I bet while you’re sitting there in front of your computer, you just sparked a nice long fresh cigarette. You’re sitting back and taking a nice deep pull, taking a moment to savor the taste of the nicotine in your lungs, then you exhale and let the smoke release from your body and you feel the tension go away with the smoke. It tastes and feels so good you pull on that cancer stick again and again, even if you are coughing uncontrollable. By the time you’re finished with that cigarette you are hacking, bent over trying to bring up that phlegm that’s lodged in your throat. You spit out a glob brown slimy gook. Disgusting!
Any sane person would call it quits right? Then take that pack of cigarettes and crush them and toss them out, and be done with this nasty habit once and for all. But smokers are not sane. They are completely insane, who would continue to smoke after being told and shown what cigarettes do to you. You may not realize it but you stink like an ash try. It doesn’t matter how hygienic you are, the cigarette smell gets into your hair, your mustache if you’re a man, into your clothes. Smell your fingers, oh I forgot you like the way it smells on your fingers. To a non-smoker you’re funky. Trust me, you don’t realize it because you are immune to the funk.
Now I’m sure you’ve seen the public awareness commercials, you know the one with the guy that use to swim in when he was a kid, now he has a trachea in his throat an he can’t go swimming. What about the lady who shows you her fingers that have all been amputated because the smoke cut off her circulation. Then there’s man in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank on, he’s skinny and ashy looking and they say so you’re smoking to be glamorous. Then my all time favorite, the man wheezing and coughing. Does that scare anyone into stopping. Maybe it helps the kids growing up with smokers around them, think twice about being smokers themselves.
Back in the fifties, sixties and seventies when you turned on the TV you would see commercials advertising cigarettes. The cartoons weren’t even protected from them. Check out these commercials:
The Flintstones http://youtu.be/NAExoSozc2c
More Flintstones http://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vintagetvcommercials.com%2F&session_token=a5nurns4-NGOgQ_-gPoDhYEiKyR8MTMyODMwMTQ4M0AxMzI4MjE1MDgz
From a little kid you were programmed to smoke. I mean like who didn’t watch the Flintstones. When I was growing up it was the acceptable thing to do. I was twelve years old going to the store to buy packs of cigarettes for my Grandmother. I grew up in a household where everyone smoked, the house smelled like cigarettes but no body noticed. Cigarettes were everywhere. People smoked on the buses, trains, taxicabs, bars and restaurants. It was so normal people didn’t even know they were addicted to cigarettes.
Everyone has habits with smoking starting with the morning constitution on the throne, smoking is a great laxative. Then another one with the morning coffee, one after breakfast. Then you went to work and everyone was smoking in the office even in the hospitals, only you couldn’t smoke near the room with oxygen. Thank goodness for that. If you went to the bar you smoked with every drink, go out to dinner and you smoked a few cigarettes before you left. We smoked and enjoyed it. I know I did.
Oh you didn’t think I smoked, if you count second hand smoke I smoked for 48 years. I had my first cigarette when I was three years old. Yes three, I use to take the butts of cigarettes out the ashtray and pretend to smoke. So one day my Grandmother decides to teach me a lesson. She said, “you want to smoke, I’m going to give you a cigarette.” She cleared the dinning room table off, she put an ashtray in front of me and light at Chesterfield regular. (That was a cigarette with no filter, full body) My brother Cliff was there. I put that cigarette in my mouth and I smoked it. I didn’t cough, I didn’t choke, like Gran wanted me too. Instead I blew it out my nose and my brother laughed. My grandmother snatched the cigarette from me and told me to get out of here. I started sneaking my mothers’ cigarettes when I was eight and smoking them in the bathroom. When I was twelve I had a boyfriend that worked in the grocery store and he would bring me cigarettes home from the store. I was a smoker.
I stopped when I was pregnant with my kids, the studies at the time showed that it cause low weight births, brain damage and all whole shopping list of ailments. But as soon as I pushed those babies out I was down the hall lighting up. When my son was born they were giving out samples of Newport Lights that had just came out. Ten cigarettes free, could you imagine. Every company was giving out cigarettes. But I smoked while I was feeding my babies their bottles, I smoked while they slept in their cribs, while they played in front of me. While they sat in the back seat while I was driving. My kids all smoke now and you should hear me yelling at them for smoking around my grandchildren.
