How To Start Smoking

 

About 20 years ago I gave up smoking, having smoked 40 per day for many years. Since then I have been a compulsive and campaigning non-smoker which I am currently trying to give up for health reasons.

 

Re-starting smoking is not as easy as people might think – the high cost of cigarettes is a deterrent and society at large, subjects you to all sorts of social pressures because smokers are now seen as an undesirable minority. Being a realist, I realised from a reality check, that I could possibly not get back to my old habit overnight and that I should first reduce the number of cigarettes I didn’t smoke each day by a gradually increasing amount I didn’t smoke, until I was able to get back to not non smoking 40 a day.

 

Despite this realisation - I initially tried to stop non-smoking suddenly by cutting out not smoking completely – but my addiction to not smoking was too strong and it gave me major ‘drawal symptoms. I therefore resorted to the original plan and tried to reduce the number of cigarettes I didn’t smoke gradually, by cutting up a few each day.  This worked for a while and I managed to reduce the number of cigarettes I didn’t smoke to approximately 10 per day.  One unfortunate side effect was that I lost weight and felt much more energetic due to reduced appetite – which my doctor and the combined resources of the NHS was not able to resolve. On the positive side, my cough returned and I again smelled like a user of ‘Au De Bonfire’ aftershave.

 

However, social pressures took their toll and I found myself slipping back into my former bad habits by not smoking at least 40 per day again which caused me to get back to my former plump and unfit state. This pleased my doctor because he has lots of pills and potions he can prescribe for such conditions.  Legislation today prohibits you from smoking in a public building and the better pubs provide an outside smoking area suitably deep pile carpeted with squashed nub ends giving off that healthy and indulgent aroma to help you not non-smoke. As an habitual non smoker, it really is embarrassing to stand furtively in a smoking section in the pouring rain outside a restaurant and have complaints from smoking addicts alongside you about your non smoking. Not only that, I really miss not being able to not non smoke after a nice meal with my coffee and brandy. My breath and clothes have developed a strong lack of odour and the absence of nicotine stains on my fingers has definitely got worse.

 

I have tried hypnosis and acupuncture to reduce my non smoking without much success. I have also tried not wearing a nicotine patch, not chewing nicotine gum and not sucking on a nicotine impregnated false plastic cigarette, which have  proved to be equally ineffective. I am currently avoiding not smoking the occasional cigar and pipe to see whether this will help.

 

Hence my advice to all smokers is not to give it up in the first place – if you do - you could have serious difficulties in starting again.

I prefer not to smoke vapes

I used to smoke 30+ per day!  The very last time was at about 9:30pm on 9th June 1986.

That was thirty years ago and I have never touched one since.  I now can't stand the smell.

Irene wrote:

I used to smoke 30+ per day!  The very last time was at about 9:30pm on 9th June 1986.

That was thirty years ago and I have never touched one since.  I now can't stand the smell.

I was a heavy smoker for many years,until one day when I had a bad cold I coughed blood. I gave it up in a panic,and also find the smell to be foul. I cannot understand how anyone can be so stupid as to start in the first place these days,in the light of current medical knowledge. Years ago,it was considered the thing to do,times have changed and people should have more sense.

When I was at Grammar School we all attended a lesson on health and a doctor lectured us on the perils of smoking and that it would shorten our lives. I can't now recall the detail - but it was a clear attempt to stop us taking up smoking.

They were too late - I had been using my dinner money to buy cigarettes well before that.

When I hear people say that the dangers were not known "in those days" I have to smile - because I know all too well they are wrong. My late wife died of lung cancer and Libby's late husband also died of lung cancer. Whilst we cannot be sure it was smoking that caused it - I would take some convincing that it wasn't.

I stopped smoking a year before you Irene - I went from 40 to 80 a day - to zero overnight. It's a long story how and why which I won't bore you with.

