Parent who smokes

[nchnchnchnhhh]

I was wondering if there is anyone out there who has a parent that still smokes cigarettes/tobacco?

My mum is mid to late 70s and has smoked all of my life (I'm mid 40s). She has in recent years cut down considerably and smokes around a packet a week. She's determined to keep cutting down until she has stopped. Her only motivation is financial, which I find sad.

I tried when I was a teenager (hiding her cigarettes) to get her to stop. I then smoked myself on and off in my 20s and quit completely aged 29. I've repeatedly told her how I quit (a calendar where I ticked off the days and if I smoked I had to start again - through trial and error I worked out I had to get past six weeks to be 'over it', and how a friend quit (NHS patches and support), but it's fallen on deaf ears.

Recently she had a health check and she has the lungs of a 104 year old. She struggles with breathlessness on hills (but she is the age she is so I don't know..). She has extremely blue and cold swollen hands.

It's become a little painful to watch now. I (stupidly?) had a conversation with her last week about the financial cost which is probably around 30k in the last 25 years. She still works part time in a minimum wage job and that money would mean so much to her now. She said it was an addiction and I said why didn't she get help for it and she said because she is too proud and wants to do it herself. The money would have given her more freedom.

I suppose I'm feeling a strange feeling of guilt, like I should somehow have made her stop, no matter what it took. I know that's ridiculous. It's just so painful watching someone you love and care about do something illogical and damaging.

I also have a brother who is late 40s who has smoked for 25 years and he seems more affected with coughing.

I know I can't make them stop and the only positive thing that I can think to do is take care of my own lungs.

She’s an adult. You can’t control her behaviour.

TBH mid to late 70’s and with a vice she clearly enjoys… I say live and let live! I actually know someone who has taken up smoking again in his 70’s after giving up since his 40’s. His motto is; he enjoys it and you never know what’s round the corner so why deprive himself.
I get the financial implications though - cigs cost a bloody fortune these days so I do sympathise with people who are addicted.

Her choice

It's both an addiction and a habit. If she's cut down that's something even if it's far too late.

It's actually very difficult and this is from someone who was only a social smoker and quit 20+ years ago.

I know I can't make them stop and the only positive thing that I can think to do is take care of my own lungs.

So leave her alone then.

Nagging people doesn't work.

It doesn't make fat people slim, it doesn't make alcoholics stop drinking, it doesn't make heroin addicts stop injecting and as you've found out, it doesn't stop smokers from smoking.

I promised myself when I quit all my vices that I’d take them back up in my 70s when I’d fulfilled all my child rearing responsibilities. I don’t really miss cigarettes and alchohol but perhaps I will enjoy them when I’m old.

My partners Nan smoked like a train til she died at 81 from heart failure. My grandfather quit in his late 30s and had nothing but lung trouble from he quit. I also know a man who's drank and smoked heavily all his life, he's 98.

Also my grandfather only made it til his 60s

I know what you mean because I grew up with two dyed in the wool smokers. My mother was a 40 - 50 a day cigarette smoker and my Dad smoked a pipe.

How my sister and I must have stunk at school in our cigarette fragranced uniforms!!

You can't make her stop though, they have to want it for themselves and I think it is good that your mother seems to at least have some motivation to cut back (and maybe eventually stop completely?). Even if that motivation is financial.

My mother is 89 now and only stopped smoking around two years ago when when a severe dose of pneumonia almost killed her and had her spending Christmas and New Year in hospital. She moved, begrudgingly at first, over to using nicotine patches and vapes. That is where she still is, but whatever the ins and outs of it, it's far, far preferable to the huge clouds of thick smoke which used to follow her everywhere. She does have COPD which is slowly worsening and she isn't particularly mobile anymore.

My Dad also made it well into his eighties. He gave up smoking his pipe a couple of years before he died at 87. He still died from a worsening of his own COPD.

A pack a week is hardly going to be doing much harm. Encourage her but it's not worth causing shame and stress for her over.

She doesn't want help because she doesn't want to stop. She just tells you/herself that she does want to stop to take the pressure off. Probably lights up a fag after each stressful convo she has.

Mine did the same thing. "It's my only pleasure in life" used to be said a lot. At the time she had a substantial sum in the bank to live off, retired at 60, a car, and good enough health to get out and about. The world was her oyster.

But chose to sit in the house smoking until the wallpaper and hair went yellow and her health was permanently damaged.

She switched to vapes. Has no intention of stopping even though she has a cough, permanent gunk she can never seem to cough right up, copd, no sense of smell or taste, weak because she's lost all muscle tone, now housebound.

Sad to watch. All of her own doing. Like alcoholism, there is nothing anyone can do. The person has to decide themselves. And their loved ones just need to stand by and wonder how long they've got left :-(

I agree about the habit. I think that's the hardest part.

I'm not sure I've nagged as an adult. Its only when DM mentions that her new drive is to stop completely, then I might share what worked for me.

Yes the fact she has the motivation is good. My concern is indeed COPD. I suspect if she went over to vapes there would be less motivation to stop (especially if free on the NHS?). I'm not sold on their safety so I don't think I'd suggest it, but patches alone wouldn't work due to the habit.

I'm sorry to all those who knows someone affected by it.