Looking back on my past smoking career..

[Doreensfree]

Here I was ,this tiny skinny,scruffy kid..brought up in Liverpool...

I started to hang around the back streets with the older kids..they stood in a circle passing around the smokes they had managed to get their hands on somehow..this is where I had my first puff..this is also where I should have never had another..but I was one of ..the gang..

It didn't take long for to get hooked..both my parents smoked ,so they was always I supply..

Little did I know then I would smoke for another 52 years..smoking while I was pregnant twice,smoking around my children all the time they grew up..

It was my pleasure,my reward..I worked hard..I earned that ciggie break..never being told of the danger..and the consequences....

I tried to quit hundreds of times..never quitting for long...I have later learned the tobacco companies kept adding more stuff to keep me hooked...

My smoking career came to a abrupt end..when I had to make a choice...

Face amputation of both feet..or quit...

Thankfully I found the strength to finally put them down...

I wonder...if those big kids are still with us.. Or did smoking do its worse...

[Sazerac]

Unfortunately, there are new generations of Those Big Kids.

 

Big tobacco,  still pushing nicotine to children and poisoning children harvesting tobacco in Indonesia and elsewhere.

A horrifyingly large part of the world is still under Big Tobacco's thumb.

 

Here in this world,  those same companies push Nicotine in a bright shiny new package. 

Billowing clouds of addiction in candy flavors.  Vaping.

Children LOVE it !

I hope the day comes soon, when it will be hip for kids to be clean and healthy and free from addictions, free from this madness.

 

Thank you for your strength, Doreen... you saved your feet,  Your Life !   

You help all of us with kindness,  concern that shows in your posts, 

and with the smoke free trail that you blaze.

Lead on,  Fearless Smoke Free Woman !

[Boo]

I remember the night I became a full-fledged smoker.  Not counting the odd one here or there I could get my hands on in my younger days.  It was a stupid beginning to a stupid addiction.  I was doing some underage drinking with friends when one of my cohorts told me: "hey man, if you smoke while you drink it will make you buzz harder."  We were quite the brain trust.  Long story short, I smoked several cigarettes that night and came to the next morning wanting more.  Addiction is born.

 

It's easy to shake my head at the youthful stupidity involved in my decision to start smoking.  It's a little harder to come to terms with the fact that I allowed myself to stay trapped for the next 25 years.

[Doreensfree]

What's your story ?????

[jillar]

I grew up in a smoking family too and I remember as a kid having our dad buy us corn cob pipes and filling them with one of his Pall Mall cigs. Then we'd light them and puff away and we just thought it was so fun and funny. Fast forward a few years, still a kid though, and sneaking a cigarette from the folks to smoke with the neighbor kids I don't think any of us inhaled but we sure were grownups looking cool.

It wasn't until we moved to California that my addiction was born. My sister and I started by smoking my dad's cig butts, because they didn't have filters, from the ashtrays  

From there we graduated to combining our high school lunch money to buy a pack and you better believe we both made sure we each got our ten. I still didn't inhale, I couldn't figure out how to. My sister would give me the clues over and over again until one day in the girls bathroom at S. M. High school I inhaled. I was so proud of myself and so was my sister....

 

[Mee]

I was raised in a very strict family, never going against the grain and having little worldy experience.   I graduated from high school on a Friday and started my first job the next monday, in the big city.   The minute I stepped off the city bus, you could see the niavety oozing from me.  I felt so adult and excited about navigating this new world.  When I would take my lunch break, I would look around and wonder what it would take to be accepted into this new world.  I don't know why seeing people smoke was so alluring to me.  To this day, I remember buying that first pack and choking through the first cigarette.   Of course it became and addiction and led me to a man that smoked.  He quit early in our marriage, but never hassled me to quit.  I continued to smoke for 42 years.   If I hadn't have stumbled across this forum, I would probably still be smoking.  

Don't ever feel that it is too late or you can't do it.  Freedom is wonderful!

[Oona]

I am all of you. Everyone smoked in family. Grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles. I’m 68...so you can easily see that I grew up in cigarette’s heyday. Packs were fifty cents, so was gas pretty much. I wanted to be tough and cool and worldly. I remember the Marlboro man well. Cigarettes were in vending machines everywhere...even in public restrooms. What a legal scam. I’ve been through countless quits. With no outside help early quits were torture. I’ve tried a psychiatric hypnotist that I couldn’t really afford and all I got out of it was the realization that, yes, I DID light a cigarette in the same place each time while driving. I went through the motion picture program twice. They threw all kinds of nicotine replacement therapies into the mix with weekly face to face appointments to talk and take oxygen levels. I made it to seven months. The cravings never went away. So, here I am again, with Chantix and a support group that I can reach anytime. I know that I can’t do it alone.