Smoking...

No...Im not smoking hot...or smoking mad.  I'm just plain old smoking cigarettes.  Yes I realize that this is a controversial subject that has it's fors and againsts, smokers and non-smokers, and the pros and cons.  Yes, I said pros as well as the cons.

When my father found out that I had been smoking he figured the best way for me to really be "punished" was to make me write an essay about smoking.  I failed his essay assignment because I had not really given it any real thought.  I was raised with very large families on both sides. I have to say that out of 9 aunts and 9 uncles (not including their spouses), only 2 aunts and my 2 grandmothers didn't smoke.  My Mom and Dad, and my 2 grandfathers made a total of 20 blood relatives that smoked.  Even now I watch old movies, and all of the 'grown-ups' smoked...it was a privilege...a rite of passage into adulthood.

I also grew up in an era where we were told that cigarettes would 'stunt our growth'.  That was the extent of the information.  The U.S. government had just begun to require a warning label on every pack of cigarettes.  It was a rather benign warning..."Warning: Smoking 'may' be hazardous to your health".  I don't recall if they had progressed to cigars, pipe tobacco, or chewing tobacco.  We didn't have to wear seat belts back then either.  But that's off-subject and I have supported that since my late teens...if the vehicle I was riding in was equipped with 'safety belts'. 

Now, one thing I want to straighten out is that I have never heard a smoker that has stopped smoking exclaim that they don't miss smoking.  In fact, I had a cigarette in an ashtray at my Mom's house several years after she stopped.  And after years of not smoking she inadvertantly, but automatically picked up the cigarette to take a drag.  The action was still ingrained...even after the habit had been supressed.  She stopped suddenly and was very surprised when I shouted.  She had not realized what she was doing. 

Before all of you Californians get upset, I want to clarify my definitions of what smokers and non-smokers are.  Smokers have smoked.  Whether it is cigarettes, cigars, or pipes, at some point they have smoked often enough to consider it a pleasure.  Smoking is a way of finding relief or comfort,  just a relaxer after dinner or a tough business meeting, a smoker has smoked no matter the reason.  Non-smokers have perhaps tried a couple of puffs from peer pressure when they were young.  But basically they have never bought or bummed any form of tobacco for their own use.  Non-smokers have pristine lungs with no tar or nicotine.  Perhaps coal dust, smog, asbestos or other noxious substances have injured their lungs instead.

Have you ever heard the saying that "Quitters never quit"?  Well they don't when it comes to smoking.  I don't know how many smokers that have tried to reform their behavior, and have at some time returned to smoking.  I never understood that until recently.  I stopped smoking for about a year.  I am still living with 2 smokers.  So it was not an easy task, and I would occasionally sneak one late at night.  I attempted this for one reason only - my health.  I did eventually stop smoking completely.

I lost one of my grandfathers, 2 aunts, and 1 uncle due to enphysema.  My father passed due to lung cancer and my Mom and 2 of her brothers had severe heart issues.  I myself have been diagnosed with COPD...which...I think is a more PC version of enphysema...along with other uncles and aunts which now require oxygen supplements.  I am grateful that my sister is 7 years my junior because more information was available about the effects of smoking.  By the time she was at the peer pressure age smoking was no longer 'in fashion' and was conisdered far more 'hazardous'.  My brother is a different story.  I have never figured out why he took up the cigar habit at a much later age. I don't understand the logic...

I am an advocate for not smoking.  I truly wish and recommend that people DON'T SMOKE if you don't already.  But as with illicit drugs or any other addiction, people are going to do what they want to do, and eventually end up paying for it later.  When I stopped smoking (remember quitters never quit) I found myself in a depression as though I had lost a friend.  I found that I was becoming resentful of the 2 smokers in the household.  They weren't 'really' doing anything 'wrong'...they were just doing the thing of which I was being deprived.

Now I finally understood where the 'born-again-preachy-non-smokers-with-attitudes' came from, and was fully comitted to not becoming one.  After all, smokers just despise the dirty looks we get from non-smokers, when they pass us going in to work as we are standing in the freezing rain/sleet/snow, or blazing heat and humidity, while we try and enjoy a cigarette.  Smokers are not comtemptible.  America WAS economically founded by the tobacco cash-crop.  The crops were not limited to the south as some people believe.  My Mom and her siblings used to pick tobacco in Massachusetts to help with family finances.  The taxes paid on a each pack of cigarettes help finance all of our country's huge debts.

You might ask why I find myself as a smoker again.  I reached for one (there are menthol and non-menthol brands immediately available in my home) on a very stressful, aggravating, angry day.

I had fooled myself into thinking that I could have 'just one' to calm my nerves.  I am now in the same position that I was in 2 years ago.  After smoking for another year, I must 'choose' not to smoke.  The smart, both physically and financial choice.  My response when asked if I'm a smoker or non-smoker?  I am a smoker who is 'choosing' not to smoke because...a quitter never reallllly quits!