Smoking poll

[Amy loves Bud]

Never tried it, never gonna.

 

I was one of those kids in the backseat with the windows up while my mom smoked up front. I fared much better than my brother, who suffered from severe asthma as a child.

 

When I was 15 my mom had to have stomach surgery and had a difficult time coming off the ventilator because her lungs were so weak.

 

She died of lung cancer, suffering from emphysema when I was pregnant with my 8 yr old.

 

Never tried it, never gonna.

[Rich with Kids]

Oh, goodness. Well, I kinda smoked in high school. Then picked it up again in college. Then after my divorce I picked it up again. I was a one pack a week smoker. :D I considered myself a social smoker. I did it enough to make me feel a little naughty. It makes me sick now just to smell it.

Edited December 18, 2008 by Rich with Kids

[Danestress]

is my father. He's in a nursing home and has few pleasures, and he's only allowed to go outside to smoke when someone can go with him (because he has Alzheimer's and will walk right out into the traffic on the days when he can walk). So four or five days a week when I am there, I will take him out and we will smoke a cigarette together, and I wouldn't trade that for the world because it's something we can still do together. I never smoke otherwise. He probably smokes 10 cigarettes a week, and I smoke maybe four.

[Lizzie in Ma]

If it were not bad for you and so bloody expensive I would happily smoke forever. 1-2 packs a day since I was barely a teen.

I quit cold turkey 4 years ago. If I ever started smoking again I would never, ever try to quit again.

 

I had tried several times to quit and made it through my pregnancies without them but went right back.

 

I smoked Captain Black sweet cherry little cigars for the last 3 years I smoked. I would never smoke the foul tasting Malboro's of my youth or Basics of my frugal college years again ever but oh I do miss my little cigars.

 

I am not one of those reformed smokers, I love the vicarious smoke of the people outside the grocery store. It still smells so good to me.

[bkpan]

If it were not bad for you and so bloody expensive I would happily smoke forever. 1-2 packs a day since I was barely a teen.

I quit cold turkey 4 years ago. If I ever started smoking again I would never, ever try to quit again.

 

I had tried several times to quit and made it through my pregnancies without them but went right back.

 

I smoked Captain Black sweet cherry little cigars for the last 3 years I smoked. I would never smoke the foul tasting Malboro's of my youth or Basics of my frugal college years again ever but oh I do miss my little cigars.

 

I am not one of those reformed smokers, I love the vicarious smoke of the people outside the grocery store. It still smells so good to me.

 

Yep. That's me (except for the smoking little cigars part). Haven't touched a cigarette in over 10 years, but I can so relate to walking by the folks lighting up outside, lol! I'll never smoke again, cause I do value my health and for the love of my family, but I think that I will always wish I could.

 

Kim

[The Governess]

I voted other. I tried it for a couple months in college, liked it, and then decided that I didn't want to be a smoker so I stopped. I always felt like an impostor walking into the gas station and asking for a pack, and always felt surprised when they agreed to sell them to me. :lol: And I usually smoked them alone. I guess I was a closet smoker. :D So shady of me.

[*Inna*]

I smoked for 10 years and quit before we decided to have children. Never looked back and also persuaded my dad who smoked since he was 12 years old to quit.

[missplacedalaskan]

I tried it once as a teen to "be cool". NOT cool, those things are NASTY! My dad has smoked for about 50 years, I should have known they didn't taste any better than they smell. What was I thinking?!

 

We have tried to get my dad to quit, he has moved his nasties outside, but he won't quit.

[emeraldjoy]

Thanks for your story....and how brave you are for actually telling it!! It was actually refreshing to read it and I hope a few people will learn something from it; in fact I know they may think a bit more anyway....

 

I smoked for 17 years and quit a little over a year ago. It truly was the hardest thing that I ever, ever, ever did.....EVER....I know now that if I ever start again, I will probably smoke until I die from it (this keeps me far away) because I honestly don't think I could ever quit again. However, I know that I am always so close and have to be careful. I tried many (so, so, so many times) it became embarassing. I stopped telling people I was quitting, especially my kids because I did not want them to see my fail, again. When I finally quit, they didnt really *know* for several weeks.

 

The older I got the more shameful it became and I the wierd assosciations people make with smokers; like "scummy" as someone on this board wrote once , are really hard. It is truly one of those things that noone can understand unless they walk in a smokers shoes. Yes, it is yucky and discusting and deadly and all those things that are obvious and as a smokers WE KNOW THIS!!! Trust me.

Anyway, I voted other because none of the other options quite sum up the feelings I have about being an ex-smoker. It is something I am so proud of, yet so cautious of, yet MOST thankful for. Definitely the most thankful for.

emerald

I'm the lone "smoker and proud of it" choice. I am *not* proud of it, at all, but am not making it my New Years resolution, so it was the closest fit.

 

I don't smoke indoors, around the kids, or in the car. It was easy-peasy to quit when pregnant with my oldest, she was surprise (although in retrospect we ought not have been *too* surprised!) but with my youngest I quit well before getting pregnant. And wanted to smoke literally as soon as she came out.

 

It is so,so,so,so hard to quit. I have quit, but always restarted, DH is military and his deployments are my prime stressor.

 

I do my best to negate my other health risks: I am not the least bit overweight, in great shape, eat healthy non processed foods for the msot part. Oddly enough, I am almost never sick. Not since I was in middle school, except for a few stomach upsets. No coughing or bronchitis, which makes me wonder if the crud is just building up, not getting coughed out. (I don't wonder too much, as I try nto think about it of course!)

