Giving up?

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Originally Posted by Wood Butcher

I have using that zyban tablets and find them very helpful.

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Be careful of zyban, that $h!t is dangerous. an ex-girlfriend of mine tried quitting using that. she could be 2 weeks off the zyban and have some alcohol and she would totally lose any recollection of what she had done for days at a time. she went right round the twist and i had to get rid of her which was a pity cos before that she was extremely nice and very beautiful as well. just be careful that what you are using to fix the problem doesnt do more damage than the problem itself

there would be know way they would ban smoking the government make to much money out of it, if they did I reckon income tax and every other tax would go through the roof, just my thoughts on it though,:)

I think the cost of smoking to community out weighs the tax revenue. The hospital system is full of smokers.

well i work in a boarding school at least 1/2 the kids smoke ( big trouble if they are caught ) yet teachers that are catching them are smokers so kids feel its not right that they are getting into trouble for something and then see teachers smoking outside

I also find it annoying that pple that i work with slip out for a quick fag and leave the non smokers to carry the load while they are gone when in a employer postion always told smokers that they could smoke on their breaks but if they went for a extra one then everyone has a break not just them

Also as a cook find it strange that other cooks smoke and then taste food ? How can u taste anything when your taste bubs are stuffed from smoking

woman i work with can not eat a meal or drink a coffee without a smoke going at the same time just dont get it , and has said that if they ever try to make her stop she would leave the job rather than stop smoking

now that new regs are in re schools and smoking the smokers now go into a close by staff flat and smoke there even longer away from the workplace now !! and as its a private accomadation the regs dont cover it ( u can smoke in your own hse after all )

My Dad had 5 heart attacks, beginning at the age of 45. And still he smoked.

Blood pressure problems, circulation problems, and still he smoked. Countless health problems.

I finally confronted him when my son was born and told him he'd better enjoy him because he wouldn't be around for when he got older. At that point he gave up.

It was too late however, the damage was done. 2 years later he had a stroke, spent 2 years in hospital, the next 8 as a burdon on my Mum and finally as a vegetable in a nursing home.

When his leg by pass collapsed for the 3rd or 4th time , when we had 2 choices:

1. remove his leg.
The doctor said he probably wouldn't survive the operation anyway.

2. leave the leg on and let him die within the next 14 days.

Over a cup of coffee at Epworth hospital, and after consulting the doctors, we decided he'd had enough and it was best to let him go. You can't help feeling a bit selfish making a decision like that but I couldn't let my Mum take any more. She'd take food every day to the nursing home only to be treated like crap and watch him grope any nurse within reach. That's what happens to old men when their brains have gone. There was no quality of life or even any recognition of life. he couldn't have cared less.

He went back to the nursing home he'd been in for the past 2 years and died a week later.

Although I have fond memories of my Dad, I didn't cry for him. The suffering of those last 10 years, what he put my mother through and the deterioration in him mentally washed most of the good memories away.

he always said he didn't care if he just dropped dead. he was going to smoke because he enjoyed it. Stubborn b*stard. He made others suffer for too long just because he refused to quit.

It isn't just about you if you smoke. It's about your family too.

I stopped smoking many years ago. I intend to see my grandkids grow up and remember me as a person , not as an old man who doesn't talk to them, doesn't care and doesn't know who they are.

Painful stuff. :(

Looks like plenty of reformed types here, me too gave up in 2001 after 14yrs(I started very young at 14)... sent SWMBO to the other side of the world(Italy)for the 1st month and was on holidays from work this helped greatly not being near any smoke or social pressure.
I didnt drink for 6mths... then a big shock to the system discovered beer taste's horrid!

I used that zyban worked for me, the only side affect I got was mild insomia but being a shift worker Im used to that... other than that it turned me into a health freak I went from a 105kg+(only 5'10")down to the high 70's then gymed it up to 89kg(12% Bfat)now hovering around the 90kg mark after 6mths off with a op on my back(back into it now).
I walk 1-1 1/2hrs a day and gym 6 days a week currently... but that'll change once I go back to work.