A little over three years ago I was trying to stop smoking. The cigarettes were really hurting my lungs. Now I’ve tried over and over for years to stop. I would stop for a few weeks maybe a month, but not much more after that though, I would be able to breathe a little easier, I didn’t cough much and I had more stamina. But this last time I tried to quit after a few weeks, I was still having a hard time breathing, I was still coughing. I knew something was seriously wrong. But did I stop? Nope. I was using the patches, I got them from the Department of Health free and when those ran out I paid for them. They worked for a little for a couple of hours, then I would snatched that patch off and smoke. I would buy a pack of cigarettes and take a few out then throw the pack away so I wouldn’t smoke too much or be tempted by having the cigarettes around. Nothing was working I couldn’t stop so what the hell. I probably have emphysema or worst cancer, I may as well continue to smoke, what the hell I’m going to die anyway, I might as well enjoy what I enjoy.
My oldest grandson was born on August 23rd, on his seventh birthday, I was hanging out with the grand kids. We went to the Aquarium, we spent the day in the sun, I was tired and weak feeling. That Monday was the 26, I went to work, this job I had to go up and down the steps to the basement. After I walked up the stairs I would have to sit and catch my breath. I literally didn’t have oxygen going to my head. I would feel like I was passing out. I would go out side and smoke on my breaks standing in the sun. I had a rash on and in my ears, on the sides of my hands and on arms near my shoulders. I was sick so after work I drove this little use Honda I had. There was mold growing in the trunk and I also thought that was what was messing with my lungs. With all that I really believed they were going to tell me I had bronchitis and they were going to give me some antibiotics and send me home. No I was admitted, they ran test, took blood, x-rays and when all was said and done. I had lupus and COPD. Thank God it wasn’t cancer. I knew for years I had lupus, my mother had it but I started to believe I didn’t have and didn’t use sunscreen that summer. The first summer I didn’t because I wanted to get a sun tan. Stupid me.
I didn’t have insurance, they wanted to send me home with oxygen but they couldn’t find anyone to help me. I was getting my medical care from the hospital and paying a sliding few scale. My breathing was getting bad the lupus wasn’t getting under control. When I left the hospital I didn’t think about smoking. I had two really serious diseases. August 26, 2008 was the last time I had a cigarette. I did end up getting oxygen it cost me $40 a can so I would only use it when I went out. In August of 2010 my doctor sent me to see a pulmonary doctor at Columbia Hospital to see if I was eligible for a lung transplant. The doctor looked at the films of my lungs and told me that I didn’t have a sever case of COPD and by what my lungs looked like I shouldn’t be haven’t such difficulty breathing. (COPD is diagnosed by the number and size of the holes in your lungs. Anyone who smokes has these holes in their lungs.) He suggested I get a heart cauterization to see if I have Pulmonary Hypertension (PH). The city hospital didn’t do heart cauterization. But God came through again and I was able to get the healthcare President Obama got signed into congress. I had my heart cauterization, and I was positive with PH. The pulmonary doctor put me on a pill called ‘Revatio,’ it is Viagra, but different then the little blue pill. I’ve been on that pill for over a year, I did Pulmonary Rehab lost sixty pounds. (with the steroids and the nibbling because I wasn’t smoking I gained over a 100 pounds.) Today I don’t have to use oxygen. God is good. Oh and my lupus is under control.
The sick part is that lately I’ve been thinking about smoking. I am pretty sure I won’t pick up again. I know that all I have to do is to wait for the urge to pass and then I’ll be okay. That’s what any of you who smoke have to do, wait for the urge will pass as long as you don’t give into it you‘ll stop smoking. Each time you pass one of those urges you get stronger.
If what I’ve written so far hasn’t convinced you to stop check out what’s in a cigarette:
Butane, lighter fluid, vinegar, methane, arsenic, carbon monoxide, rocket fluid, paint ammonia, nicotine, industrial solvent, candle was and barbecue lighter. Check out the link below.
http://www.121hypnosis.com/
On my other blog I wrote an essay that it should be illegal to smoke around kids. Here’s a link if you care to check that out.
http://my2centsnotworthapenny.blogspot.com/2010/12/it-should-be-illegal-to-smoke-around.html?spref=tw
WARNING!! Photos may be graphic. Photos from Google images "pictures of smokers" When I was growing up smoking was normal as not thinking ...
STOP BEING INSANE! STOP SMOKING!
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