 

Despite my nasty habit, I am a nice person, kind to animals, and a good mother. Well, the nice person may be an exaggeration. :tongue_smilie:But I am not a monster. None of my mommy-friends (gymnastics, hs'ers, etc) know I smoke. The only ones who do are my long-time, trusted friends, and I value their non-judgemental friendship so, so highly. They will help and support when I *do* quit, and don't look down on me for smoking.

 

I tell my kids that if I can't be a good example, I'll have to be a horrible warning. DON'T EVER START! Its almost impossible to quit, at least for me. Thank goodness I discovered cigarettes and not, say, crack- I have never been tempted to try any drugs due to my addiction to cigarettes. I'd be a crack ho' fo' sho'.

[beansprouts]

Despite my nasty habit, I am a nice person, kind to animals, and a good mother. Well, the nice person may be an exaggeration. :tongue_smilie:But I am not a monster. None of my mommy-friends (gymnastics, hs'ers, etc) know I smoke. The only ones who do are my long-time, trusted friends, and I value their non-judgemental friendship so, so highly. They will help and support when I *do* quit, and don't look down on me for smoking.

 

I tell my kids that if I can't be a good example, I'll have to be a horrible warning. DON'T EVER START! Its almost impossible to quit, at least for me. Thank goodness I discovered cigarettes and not, say, crack- I have never been tempted to try any drugs due to my addiction to cigarettes. I'd be a crack ho' fo' sho'.

 

You will get no judgement from me. I KNOW how hard it is!!

 

And I know you are a great person :001_smile:

[Remudamom]

I have to tell my first smoking experience. I was at the movies with my friend Anne, and we smoked during the movie. One of my mom's friends was (unbeknownst to me) sitting a few rows behind me. She called my mom the second she got home, and mom was waiting at the front door, tapping her foot. It was not pretty.

[beansprouts]

I have to tell my first smoking experience. I was at the movies with my friend Anne, and we smoked during the movie. One of my mom's friends was (unbeknownst to me) sitting a few rows behind me. She called my mom the second she got home, and mom was waiting at the front door, tapping her foot. It was not pretty.

 

And if the daughter is anything like the mother... Oh my!

[Pretty in Pink]

Never tried, never gonna.

 

I grew up with two full-time smokers. My mom was and still is a two-pack a day smoker. I remember riding in the car with them smoking, windows up. I haven't been around it for ten years now and when I am in my mother's house for any length of time I get ill. I have permanent lung damage stemming from my exposure to second-hand smoke.

 

Smoking just disgusts me. I have both a physical and mental aversion to it.

[Ellie]

My mother died of lung cancer. Her only sister died of lung cancer. Both of their parents, my grandparents, died of lung cancer.

 

I'm thankful that I never smoked, and wish my mother and the others never had, either.

[Audrey]

Anonymous ... although maybe the mods can see?

 

 

I put "social" but I don't know how accurate that would be. You didn't say what we're smoking.

[Peela]

I answered "other" because I used to smoke and I did enjoy it, but I realised after a point that it just wasn't doing me any good. I have always been interested in health, and I just wised up about what it was doing to me. You know, I thought I was immortal and all that in my late teens and twenties, then I grew up!

 

Its actually a lovely little ritual (I used to roll my own and all) but it definitely isnt worth it considering what it does to your body. Nowadays when I come across smokers I wonder how they can do that to themselves and I gag at the smell.

[Rosie_0801]

My mother threatened me with murder, when I was a teen, if I ever smoked. She needn't have worried. At the grand old age of 4 I looked at my grandfather and thought "You're the ugliest old guy I ever saw. If that's what smoking does to you, I'm never going to do it because I'm no Elle Macpherson anyway!" Good thing I never said it to his face, huh?

:)

Rosie

[chaik76]

I've smoked and not smoked, smoked and not smoked. I'm not anti-smoking, even when I'm not. I never lecture people on not smoking, and I think that you should be able to get permits to have smoking restaurants and such...but that they shouldn't be a regular rule. Sort of like having a permit for a bar.

[KidsHappen]

If we are talking tobacco in this thread then, I tried it and didn't like it. And I am so thankful that that is the case.

[StaceyinLA]

I NEVER smoked around my kids. The last time I smoked a cigarette was about 5 years ago. I smoked ONE at the beach with dh. It had been years and it was GROSS! He finally quit a year ago. I can't even stand the smell.

[swellmomma]

When I was 16 I worked in a drug store as a cashier which included selling cigarettes (before all the laws changed), so I bought a pack one night to try it out, thought it was disgusting and that was that, After just one smoke I tossed the whole pack.

[Apiphobic]

Disclaimer: I didn't know about the thread connecting tea with toys. I'd seen Doran's Make Tea Not War avatar and assumed that was what the references to tea was all about. That was my thinking when I included the smoking only after making tea as a poll choice.

 

And now I wish I'd thought of this as an option:

 

I'm a joker, I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker, Sure don't want to hurt no one.

 

Thanks for playing and thanks for sharing.

 

P.S. I'm one of those reformed smokers your mother always warned you about. Started in college and mostly was a social smoker off and on through the years. Smoked when I went out and on breaks at work but not around my kids, never in my home or car, and never when I was pregnant or nursing. I found it easier to quit earlier on and harder to quit the last couple of times.