You needn't tell me about the cruel and nasty deaths that smoking can cause. My mother died of cancer (though, she didn't have cancer of the lungs...ironically...but nearly everything else) and my father had emphysema (which he was hospitalized for...and in the hospital they found a blockage of his arteries and operated and he bled to death).

The part no one seems to understand (and I don't know if you've ever smoked jseal...so I'm directing this to everyone) is that when I (we...smokers collectively) started smoking, we didn't envision our parents, or anyone for that matter, with lung cancer or any other disease caused by smoking. I was just hanging out and fitting in and gagging and puking and making myself like this shit so I could look cool! It may have been boredom from living in a town with nothing much to do. It may have been peer pressure. It may be that I saw both my parents do it and it looked fun and cool. It may have been any and/or all of that...but it happened. I started smoking and now I can't stop! I don't want cancer! I don't want emphysema! I've seen the horrors FIRST HAND! I'm not a stupid person. I know what smoking is doing to me...and yet I can't quit. I could quit eating easier than I could quit smoking. I don't have any other vices to quit...but if I drank coffee, I could quit it. If I smoked pot, I could quit. If I took narcotics, I could quit (and I did...a prescription for pain that I stopped on my own cause I hated the addiction). Think of anything and I bet I could quit it. But I can't quit this and I've tried so much it'd make your head spin! The need is ALWAYS there...and I don't want that need anymore!

To be totally open and honest here, I'll divulge something that I've never said here at Pixies. I've been smoking since I was 7 years old (started at 6 and started inhaling at 7)...I will be 47 in one month...and the longest I've gone without a cigarette in all that time is 2 months and 3 days. I've quit a total of 32 times in my smoking carreer and I've never made it past 2 months and 3 days. It's tremendously upsetting to fail at something so many times! I don't take failure (for myself) very well at all. This has been one...no...make that THE...hardest thing I've ever tried and failed at in my life!

If words and advice and warnings and tsk tsk's from those in the know could make me/help me quit...don't you think I would??????? I don't want to die like that...and I surely don't want to lay it all on my family to see me die like that!

Give me the antidote!

Damn...this is a touchy subject...eh?

*hugs to (((everyone)))...smoking or not*

__________________
Minds are like parachutes. They only work when they are open.

~Thomas Dewar~