Be Excellent To Each Other

Yes this is pretty gross but I figured you know hey, if I can help someone to realise what they're doing to themselves then they might consider quitting.

I started smoking when I was 15. Basically I got caught doing some dumb teenage shit (I set fire to a dog poop bin) and was grounded for a month. Boredom slowly sank in and I started playing with my mum's cigs. I saw this dude on the TV doing a magic trick with cigs and bubbles (the ones you blow with a straw) and figured I could do that. Since then I smoked with two attempts at quitting. One lasted a month, one just over two.

This time however due to recent health scares I was fucking determined. I had my last Cig on or around the 2nd Decemeber after having a bad case of flu-bronchitus-walking phneumonia (sic?). Any way, after reading up on bronchitus etc I read that I will now probably get it next winter, and the one after that due to it recurring, especially in smokers.

I can't even describe how ill I felt all winter. At times I just wanted to die it was that bad. In the end I damaged a muscle and some cartlidge from coughing and hacking up green mucus and decided that was it, I am going to give up.

It hasn't really been that hard in honesty. Every time I even think about smoking I think back to how depressed, ill and miserable I was during October - January and any craving soon passes. About a month after I gave up I started coughing up black phlegm. I'm not exagerating (sic) when I say black I mean, black. Kinda like when you were a kid and ate about two thousand black jack chews? yeah, just like that. This also scared the fucking shit out of me. Over the last week however this black has started to change to brown. I just got done a 2 mile walk back from the docs (to get smoking aids, ironic as it sounds) and when I sat down I coughed this up.

Yes, it's really fucking gross but I just wanted to show smokers what they are doing to themselves.



Now had someone showed that to me years ago I would have stopped there and then. Sure you hear all the horror stories but hey, that would never happen to me right?

I can't believe it. Maybe I'm stupid or naive but you don't see it going in so it never even really crossed my mind. You sure see it fucking coming out though.

So please. If you smoke please consider stopping.

No one likes a quitter.

Trust you to fucking think of that

Thing is I can't believe how well I feel. I did that 2 mile walk so fast my shins still burn yet I could do it again.

I've even been pricing up bikes and have found the one I shall order when Spring comes

Stick with it JC. Over 4 years now for me.

My grandmother needed a wig, as she was having chemo for lung cancer.

We then spent most of 1994 watching her deteriorate until the end of the summer when she was moved into a hospital. She knew, when we picked her up from her house, that she wasn't coming back to her house, ever. Several evening a week consisted of visits to the hospital, uncomfortable conversations, not knowing what to do. My lovely, kind, generous, loving grandmother was barely recognizable in this frail, practically immobile form lying in bed with tubes coming out of her.

On October 31st, it was over.

I'm determined. I'm talking tooth gritted determination.

I was rushed to hospital about three weeks ago with a suspected heart attack. Basically it felt like the left side of my chest had collapsed and the pain was unbearable. Personally I thought I had either a collapsed lung or lung cancer. I was rushed in and my entire chest shaved. I had an ECG, fingers shoved up my ass (they wanted to check for bleeding incase I needed nitrates or something) and had to undergo hours and hours of tests and being poked around. I had a chest Xray and three blood tests.

When it was all over (after about four hours) the nurse (lovely little thing she was) came to tell me I had damaged a muscle and cartlidge in my chest. I was so relieved I thought "hey, maybe I should get a pack of fags on the way home". She asked me to wait for a doctor to come and remove the blood tube thing from my hand and I ended up waiting two hours. As I sat there they rolled in some old dude with COPD. I can't even begin to describe the fucking noises he was making. Gasping, pleading with god to make it stop etc.

After two hours of that I can safely say I will never fucking smoke again. Filthy nasty shit.

You've already done it once you've totally decided to quit. The thing that grates me is all the shitty excuses people come out with about how addictive it is, I've smoked for X amount of years, it's harder for me, I can't do it without patches/gum/hypnosis.

If you want to give up, stop buying them. If you buy more, you don't really want to stop do you?

Simple.

Wanking is the killer for me though. Sweet sweet wanking.

I'm off for a fag.

Will you smoke a cigarette afterwards etc?

I'm currently on an inhalator plastic cig thing. I'm using 3 cartridges a day after coming off the patch completely. The nurse today said my monoxide levels were now that of a non smoker (3) after having been 5 last time.

So yeah the excuses?

It relaxes me !

Bollocks. My nurse wanted me to go on a 24 hour full strength patch and 6 cartridges a day. After two days I went bezerk. My blood pressure was through the roof and I was ready to rip someone's head off. I was having nightmares and everything. So much for it relaxing me.

Now I gave up smoking in the house, or any other house back in 2001. Look at the shit I am bringing up three months after packing them in ! I can't even imagine what that would look like had I sat in a haze of smoke all day for the last 10 years. I always hated ex smokers myself. Fucking dogooders. I am going to be the worst one ever

I didn't know you liked Harley riders

You should have seen what I was coughing up after cutting up all the fiberglass my car body needed without a proper mask.

I gave up smoking a few (three? Four, maybe) years ago. As Craster will tell you, I still smoke when I'm drinking, but that all adds up to about five a month. I found some cigarettes on the boat I get to work once too, and smoked them all in a weekend.
I've no desire to start smoking again properly, though, which is quite surprising.

Ahem, I remember us laughing when you said you'd bought extra cigarettes to the Firefly meet assuming I would steal all of yours.