They say reformed smokers are the worst, I reckon so, while driving along the hyway I can smell if the car infront has a ciggi burning in it!
I dont think even the death penlty would stop a smoker if they banned it, as they all ready have one.

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Originally Posted by Harry72

They say reformed smokers are the worst,.

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That's smokers saying that and they are confused, what they really mean is reformed smokers are the BEST.


Funny thing about smokers who say they aren't addicted, they just enjoy it. Ask them why they can't just enjoy it once or twice a week and 'um...Well I enjoy it soooo much that I do it ever hour or so, I'm not addicted but, I can give up anytime"

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Originally Posted by Harry72

I used that zyban worked for me,

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Good to see the drug companies cashing in on the tobacco industries misfortunes, they have much better ethics ;) :p

Wouldn't suprise me if they had the same parent company.

Yer i'm off the smokes the grog n the drugs.........n Oh yeah thx to swmbo the sex to!!!!!!!!!

...............Now I do woodwork!!!!

Ha ahrrrrrrrr....................now the secrets out!!!!!!

:D:D:D:D:D


REformed LoutoYou!!!!!!

I'm a smoker, not particularly proud of it but not ashamed either.

This isn't a justification for smoking, I'm not even going to try. I've no intention of even trying to explain why I smoke. I'm informed. I smoke. It's my choice. You're informed? You vote liberal? Who's the bigger fool? :D

The funny thing is I can easily, and often do, go without a cigarette for 8 hours. Usually when I'm working on-site at a non-smokers' house; gotta have some respect for the customers. Don't even bother lighting up when I stop for lunch... then I've better things to do, like eating. I occasionally do without for a couple of days when I run out of tobacco, without feeling any "need," although admittedly my last stay in hossie (some 7 days) left me fangin' fer a fag.

And yes, I'm a fairly heavy smoker, have been for years. I don't know how many packs per day 'cos I smoke shed tobacco. Home-grown "Rollies" to the uninitiated.

Given the above, I can't help but wonder how much of the addiction to "cigarettes" and how many related diseases are actually due to the additives major companies put into their tailor-mades as compared to plain tobacco? All the results and all the testing I've seen has been done using tailor's, I've seen no figures whatsoever on pure, unadulterated tobacco. Filtered or otherwise.

And don't tell me there are no additives. Any rollie or pipe smoker'll tell you that plain tobacco will extiguish itself if you don't keep a draw going. Unlike a tailor: light it, put it in an ashtray and watch it burn twice as fast, almost like a fuse...

Just another thing that makes me go "Hmmmm...." ;)

Skew,

As you say, it's your choice to smoke. It's not illegal.
How do you know that there aren't additives added to rollie tobacco though?

All I know is that most people on this board spend significant amounts of money on systems that will hopefully prevent micron sized dust particles entering their lungs when thay are woodworking.

However you are voluntarily ingesting them. :confused:

As our American cousins say, go figure.

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Originally Posted by craigb

How do you know that there aren't additives added to rollie tobacco though?

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Rollie tobacco sold commercially? I don't, although I assume there is. After all, it is being sold by the same tobacco industries. Mine is home-grown shed tobacco. My home, my shed. Environmentally friendly stuff. Except for the occasional bit of cocobolo or lily-pilly in the sawdust I use for mulch. Oh... and the occasional bloodstain, but I'm convinced it's not infectious.

Trivia: boiled tobacco makes an effective, eco-friendly pesticide. Well... eco-friendly if you're not a pest. ;)

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All I know is that most people on this board spend significant amounts of money on systems that will hopefully prevent micron sized dust particles entering their lungs when thay are woodworking.

However you are voluntarily ingesting them. :confused:

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Yup. I'm also investing in one fairly soon. I should point out that they'll extract down to micron sized dust and woodworking generates quanta more particles than a cigarette. If smoking was the same as breathing in a handful of sawdust I doubt I'd have started in the first place!

And I'm sure that not having to sweep the floor after every session didn't have influence on their decisions. :D

Still, you've a valid point. Oh, the vagaries of children, pets and woodworkers!

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As our American cousins say, go figure.

