How I finally ended a life long battle with smoking.
My mother smoked while she was pregnant with me and my sister. I used to light her cigarettes while she was driving. One time I handed her a lit Benson & Hedges backwards nearly causing a huge freeway accident. She managed to not hit the car in front of her but had a huge burn on her lip, it didnt stop her from grabbing the cig, which had flown out of her hand during the burn/swerving wildly, and start puffing rapidly to get the cherry back up to a glow, a look of calm passing over her face as she blew out the first inhale.
Growing up in band life, in my life, we lived in a cloud of smoke. I emptied bottles and cans stuffed with butts, I did my school work engulfed in a haze of fluffy smoke and I knew how to blow rings by the time I was ten. I would walk to the corner store with a note that said please let my daughter buy cigarettes for me and they would. I didnt have to steal cigarettes from anyone as a child, they were everywhere, I only had to pick them up. I bought my own personal pack at 13 years of age from a doughnut shop vending machine half a block from my house. Newports, because I didnt want to be like my mother (funny I know).
Most kids have to work a little bit at getting hooked on cigarettes. Your first smokes hurt the chest and make you want to throw up. I had one initial punch to my chest with my first Newport and then nothing. It was like breathing the free air to me. Newports are the worst of the worst of worst for those who dont know. They take the shake of other brands and treat it with thousands of more chemicals and menthol the .... out of them so all you feel is BIG ole nic hit and a cool frost that immediately numbs the path of carnage you just blew through your trachea. Newports are to smoking what crack is to coke or Madonna was to pop
..cheaper, harsher and more addicting is a horrible way.
The first time I tried to quit smoking I was only 14. I vividly remember getting through two days, spaced and jittery, and then finding a pack my mother left on the couch. I remember telling myself dont smoke one, if you do you will never quit and then watching my hand slowly take one out, light it up
. And so began a long and bitter battle that would last until I was 42.
At 15, I was in Montana super happy because Newports sold for half price in most QuickStops (they were not a popular brand with country folk) I was buying (with my fake ID) as much as I could hold in my van as I headed west. Once I drove my van halfway off a cliff, staring down at a 75 foot drop I scuttled out the back doors onto the road and then realized in horror I had left my smokes in the front seat. I slowly and carefully crawled back into the van to retrieve them because I didnt think I could get through the trauma of it all without them. Yes I did that, and its not the worst thing I have done for my addiction.
I secretly smoked during both of my pregnancies. I cry just typing that but I did it, its true. I tried to quit and I know everyone reading this will shudder in disgust but I have to be honest. I could not quit and I smoked while carrying my babies. Thank god, not me, that they are both healthy and perfect. Everyone should be so lucky. During my first pregnancy, after a week of not smoking I was spacey and couldnt focus. I rear ended a car in front of me and a forgotten pack of smokes flew out from under my car seat. I grabbed them and lit up faster then you could say pathetic much?. My point is that I would die for my children, I would be happy to die for either of them, but I couldnt not smoke for them. *break for crying in shame
excuse me*
I helped my best friend take care of her father while he slowly died from emphysema. He smoke two packs of Camel non-filtered up to the very end and we smoked with him. At first we tried to get him to quit, but he flat out refused. As the steroids took their toll on his body his bones got weaker and weaker and he had fractures constantly. He was a sweet man and vaping could have saved the quality, if not the quantity of his years with us. Don I wish I knew then what I know now. Dawn, his daughter, still smokes to this day. Death doesnt stop addiction, love doesnt break it. I have watched herion addicts kick with less pain then smokers and more success. If you think quitting is just a matter of will power then your mistaken. Its not.
I was hypnotized once, it didnt help. I have tried patches 13 times. I had a needle in my ear for a week. I have used gum, lozenges, prayer, scent therapy, positive thought, Wellbutrin, read every death/horror story I could find, posted cancer pictures on my walls and every other thing I thought would help to quit, and for all of my efforts I quit once for 8 months and once for a year and two months. I have smoked my whole life really
42 years of smoking. 42 years of hell.
Look smoking hurts. It limits your ability to live your life. I have spent my life feeling like I was less than others because I smoked. I felt like I was less capable, less intelligent and less in control of myself. I wanted to do a triathlon but couldnt because I had no wind. I wanted to be a nurse but didnt even try because I found getting through a day of classes to hard without a fix. I have turned down or quit jobs that interfered with my need to light up every two hours choosing to work in bars my whole life where I could be the addict that I was. I have left movies early, cut dates short and once left James De Priestlys very last symphony because I had to have a cigarette, after having paid $200 for the tickets too. I have wheeled my ... out to the smoking area at hospitals, pee bag in my lap, to smoke. I have been humbled, I have beat my head against walls and I have cried thousands of times over cigarettes. They are so small and so unimportant but oh my god they dominated my life. They defined me.
