Smoking Vapors

Next month I will be celebrating three years of being (traditional) cigarette free which is great of course. Over the years I have had many people ask both myself & by better half how we quit and why we quit. Really we both just wanted to breathe easier and not continue down a long path of continual destruction to our bodies (and our wallets). Cigarettes are expensive and I am sure with the price of everything else rising prices for cigarettes per pack or carton will continue down the same road. This will be my path down the road of smoking vapors…

When I moved from the east to the west coast I thought that price shock alone was enough to make me quit. It seems when you move you adapt to your surroundings and the only thing I really did was switch brands (from Marlboros to Camels, even the wide ones at times). I went from a few cigarettes a day to a few packs depending on what was going on in my life at any given time in the course of just ten short years. I have tried just about every brand at one point or flavor, even peach ones smuggled in from France during a friend’s study aboard.

I started smoking as a teen, ironically (and sadly) enough while my father was in the hospital with walking pneumonia. Of course at the (stupid) age of 12 I knew very little about why he was there or what smoking had already managed to do to his body. There are many things in my past that I have forgiven and forgotten, one of the few things that I will never forgive is my mother allowing me to continue smoking after she found out about it.

I am the youngest of a six kid (blended) family and for some reason being the youngest most thought would mean I always got away with everything. Looking back this is the only thing I remember ever getting away with and the worst at that. Allowing your child of any age to be smoking is not cool. Yell at them, I yell at every smoke I know. Why? Because I have already been down this road before and I know very well how it can & may turn out.

By the time I was a late teen my mother was already diagnosed with lung cancer and had started treatments, my father in another state had already gone under a lung transplant; both with deteriorating health issues and yet I still continued to smoke. I smoked in the morning, at noon & night. Let me say I never litter, that is just as bad as smoking in my eyes; very disgusting. I smoked in the car, in the house, outside, at work. I even smoked when I dated a non-smoker. I hated the idea of the prices rising, I hated the fact that I could just as easy turn out like my parents. I hated the smell on my clothes, the changing color of my nails, I hated it all.

I managed to go through two pregnancies before I finally got the urge up to quit for good. I tried Chantix with horrible (freaky and scary dream) results; I tried the lozenges (too sweet and hurt my sensitive teeth) and even the patch (NicoDerm). After all of that hell I decided why not give these new little things called an “e-cig” a chance, what is the worst that could really happen? At the point when I had finally decided to try one more thing I had already buried both of my parents, knew many with health issues related to smoking & started to feel the effects of the dreaded shortness of breath, before I was even 30…stay tuned it will get interesting.