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Our American cousins also have reported figures that air travel is safer than driving down the street. So why does anyone still drive a car? Go figure! ;)

Yes life is an inherantly dangerous pastime. You could go to sleep and wake up dead. Or trip on the bedside table, if you do manage to live through the night, and hit your head on the dresser and die.
If you make it out of the bedroom there's all manner of things waiting to get you. Porcelain bowls, sharp knives and potato peelers. If you make it past all this gratuitous horror and out to the shed, you're lucky everytime you get back. I need not point out the dangers of the shed.
Yes, life is indeed risky enough without adding to the danger for little or no reward. :p

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Originally Posted by DanP

BTW Alcohol causes MANY more social issues than smoking.

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Not according to Quit Victoria (unless things have changed dramatically in the last five years):

In 1998/99, the total social costs of tobacco use in Australia were $21.1 billion. This accounted for 61.2% of the total social costs of all drugs, including alcohol and illicit drugs.

From Smoking rates, diseases, passive smoking and costs, "Background Brief", Jan. 2005, p. 6 (see http://www.quit.org.au/index2.html > Resources > Background Briefs).

I didn't say social costs. I said social issues.

I’m a smoker. I wish I wasn’t but I am addicted to the %$#&ing things.

It is not good for me but I continue to smoke – doesn’t make sense to me either.

I have tried several times to give up but I have failed each time. I once went to a Chemist to get some patches but I was refused because I needed a doctor’s prescription!!!!! I don’t recall getting a doctor’s prescription to start smoking. Here I was determined to give up at that time but I was stopped. The determination to give took a big nose dive and I went outside the chemists and lit up after having a very heated argument with the %$#!head pharmacist. Are they fair dinkum or is it just another little game for them?

I could reach a conclusion that patches are more of health hazard than cigarettes. Or perhaps doctors are trying to cash in on people giving up due to lost income writing out death certificates. Maybe it is just the small minded people in the government who make up laws to stop the smooth flow.

Like DanP I think I am a considerate smoker in that I don’t try to inconvenience the fresh air of others. I even ask visitors to my shed for permission to smoke in my shed. I certainly don’t smoke inside the house.

Avid anti smokers do not help. They are most annoying and I generally end up telling them that I hope I die soon so I don’t have to put up with them anymore. Do they really think that smokers have not been made aware of the dangers already and that their rude remarks will suddenly make me see the light? Wrong, try and help me, don’t abuse me. I think they enjoy the new socially accepted sport of being nasty and rude to total strangers who smoke. They might be disappointed if there were no more smokers left.

The anti smoking ads on TV remind me of smoking so I walk outside and light up long before the gruesome pictures are beamed at me. They are sickening those pictures but they don’t help give up either.

How did I start? When I was younger, silly old fools with twisted ideas on other subjects told me it was bad.

In hindsight that was the only sound advice they ever gave anyone. The same people thought warnings about DDT were communist plots and that young people of today were hopeless and always would be because they had not experienced the Depression, the Beatles were crap, long hair and flares corrupted people’s minds etc etc etc How does that make someone defiant like myself react?

I would like to give up and hopefully I will before it kills me prematurely, makes me terribly sick and stops me from seeing my grand kids grow up and doing my woodwork. (See I am trying hard).

So if you are one of those people who think it is smart to be rude to smokers, ask yourself what it is that you are trying to achieve. Being rude to someone like me is not helping at all, it will result in a double dose of abuse back and me continuing to slowly commit suicide.

If I ever do give up, please put a bullet through my head if I become a nagging ex smoker because one death is not as significant as multiple deaths.

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Originally Posted by Wood Borer

I was refused because I needed a doctor’s prescription!!!!!

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Un-bloody-believable. You'd think they'd be freely available. The govenment should even subsidise them so they don't cost anything. The saving to society of not treating lung cancer must be greater than the cost of an anti-smoking course.

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Are they fair dinkum or is it just another little game for them?

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Presumably there are chemicals in the patches that are hazardous in some way. I dunno....

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Avid anti smokers do not help.

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Yeah; there's alot of self-righteousness involved...

