TattoodGirl TattoodGirl:
I would also like to hear people call it what it is....ADDICTION...its the hardest thing I have ever quit. It isnt a habit, the habit is having something in your fingers...
Im sorry to hear about your parents...good choice to put the smokes out.
That's why I put the word habit in quotes. My Dad started smoking in WW2 (free smokes!), and Mom was a model for cig advertising (all the smokes she wanted, free!). Dad died slowly in hospital, after he had a major heart attack, and his internal organs slowly died because his heart couldn't supply them with blood any longer. It took nearly a month. Mom took 5 years to die after she was diagnosed with lung cancer. It was very slow, and she was on a morphine patch the strength of which would have instantly killed an ordinary Junkie. And she was still in excruciating pain.
I don't say this to illicit sympathy (but, thank you!), I say this as motivation for those who are thinking of quitting. (asbestos whiffing is easy to quit
) Your death can be just as slow and painful, if you want it to be. Even with that as motivation, I still find it difficult.
Second hand smoke was unheard of when I was born, and from the time I was born I was addicted. I still remember asking them to roll the windows down when we were driving anywhere, and seeing that layer of blue smoke hovering in the living room. I never really knew how addicted I was till I moved out of my parents house. Then I started smoking, and didn't understand why.
It is really tough to quit. I must be on my 10th attempt. The first couple weeks aren't bad. Somewhere around 4 - 6 weeks it gets bad. If I can get past that, again in 6 months it hits again. Never made it past 6 months.
Banning tobacco will have to be done slowly too. First restaurants, then public spaces, then fully.
I think it's the same 'sudden death' thing we see too frequently in society. Someone dies by gunshot (sudden, violent, messy) and there is a huge outcry to ban guns. A child drowns in a pool - there is no outcry for manditory fencing around pools. But more kids drown in pools than are shot by accident.
People die daily from smoking, and people still try to defend the purveyors of death. And we hum and haw . . . and debate about rights. I don't care about peoples' right to die slowly by self inflicted causes, I care about the rights of everyone else not to.