My parents never smoked, but my favorite uncle did, and so did my favorite people my parents used to have over when I was like 3. At 3 back in 1971 whenever I was around anyone smoking, the smoke just smelled so awesome to me. At 6, my Mom's favorite uncle, (my grand uncle or something?) did Red Man all the time. It smelled good also, and he gave me some and I loved it. Every visit he would give me Red Man in a sandwich bag to take home with me. By 7 I was buying Red Man and by 8 Skoal. By 10 all my friends did Copenhagen, I never could stand that. I do like the old funny song about it someone did long ago.
Anyway, my first cig was on my 13th birthday as a dare from a kid that lived behind me. His Dad smoked, and he was smoking also, and he bet I could not smoke without coughing. I smoked a whole pack in about 4 hours while we were playing baseball, and I never coughed. At 14 my cousin was in town and spending 2 nights and he had been smoking a little, and cjgs were cheap then, like 50 cents a pack and I was always a entrepreneur and making money(like picking up money back bottles 10 cents a bottle, and cans 40 cents a pound, or even splitting and stacking firewood for Dad and his friends 2.00 a hour), and I always had plenty of money, so we walked to a store nearby, I bought 1 pack of every cig that was for sale. We stayed up all night, tried a new cig every 30 minutes, and talked about what we liked and did not like with the flavor, etc. Early on Salem was my choice, with Vantage being pretty up there, that is all I remember.
Anyway, from 6 to 22 I mostly did Red Man or Skoal, and then at 14 I also smoked about a pack a month of Salem along with the other stuff.
At 23 Dad went bankrupt, I was losing my job, losing the place I live, everything. Dad had a great construction company. and I worked all the time full time and more, like 80 hours a week back then. Luckily I had always worked and saved so I was able to buy the house from the bank, and started my own construction company. I had always worked for Dad, while also doing stuff myself my whole life. I wanted to get ahead while I was young and had the energy. BUT.....at 23 with all this stress going on and my world was changing fast, Red Man and Skoal suddenly gave me intense painful heartburn, and I went from a pack a month of cigs, to 4-5 packs a day.
Luckily everything turned out fine and since 24 to now at 51 I smoke 15 to 30 cigs a day, depending on what I am doing. One time in my early 30's I tried to quit, but I found that I liked the smell so much I could smell a cig a mile away. I also broke teeth and had very high dentist bills because I would do sunflower seeds or atomic fire balls and biting that crap wreaked my teeth.
Currently I have lots of e-cigs, and even a expensive prescription inhaler, not because I want to quit, but sometimes with my work I have to work at places like Lockheed for a few months, and I can hide a e-cig easily to get me by, but they are even against that, so a inhaler from a doctor, they can not say a damn word.
I do high risk work that pays very well. Since my 20's there have been 5 or 6 times that I was one step away from a underground cave in. Something will cause me to die, I know this 100%. But in my dreams I dream that I stop doing everything I like to try to live longer, and then a plane falls out of the sky and kills me in my jacuzzi, and one time a small plane did crash into a house a block away from me. I do what I like, because at 51, I have already had a lot of friends die younger than I am, and they were trying to be all healthy and something else struck them out of the blue.
I am the black sheep. My GF does not smoke, none of my friends or family does, but they will all tell you I am the most considerate smoker they have ever been around. Even in a smoking area around other smokers, I watch which way my smoke goes and I move around and do everything I can to keep my smoke away from everyone. They all tell me to chill out, but that does nothing, I keep moving as needed to keep my smoke away from them.
My office is the only place I smoke in my house, and it has a ventilation system, and a commercial air cleaner so anyone that comes by does not even notice any smell. And I never have smoked around any of my pins, they are in another room.
And as much as I clearly like to smoke, I will stop in a few years when I retire, and not doing the high risk work anymore. I like the tv show Deadliest Catch. You see those guys make a lot of money fast and most of them smoke. That is kind of where I am, just not on the ocean.
And I thank all of you for sharing ways to quit, even though I think just retiring I can quit, I may need more help also, so I am taking notes. No pills though, I do not do any kind of pill or any kind of drug legal or not.