WB: Any chance of trying to get hold of a prescription? I'd like to see your posts on this board for a long time to come.:)

Yep,

I have to visit the doctors on an unrelated matter soon so I will mention it.

You won't get rid of me that easily. :D

Jeez Borer,

After reading your story I had to find a hankie and blow my nose. How cruel are they attacking somebody who is already depressed.

Of course you are considerate to non/ex smokers and so is DanP 'cos with the tax on coffin nals being so high you guys are paying to keep our troops in Iraq etc.

Keep up the good work ( now who else can I encourage to pay more tax than me)

regards
Geoff

Geoff,

Not depressed, just extremely frustrated at trying to give up this stupid habit with anti smokers and chemists seemingly putting obstacles in my way.

Nails, Nails, Nails???? I don't want those terrible things in my coffin - hand cut dovetails for this black lunged duck thankyou. :D

Don't even try and fool me by making them with a jig and then scribing the joint - I will know! I will haunt you foillie or not! ;)

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Originally Posted by Wood Borer

.......extremely frustrated at trying to give up this stupid habit with anti smokers and chemists seemingly putting obstacles in my way.

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Absolutely amazing that they make it so hard. As I posted I gave it up about 13 years ago having started when I was about 12 years old.

Rob. like you many a times I saw the warnings both on packets and tv ads but neither them or even complaints of my family made me give it up until I was ready to do so.

I believe that it is a matter of willpower and until you really want to give it up you won't succeed. I went cold turkey ( took a fortnight for the cravings to go ) but patches would make it easier. I found that it helped to make changes in my habits, eg don't linger after meals but get up immediately to break the urge to smoke.

Good luck Rob.


Peter.

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Originally Posted by Wood Borer

So if you are one of those people who think it is smart to be rude to smokers

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Being rude is being rude and it is never justified,
I had 'The little book of quitting' by Alan Carr. That was all about getting your mind ready to quit, rather than worrying about cravings or dealing with symptoms. He went though all the reasons people give for smoking and explained them in terms of nicotine. Made a lot of sense.
Quitting is so hard because it's so easy to give in and you dont need heaps of cash to go and buy some.
Being free of an addiction is a wonderful feeling.
You'll get there when you're ready, then your beer tastes better :D
(I was a bit abrupt with someone the other day for smoking too close to my house, told them to ****** off somewhere else. I dont think I was rude)

I knew a bloke who used the nicotine chewing gum to give up smoking. Worked with him for twelve years - he chewed the gum that whole time. I often wondered what it was he'd given up. :confused:

Richard

Having started this I may as well attempt to finish it.

Like most smokers I was hooked early and "enjoyed" it. I tried a few times to give up but wasn't really motivated. I tried zyban, hypnosis, willpower and the rest without success.

What it did take was a reason, and eventually I came to realise this. So, I looked for a reason "for me". I happened to hear bits of the Congressional hearings in the US and got so (expletive deleted) mad at the lying bastids I managed to get the resolve to quit.

I suggest you learn a little bit about how these companies designed the drug to be compatible with a developing teenager's chemistry, so their brain actually changed slightly to derive better pleasure (hence addiction). They denied it ever happened - especially since all the research had been destroyed at their direction years ago.

It did me a favor, but they should all be in jail. It is a physical addiction, plus a mental (habitual) addiction. Not easy to give up and no one should be embarrassed about failing the first few attempts. After all, scientists and tobacco companies spent years making sure you wouldn't.

Two days in and I hate you all.

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Originally Posted by DanP

Two days in and I hate you all.

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Good onya Dan! Turn that hatred towards the bastids profiting from your misery and the job gets easier (and the tools get bigger!).

I pity the bad-uns in Cobram over the next few weeks!

Don't worry, I hate everybody.

WB - Can't see why you can't get patches from the chemist. They are not a prescription item.

Dan

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Originally Posted by Wood Borer

Geoff,

Not depressed, just extremely frustrated at trying to give up this stupid habit with anti smokers and chemists seemingly putting obstacles in my way.

