:


"Shag Tobacco:
"Due to some hand rolling smokers using shag tobacco for hand rolling purposes, HMRC have taken action to stop this abuse of the tobacco taxation. HMRC have defined that any tobacco where the strands are less than 1.5mm will be taxed as a Hand Rolling tobacco. All shag tobacco produced as of January 2011 will be cut above 1.5mm. This is a pipe tobacco and is taxed accordingly. It is a criminal offence to use shag tobacco for hand rolling and we do not endorse this."


You wouldn't dream of using it for cigarettes once you'd read this warning, would you?

I smoked from the age of twelve, until I was 40. I peaked at 120 (yes, one hundred and twenty) a day, and then it killed me.
Literally - I had a heart attack, a mild one, and stopped smoking, but a year later I succumbed and started again. About six months after that I had a massive heart attack which killed me, and it is only due to a miracle and some VERY dedicated and skillful paramedics, and the staff of the hospital I was rushed to for emergency heart surgery, that I'm still here. I was revived twice (just like on tv apprently, with the paddles and the CLEAR! and the ZAP) and will have an oblong scar on my chest, where the current burnt me, forever. They even lined up my children and said "say goodbye to mummy" before loading me in the ambulance as they didn't really think I'd make it.
And having been all dramatic and said all that, I STILL crave a smoke. I even find myself dreaming about it, I breathe in deeply if I walk past someone smoking in the street, I chew pens and pencils, I fidget, I have an utterly horrid little plastic "thingy" to chew on instead, I had nicotine replacement cartridges that went in it, and I still miss the real thing. I even actually sit and dream about the day when I will start again, once all my children have left home and are settled as adults.
I don't know if I actually will, I guess the cravings could fade eventually, but they haven't yet.
I reckon nicotine (and the actual act of smoking it) must be THE most addictive substance there is. Words cannot describe how hard it is to resist sometimes. I've heard talks from people who have kicked heroin and other seriously hard drug habits, and they have almost all said that they still smoke, and can't give up cigarettes.
So far, the two of my children who are old enough haven't started - what happened to me has put them off, and I am very, very thankful for that! I think that the only way not to smoke is to never start. Never let it get a grip so to speak.

Edit for silly typo.

I just bought Jack a couple of cartons of smokes yesterday and they cost $136 each ... eight packets of 25.

Crumbs.

I'm still reeling at the 120 a day. I had to move fast to get through 40. Has your OH stopped?

I hope your children have recovered from the shock - or did you just tell them it wasn't meant like that?

I am grateful and lucky that my cravings didn't last for more than about a year. I hope yours fade quickly.

Okay, so you're 42 now and still have cravings... I think we all know, from people we know and stories we've heard, that if we don't have cravings forever after we're very fortunate. It's like with Alcoholic Anonymous and other organizations: one day at a time.

OH never smoked Lesley - he has been known to have a cigar on occasion, but he's never actually smoked.
That's it exactly CmdrK, one day at a time!

Today marks 6 months smoke-free for me, after almost 25 years as a butthead. I come from a long line of hardcore smokers and then, oxygen tank haulers. I was one of those smokers who thought I'd never be able to quit, didnt think I had it in me to give it up. Somehow, I did. The day I stopped, I had a pack with 5 or 6 remaining that I finally trashed after a few weeks. Not sure why I kept them so long, maybe as some sort of test. Anyway, I passed the test and haven't gone back. Sure I gained about 15 pounds because I spoiled myself. Welcome back, tastebuds. I have had dreams about smoking, always secretly, because even in dreamland I'm an ex-smoker. The craving come up every now and then, it's just much easier to ignore them.

I guess the whole point to my posting all this is that if you think you're one of those smokers who will never, ever be able to quit, you are wrong.

Congrats, dumb_bunny! And good luck staying an ex-smoker. One good bit of advice that sees me through is that a craving will go away in a little while whether you smoke a cigarette or not.

