I was forced to give up smoking after 20 years (along with drinking) for medical reasons. I’d had a number of attempts at stopping, including the now classic smoking and vaping at the same time, so you vape then think, il have a real one now, in one continuous nicotine extravaganza 😂.
So many family members have been lost as a result of smoking, but you know what, I still miss it. I’ve never had the dramatic response you see from ex smokers, where they waft their hands frantically and declare how much it stinks, I interestingly still love the smell, it makes me nostalgic for smoking. Smoking in pubs, smoking at Christmas, with family and friends. It’s been there my whole life. The smell of perfume and cigarettes reminds me of my late mum, stale cigarette smoke of warm evenings in pubs, being able to step away and have time to myself outside on a crisp autumn afternoon, but it’s all nostalgia and it’s all lies.
I never seem to remember those times, when you smoke way too much and your chest hurts, when you think, I don’t want this one, but have it anyway. When my breathing started to get very difficult, because the effects of all those years of kicking the can down the road and saying, I have to die of something, I enjoy smoking, the anxiety that causes.
Its fine until it isn’t, both my parents had catastrophic heart attacks because of smoking, all my grandparents died very young because of it, friends and neighbours also, possibly more prevalent in my working class background maybe before anyone says I’m a jinx 😂.
In our heads it’s always the next man who is affected, but it can and will be your turn, it caught up with me at 41 with pancreatitis. I’m still nostalgic for smoking, would still like one, but all good things have to come to an end, so remember the bad parts of it, you can do it!