I want to tell you about the last year I had quit. In 2009 I quit, I made it and I couldnt believe it. Every one said they never believed I would do it. I started training for my first triathlon and started my prereqs for nursing school. I was sooooo happy I had finally triumphed! I would run past the smoking areas outside of the hospital and think thank god I am finally free every day. I begged my husband to quit and watched him struggle to do it and fail over and over and I couldnt help him. Occasionally, on a really tough day I would sneak a hit of his cigarette and think oh I dont even like the way it tastes. I am cured
..but I never really was. I sometimes dreamed I was smoking. It haunted me.
Of course I gained 15 pounds and spent the whole year trying to lose it. I ran a mile every day, ate little, I even tried fasting periodically and it just wouldnt come off. That wasnt so bad I guess except that I woke up every day and tried not to smoke, tried not to eat and tried to get along with my day. Now my whole life had become a battle of will power. Every day I went as long as I could until one day I was smoking again and I didnt even realize how it happened. I had just thrown away a year plus two months of not smoking and it was so depressing I didnt know what to do. I couldnt run anymore, I couldnt breathe. I would go to sleep at night thinking that tomorrow I would do better, get control again and not smoke. By noon the next day I would be searching through old coats or asking my neighbors for a smoke. I have picked butts up off the ground and smoked them for gods sake. Then one night, driving in my car and feeling very sad that I had smoked that day my husband called me and told me to turn on the radio. Thats where I was when I heard Bob Alexanders story about ecigarettes on Mike Malloys radio show and it changed my life.
Ecigarettes. Nicotine (as low a dose as you choose or no nicotine at all), polyglycerol the same as they use in asthma inhalers and food products. Flavoring if you want it. True to form I chose menthol and mint. You can vape, blow mist just like smoke, get the nicotine just like a patch and its as good as smoking but so much better. Ecigs
.the reduced risk alternative. The harm reduction option. The little battery operated solution that gave me back my life and my mind.
I went to Bobs website and ordered a kit from Frank over at EasyCig before the program was even over. In fact I sped home to do it. I got my kit three days later and I for the first time in my life I am free. My husband is free too, but that is his story, not mine so I will just note it here. True, we are not free of nicotine but that wasnt really important to me (its not the nicotine that kills, its the smoke). Now I can vape and it makes everything ok. I get a small amount of nicotine and no harmful smoke or chemicals. No carcinogens, no ammonia, no cancer, no COPD, no wheezing, coughing or shortness of breath. No smoke.
You want to know all of the things I am free of? The list is huge! Free from watching my husband struggle, he quit the first day easily as did I. Free of the guilt, the shame, the persistent nagging worry about my health. Free of the smell, the mess, the cost, the cough and the wheeze. Free to not crave all of the time! Not having this persistent itch that I just have to scratch is AMAZING! Free of the depression, the grief and the ever present sense of being a bad person for smoking. Free of the hunched over smoking areas, free of guiltily sneaking off and free of fear of being judged. Free to not have to suffer anymore. That is such a big statement I have to say it again
.Free to Not Suffer Anymore.
I can run again. My wind is great. I can breathe without wheezing. I am dropping the extra weight while eating whatever I want (within my vegan reason). I go to school and know that once I am in the field, with my RN degree, I have a extra tool to help others. My mind is finally free to think about things other than cigarettes and how I shouldnt and why I cant and why I am
freedom.
I know there are people out there who feel I should pay for getting addicted to cigarettes. That it is fitting and right I should suffer for it. I know there are people who will feel I should quit nicotine all together. However I am no longer blowing second hand smoke into the air and that is a good thing. I am no longer filling up endless ashtrays, and eventually landfills, with my poison butts and thats a good thing too. I know in my heart I tried as hard as I could to quit and failed again and again. Now I am not hurting anyone else and that is a good thing. If you know someone who just cant quit smoking then put away your judgments and get them a ecig immediately. Would you rather have your smug superiority or save a life? Refer them to the ecig forum and go to Super Beans and read How I Quit Smoking by Bob Alexander. Sometimes you have to pick your battles and lives can be saved, be improved, by the ecigs.
Listen it is wonderful to not be carrying this huge burden anymore. I wish it for everyone who got trapped by smoking. Please try vaping, if you cant just quit, and be free to live your life again.
**I am just a girl who quit and am not affiliated in any way with any vendors or people mentioned in this post.****
so I know how horrible you felt, I felt the same and thank God (and not me, as you said) my baby is a very healthy and happy 6 year old now. I felt (feel) all the things you mentioned, being less than everyone else, weak. I couldn't even quit after spending a year home hospicing my beloved mom for her lung cancer 