Sorry, Rowena, I'm sure I knew that - and then I got it into my pretty little head that he smoked with you. I don't suppose he and the children miss it much, now you've stopped?

I couldn't do the one day at a time thing. I had to make it one hour at a time.


Wish I'd said that!

I have never smoked, but I grew up with parents who smoked. My mother got lung cancer and survived, but she lost half a lung; my father also got lung cancer, and he died. I think I might have been slightly asthmatic as a child because of the environment I grew up in.

When I went off to college and was in a smoke-free envionment, I found I couldn't bear to be home for very long for all the smoking.

Did you really spend $5K/year on cigarettes? That's more than $416/mo.

Yeah, I did. I think smokes are much more expensive here. A packet of 25 is about $15 NOW and I smoked a pack a day at my worst.

Hope your Mum is doing okay now.

At my peak I used to light about 60 a day, I say light as I used to take a puff and rest it in the ashtray to do some work, take a puff then put it down again, often I hardly smoked half of it, could be less. I then lit another and so it went all day. In the last proper job that I had it was no smoking in the office (they all are now) and I didn't go outside to smoke, I just used to have my first one when I got home then virtually chain smoke all evening.

When I 'stopped' smoking, what I did was to tell myself that I wasn't giving up smoking, I was just delaying having the next one. I just went to look and the half empty cigarette packet is still in the cupboard together with lighters. So far I have delayed since March 2000.

If you told me that I couldn't have a cigarette I would crave it which is why I just delayed. Sometimes I still have the feeling that I would love to have a cigarette but with my health the way that it is now, nothing at all to do with having smoked, I won't be lighting up soon.

After the endocarditis, I had an aortic valve replacement, was closed up with surgical thread and little stainless steel loops the length of my sternum, and was sent home to recuperate and eat myself into blobness.

After a while, I did what I always did after a cold - thought I'm feeling better now, I can have a smoke.

Husband said, if you smoke, you'll cough, the little stainless steel loops will burst open, and your insides will spill out.

Inspired! Of course it was abject nonsense but it really put me off. Back to the peanut butter and banana sandwiches...

Edited for daft typo

Now Lesley, as a woman like me, when you eat very hot or very cold food does your sternum hurt? I have asked a man that I know and his sternum doesn't hurt then he is a huge man as in 6 feet 8 inches tall.

It seems to me that the wire heats up or gets too cold which causes pain. On Thursday I was eating a hot sausage roll and had to drink cold water to stop the burning.

That's it, Sue. I think I just figured out why I kept my last pack for so long. Showing myself they were there and ready for a good smoking. I suppose that took some of the pressure off the idea of never smoking again.

Sorry, Sue, that doesn't happen. Unless it's because I don't eat or drink anything hot enough to burn? But no, I've never had anything hot (or cold) have any effect on my sternum at all.

I'll ask at my cardiac exercise class. Most of the people there haven't had surgery but one or two have and I'll see if I can remember which ones they are.

Started smoking in 1958..........in the Navy we got Duty Free Allowance of cigarettes you see, and I thought "I am not missing out on this", and in any case most people smoked at that time anyhow.
At the "peak" I smoked around 25 cigs a day, but by the time I had a heart attack in 2003, was smoking around 15 a day.

Pity I had to give up smoking (haven't smoked since 2003) as I used to enjoy a cigarette, but I enjoy still being alive even more!

We all know the dangers of smoking and attendant health risks, but to level the playing field a bit, smoking does have a beneficial side. A cigarette was a good calming inducer when stressed, it was also good to help concentration, good at keeping you awake and alert when on a long drive, and a pleasant addition to the after meal coffee as well as giving the system a "kick start" in the mornings.

Anyhow, I was told I had to give up - so I gave up......easy? Well shall we say I didn't find it particularly difficult, just annoying that I could no longer do something that I hitherto enjoyed. However, sadly as we age, many things come under that category. For example I have recently been advised medically to give up driving.......now THAT is a "pain" !

Maybe I was lucky, being a relatively light smoker, giving up wasn't difficult.