Thanks for the pic, JC. Next time, photograph a turd for us, please.

hahahaha you're one of the cunts I absolutely hate

Mum can do that. Party smoke. GRR. If I had one I would be right back to 15-20 a day. Mind you after having seen what it's done to me and what I am getting rid of I truly have no desire at all to smoke one again.

The Germans make videos for that.

[opens sweepstake on how long it is before this happens]

Surely, and I speak now as someone who has smoked maybe 3-4 cigarettes in my entire life, it would be easier to simply stop dead with it and not use all these patches and inhilators and stuff? Feel free to shoot me down in flames though, the only thing I can think of that would even come close to this was the withdrawal symptoms I got when I went cold turkey coming off of Citalopram last year. That was a bit shit, but the more ill it made me, the more determined I got to see it through.

This is how I am although even when drinking I'm finding myself increasingly less tempted just because fewer people around me are smoking. I still can't pass up a joint, though. Starting running has brought home to me just how bad smoking is in the short term at least. I had a smoke one night the other week and running the next day was hopeless.

Different strokes really. Someone telling you what helped them to quit isn't necessarily going to be the slightest bit of help to you. I found that patches were a big help as I was able to stop the nice comforting habit part of smoking and then later tackle the slight physical withdrawal instead of the double whammy of doing both at once, and crucially I was able to do it without being a narky shit to those around me.

DON'T MENTION CIGARETTES AROUND ME...Must Kill.

It's the bipolar. All it takes is one manic day and I get stressed and reach for the nicotine. It's also why I can't take those tablets for giving up.

It's going to be a hard long slog truth told, but I'm well up for it.

You ought to change your name to John Coughy.

Seriously though, my Dad died 2 years ago from lung cancer resulting from smoking. He was 60, gave up when he was 36. Horrible way to die.

I'm 36... *gulp*.

Still, if I live until I am 60 and don't have to wheeze gasp and smell like a chav's ashtray then hey all the better really.

Keep at it JC, keep looking at that picture when you feel the desperate urge for a fag. The cravings last four about five minutes at a time, yes they're a fucking horrible five minutes but they do pass after a few days, after that it'll all be down to habit.

I gave up (cold turkey) four weeks ago today. I do feel better for it, but blimey it's been tough. I've had to try and break habits, I spend about 4 hours in the car most days, perfect smoking time and by far that's been the hardest.

But it is paying off, I went walking on the weekend and managed to keep up without ending up wheezing or collapsed in a heap.

Stick at it chap, if you want some support gimme a shout. Not sure how well I'll do mind, but like you I'm determined that this is the last time.

In the month or so after stopping I had a stash of chewy sweets and lollypops in the car, as like you say, driving is a prime time. I caught myself once flicking my lolly out of the window at a set of lights.

I'm working on the assumption that teeth are cheaper than lungs and generally easier to fix!

Instead of empty fag packets my car is full of Extra Strong Mints wrappers. Lollipops, now there's a good idea

The hardest part for me to beat is the habit. Not the nicotine, not the taste etc but the habit. I have terrible, literally incapacitating at times OCD due to my bipolar. When I get a manic kick I start obsessing over things. For about 15 years of my smoking I smoked hand rolled. The other night I turned on my wireless headphones, set a track I liked to repeat and went downstairs to roll a ciggarette. Then I realised that I didn't have any ciggarettes and I had given up smoking two months prior.

That may not seem all that strange but I only owned the wireless headphones so I could take my music to the garden with me to smoke. Ever since I stopped smoking they have been completely redundant. I literally performed a five minute ritual without even snapping out of it, it's almost embedded into me. I did exactly the same in the USA for the last 6 years. Set the PC to repeat on a few songs, turn on the wireless phones and roll a cig and go outside and smoke it.

The last two weeks have been the hardest. I have more nicotine on tap than I can wave a stick at. As I said before my nurse wanted me on a full strength 24 hour patch aswell as sucking down 6 inhalator carts a day. However, that made me really feel sick so Ive been sucking on the carts but only three a day. But lately I have been really craving.. Not smoking and certainly not nicotine, but the fact that my brain has finally realised my entire life and world as I knew it has changed.

Crazy really.

Still, I'm going to beat it. When I am determined I am invincible. If I truly decide to stop something I can.

Oh, and I have a 4 pack of XXX here Thing is, as you stop smoking they get fucking stronger man. I used to be able to throw two of them in my mouth and hardly taste them when I smoked. Now? fuck me they blow my sinuses to bits haha.

BTW. Be careful on the peppermints. The oil is really bad for your insides.

EDIT. One more thing. The black and brown cack? It wont happen all the time your lungs are still dilated from smoking. Give it time and soon enough you'll start bringing up all that fucking filth that you've put in there over the years. It's a bit messed up at first but god, every time I do it now I think about another nice pink healthy section of lung reappearing from under the cack.

Smokers. Those of you that smoke and have no intention of quitting... do you wish you could roll back the clock and never start?

My family, on both sides has a terrifying predisposition to Lung Cancer. So much so that going back 2 generations, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM has died of lung cancer or a related respiratory disease. They all suffered, pain and indignity right to the end. It's a horrible way to die. And yet, my Dad smoked from the age of 13 until he quit for good aged 55. My brother started at about 15 and he's only cutting down now, aged 30. I could smack him every time he reaches for the lighter.

I've never smoked. Seeing my favourite Aunt fade to a waif made sure of that. I hate smoking. Hate it with a passion. I'll not list the reasons, I'm sure you could all list them for me. Honestly, it disgusts me. Stop it. Seriously.