Giving up is easy.

[fishcatcher60]

I stopped smoking at the end of 1989.
I had the flu and a very sore throat so i didn't have a ciggie for 2 weeks and i just thought "that's a good start" so i thought i will try and stop.
I have not had one since that day but i must admit it was very difficult for a long time.

 

[Jelster]

There is a lot of hypocrisy when it comes to the government wanting people to stop smoking, pictures on packets, stopping sponsorship, hiding them behind cupboard doors in shops, but still being quite willing to take billions in tax from them, I have to wonder how much more would have to be made up by income tax should everyone stop, or would they just increase that already massive tax burden on fuel?

Doesn't all that tax go to help the NHS deal with all the smoking related diseases ? I mean, stop people smoking and the health rate would improve.

My sister who now only has 5% lung capacity, and on dialysis (all smoking related) is in hospital, and I went to see here on Friday, and there's a guy in the car park, wired up to 2 drips, looking like he's at deaths door, having a fag.... I'm just so glad that my addictions are petrol and technology related, and not smoking....

 

[Tee-Cee]

Yes, I noticed that at Stoke Mandeville hospital recently. More folk (waiting to see a doctor) outside the waiting room having a fag than inside. Similar situation outside the wards. and as Jelster says, complete with all sorts of tubes and looking, well, ill...

 

[Another Dave]

Doesn't all that tax go to help the NHS deal with all the smoking related diseases ? I mean, stop people smoking and the health rate would improve.

No, we pay approximately double what we take from the system.

Does smoking cost as much as it makes for the Treasury? - Full Fact

Also from that link:

None of this comes close to telling us what the NHS spends on smokers on top of what it would spend if they didn't smoke.

Imagine a patient in her 40s who is diagnosed with terminal cancer as a result of her smoking. Let's say her care costs the NHS £20,000 before she passes away. Now imagine we could go back in time and prevent her from taking up smoking in the first place. She might live into her 80s, and even if she spends that time in relatively good health is likely to require any number of GP consultations and routine prescriptions in that time.

 

[fishcatcher60]

I was at the hospital with the wife yesterday and on walking in the hospital outside there was a heavily pregnant woman smoking.
You also people who come off the wards connected to drips etc just to have a fag outside.

 

[103841]

My mum was a smoker until the last few months of her 92 years, I use to take her a packet of fags when she was first admitted to hospital with cancer, we would go in the garden where she would have a couple of puffs and that’s all she could take bless her. Her ciggies were her best companion and comfort when living alone for the last fourty years of her life.

My Aunt (her sister) was even worse, her last words when dying of cancer exactly the same age as my mum when having removed her oxygen mask “can I have a last fag please”

 

[fishcatcher60]

My mother in law was the same.
She also liked a tipple of whiskey in her coffee and whenever people say she should stop i always said she is cutting down now she is down to 20 cups per day.
When you get to a certain age and it is your only pleasure i cannot see the point of giving up.

 

[103841]

It makes the despicable disease all the more unpredictable when someone can chain smoke for nigh on 75 years and only then succumb. Diagnosed in June, gone in September, a short illness, thank goodness.

 

[maggot_dangler]

I gave up over 30 years ago .

it is something i will not forget in a hurry because of the way it happened i had gotten up had my breakfast and a cuppa light up the first fag of the day and it tasted well bloody disgusting so binned it lit another one in case is was a duffer fag nope same thing .
From that day o i have never touched another one never missed them either and i was a 20 to 30 a day merchant now i cant stand the stink of them ...

PG ...

 

[Ray Roberts]

When I was at senior school back in the early 60s we used to spend our one shilling a day dinner money on a plate of chips from our local cafe and a single Cadet Cigarette from the local sweet & tobacco shop who used to keep them loose in a sweet jar.

Sometimes I bought a packet of 5 cadets and went without my chips altogether but I usually had to share them out with my mates, so I quickly learnt to carry two packets on me; one with only one cigarette in it so that I could say “sorry it’s my last one” when there were cadgers about.

When I was a teenager and started going out with my mates in the evenings my dad used to smell my fingers when I got home to make sure that I hadn’t been smoking.

I remember one night when the ‘Who’ had been playing at our local Mods youth club (the Lynx) and when I got home my dad found a cigarette stub in my pocket and I tried to tell him that Roger Daltry had stubbed his fag out and I had picked it up as a momento, but he didn’t believe me of course.

Those were the days

There were times in my youth that if my father had sniffed my fingers when I returned home he would have thought I’d been fishing, lol.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[mikench]

I like innuendo Ray!

My wife asked me to give her an example of an innuendo so I gave her one!

 

[floatfish]

Having started smoking in the 1960's as everybody seemed to do in those days.
Working in the freight/shipping circles,cigs were easy to come across.
I stopped 40 odd years ago, similar to as mentioned above. One fine day
opened up the car to go to work and have a cig on the way. The car stank.!!
Drove with the windows open and never lit up again. Stopping smoking is
easy when you really want to do so. If you say I will stop,but still crave
a cig, then you will carry on even after a break.When stopped,I noticed
even years later in moments of stress,my hand still went to the jacket pocket
that I used to keep the cigs in. Old habits take a long time to be forgotten.!!

 

[Peter Jacobs]

"When stopped,I noticed even years later in moments of stress, my hand still went to the jacket pocket
that I used to keep the cigs in. Old habits take a long time to be forgotten.!!"

I always carried my cigarettes and lighter in my shirt pocket.

Before leaving the house or my office I'd sub-consciously alwats tap my shirt pocket to make sure they were still there.

Some 8 years after having given up smoking I will even today sometimes tap my pocket, and inwardly smile to myself . . .


Habits do indeed die hard