I started smoking in my last year at Grammar School.
There were three of us who were great chums in the local scout troop (it was a small troop of maybe 7or 8 depending on the way the wind was blowing.)
We had one or two camping sites but the best of them was north of Settle in Ribblesdale.It was a fairly large farm with sheep up on the hills and cows nearer home.There was a small field that was referred to as "The Camping Field" and that was at the side of the river.
It was an ideal place for pitching a tent because it had the river on one side and walls on the other sides with a gate through the north corner. The other thing it had was flies. It was not too bad on a normal dales day but when the not infrequent sultry warm days appeared so did the flies (no, I know not from whence they came).
It was apparent after our first experience of the flies that something would have to be done. One day we were in the farm yard talking to the farmers son and a neighbouring farmer who happened to have called in. This fly business cropped up and the neighbouring farmer said "Tha wants to do as ah do."    "Oh, what is that?" 
He put his hand in his pocket and came out with a pipe.  "Thou wants some reet dark 'backer in one o' these"

After a quick stroll down into Settle both Peter and I started smoking a pipes.
The man was absolutely correct, and we were relatively free of flys.
Peter stopped smoking just before he was conscripted into National Service.
I had to go into hospital in my mid fifties to let a man tinker with my prostate gland and so I stopped smoking a pipe a week before I "went in".

I still have not recommenced, despite having a box full of pipes and some very dry old sliced black twist in the back of a cupboard in the bedroom.

some very dry old sliced black twist in the back of a cupboard in the bedroom.

Why not try soaking some for a few days in water, then drain it off it would probably make a good insecticide for the plants in the garden.


https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2010/acs-presspac-october-27-2010/tobacco-and-its-evil-cousin-nicotine-are-good-as-a-pesticide.html

Sod the insects in the garden.
The price of black twist will have gone sky high when I need it on my last day here on earth.

How will you know it's your last day - you might get run over by the Dales bus - a warmed up pork and salmonella pie in a glutinous sea of mushy peas, which seems to be a delicacy in Yorkshire.

I s'pose you are relatively immune from being shot by a jealous husband.................

AlanHo wrote:

How will you know it's your last day - you might get run over by the Dales bus - a warmed up pork and salmonella pie in a glutinous sea of mushy peas, which seems to be a delicacy in Yorkshire.

I s'pose you are relatively immune from being shot by a jealous husband.................

He's well past that.

"- a warmed up pork and salmonella pie in a glutinous sea of mushy peas, which seems to be a delicacy in Yorkshire."

You have made me go chasing into the past. In what was known as "T'open Market" there was a stall that sold "Pie and peas" . Wonderful 3" diameter pork pies served on a dish with "mushy peas". Salt and pepper and a spoonful of mint sauce made it a comestible fit for a king.  And I past it on my way home from grammar school! 2d for the pie and 1d for the peas. (2d for the peas if you did not have a pie)
My mouth is dribbling as I write.

I went to a cousins 25th wedding anniversary in Leeds 3 years ago - it was held in a social club who did the catering.

We were served up with a steaming hot pork pie in a dish surrounded by a sea of sloshy mushy peas.  I didn't know it was a pork pie until I cut into it and a jet of hot jelly squirted out. I gagged and could not eat it.

Well it's understandable Alan. The folk in Leeds and the folk in Bradford  are not typical of the real West Riding Yorkshire folk of not too many years ago. The current bunch have run riot through the streets and ripped down the old revered buildings and filled the spaces with ponds and mosques and  dole payment offices. I have a sister who still lives in the "green area" between Bradford and Halifax, but that too is shrinking. I fear we shall eventually be a totally Heinz country.

It's no different here in the Midlands.

We are suffering from white flight in the large cities and towns. The whites and the long established and integrated immigrants are fleeing to places in the countryside. Their homes are then bought by buy-to-let landlords or immigrants.

The state of the inner circle of our towns reminds me of Karachi (I have been there) - except they are even more scruffy. Crime has soared - causing a massive increase in insurance premiums in certain post codes - and school standards have plummeted.

AlanHo wrote:

It's no different here in the Midlands.

We are suffering from white flight in the large cities and towns. The whites and the long established and integrated immigrants are fleeing to places in the countryside. Their homes are then bought by buy-to-let landlords or immigrants.

The state of the inner circle of our towns reminds me of Karachi (I have been there) - except they are even more scruffy. Crime has soared - causing a massive increase in insurance premiums in certain post codes - and school standards have plummeted.

I think this is the "grand plan"....but not the one conceived by the white man, who continues to talk with split tongue.