Nails, Nails, Nails???? I don't want those terrible things in my coffin - hand cut dovetails for this black lunged duck thankyou. :D

Don't even try and fool me by making them with a jig and then scribing the joint - I will know! I will haunt you foillie or not! ;)

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No Woodborer no, No Woodborer no, Noooooo Woodborer. :D

Al :)

SWMBO found this on the net. You've probably seen something like it before but it is all ways worth remembering.

I agree with groggy I had to have a reason to give up.
about seven tears ago, soon after I had separated from swmnlbo, the kids came back from there mums place and said she'd given up smoking. As we were still feuding at the time I couldn't possibly have her beat me at this so I gave up there and then. Sounds a bit immature now but it worked, I've had only 4 cigarettes in 7 years.
She took it up again after 3 months

swmnlbo = she who must no longer be obeyed :D

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Originally Posted by DanP

Two days in and I hate you all.

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Onya Dan. Good stuff:)

I still hate you all.

Day 4. Geez I miss that 1st cigar with my morning coffee, but not so much today. Cranky as s**t yesterday, but bought a heap of myrtle at Mathews this morning, so much better.

Who said retail therapy only works for women. :D

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Originally Posted by AlexS

Day 4.

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Excellent stuff, Alex. Keep Butcher's list on the fridge door. Keep a tally of the cigar money you save, and buy, buy, buy.

For Alex, Woodborer, Dan or anyone else giving it up.

http://www.silkquit.org/meter.html

It's the meter I use to track money saved and other stuff, looking at it every now and again helps to remind you when to buy a new tool...

Sample info provided is:

Three years, eight months, three weeks, six days, 2 hours, 53 minutes and 39 seconds. 34128 cigarettes not smoked, saving $8,532.26. Life saved: 16 weeks, 6 days, 12 hours, 0 minutes.

Day 5. Didn't miss the phlegmcutter at all this morning, nor the afterlunchie, as I was eager to get into the workshop. Finished final sanding on latest project.

Congratulations to all on the wagon. It is indeed a most noble pursuit.

If you get a craving urge, stop what ever your doing and do something else, you'll be suprised how easy it is to distract yourself!
You need to assoicate things you do with not smoking ie, when you have breki/lunch/tea soon as your finished, have a shower or read the paper(whatever) this way you are training not to assoicate smoking with certain actions. Like after a coffee have a chewy instead of a smoke, spit it out at about the same time it takes to finish a smoke and then do something that involves thinking hard/intensely(hey your a woodie think of yer next project!).

If you want to give it up you have to be a 'manual smoker' rather than an automatic one. Don't just reach for the packet and light up. Make yourself aware of every process from the moment you light up. Be aware that you are filling your lungs with all kinds of muck and poisons and you are doing it for fun.

When you wake up in the morning and start to cough don't go on about having a slight cold or some other feeble excuse. You have filled your lungs with muck that has probably settled during sleep and you have to move it around to get a clear space to absorb oxygen and reduce the irritation. Ask yourself whether this is the act of a sane person.

If you have kids, you should ask yourself what kind of role model you are going to be be for them. If you smoke around your kids you should be aware that it is child abuse. The only difference between passive smoke and beating the daylights out of them is that the bruises take years to show.
Maybe you should think about getting a list of the carcinogens and the poisons and their doses and inject them into your child's veins so that they will get their fix when they are away at camp. Don't hold the mistaken belief that there is any difference between making them inhale the smoke or getting the chemicals intravenously. Ask yourself what you would do if a stranger did inject your child with the same chemicals.
If you are a parent and you care, then giving up is the easiest thing in the world to do.

As for totally banning smoking in all publc places where it is possible for someone to inhale passive smoke, it is only a matter of time before someone tests the waters by asking for a smoker to be charged with assault with a deadly weapon. Smoking is well recognised by every major health organisation around the world as a major cause of preventable death. As I have said above, there is no difference between inhaling the poisons and receiving the same chemicals as an involuntary injection. The only difference is the ingestion of tar into the lungs when inhaling, which adds an additional danger. Being injected with those chemicals would constitute an assault and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a smart lawyer working for the anti-smoking lobby could easily prove the case, given that cigarette packets clearly carry warnings of the dangers to others.