So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[GHT]

Nicotine is so difficult to quit because you are up against quitting all the other addictive chemicals that the tobacco companies spray their product with.

Last night I watched about fifteen minutes of one of those sales channels. The product that they were promoting was Estee Lauder perfumes and make up. Estee Lauder also own the Clinique brand, it's my wife favourite. Her birthday will be coming up in a few weeks time, that's why I watched that sales channel.

The presentation was slick, although it didn't appear to be pushy, the pitch was subliminal, yet constant. The fragrance that my wife particularly likes was discounted by twenty percent, and, if you buy NOW, you can have four easy payments without any extra charge for credit. That pitch went on and on. I had enough and switched off.

There's a large pharmacy store in Salisbury, about a forty minute drive away, they stock a large range of cosmetics including the one shown on that sales channel. This store is not the sort of place that aims at the lower end of the market. The fragrance was five pounds cheaper than the discounted price that I saw on TV. It will be a sad day if the retail trade folds completely, the sharks are certainly out there, waiting.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother quit a twenty-year two-pack-a-day habit cold turkey the day her father died of advanced emphysema. I watched her tear up what remained of her last carton and flush it down the toilet, and in the forty-one years since that day she has never touched another one.

It was the bravest thing she ever did.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
In my case it wasn’t anything I’d call heroic in dropping my two-pack-a-day habit of some 35 years duration. The cardiologist told me he and his fellows would continue treating me if I continued smoking, but that I would just be undoing everything they were trying to do for me.

Like your mom, I haven’t taken so much as a puff off a cigarette since. It’ll be 15 years come September.

I don’t know that the research would bear me out, but I suspect that those who quit cold turkey are likelier you stay quit than those who taper off or use nicotine replacements such as gum or patches. (Or vaping, which poses its own deadly hazards.) And that, I offer, is because we cold turkeys aren’t playing with the idea of leaving tobacco behind. For us, this isn’t an experiment or some lifestyle change we’re giving a try.

 

[Hercule]

My mother quit a twenty-year two-pack-a-day habit cold turkey the day her father died of advanced emphysema. I watched her tear up what remained of her last carton and flush it down the toilet, and in the forty-one years since that day she has never touched another one.

It was the bravest thing she ever did.

My dad quit cold turkey in the early 70s and said it was the hardest thing he ever did. Sadly it never occurred to me to ask him about what inspired him to do it. Then again, there a lot of things I neglected to ask him about. I really regret that.

I remember as VERY young child, maybe 4 or so, telling my mom that I would stop sucking my thumb if she would stop smoking. Didn't happen though I did stop sucking my thumb before going into kindergarten. Odd the way she eventually stopped - she had a gall bladder operation, back in the day when you stayed in the hospital for the better part of a week. About two weeks after coming home she realized she hadn't had or wanted a cigarette the whole time. Maybe an artifact of the anesthesia? Who knows.

Never had the inclination to smoke myself though for a while about 30 years ago I would occasionally puff on a cigar. Probably mostly out of nostalgia. I grew up in tobacco country in Connecticut and had just moved to the midwest. To this day cured tobacco and tomato plants are some of most evocative smells to me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Even as a little kid I couldn't stand cigarettes. My grandfather's pipe didn't bother me, but when he'd sit there chain-smoking Lucky Strikes, I'd leave the room in disgust.

When I was maybe two or three years old, I took my father's cigarette pack out of his jacket, took out all the cigarettes, dunked each one in a bottle of Clorox, put them all back into the pack, and the pack back into his jacket. I hated the smell that much.

 

[Hercule]

When I was a kid I lived in Greece for two years, once wandered inside a bar in Thessaloniki and ordered
a beer. Live music, small band. Miller. Ice cold. And a sister of Sophia Loren walked up . . .

. . . she wrote her name, address, phone # on a slip. Told me I was a sweet lovely boy
she wanted to sleep with. I pocketed the slip, went back to base. And lost the paper.

Never saw her again.

WOW, you CAN speak English! And I've gotten so used to the strings of non seqitors... [I jest in good fun, please take no offense.]

Ah, what could have been, eh?

 

[Hercule]

Even as a little kid I couldn't stand cigarettes. My grandfather's pipe didn't bother me, but when he'd sit there chain-smoking Lucky Strikes, I'd leave the room in disgust.

When I was maybe two or three years old, I took my father's cigarette pack out of his jacket, took out all the cigarettes, dunked each one in a bottle of Clorox, put them all back into the pack, and the pack back into his jacket. I hated the smell that much.

AMEN! I never even wanted to touch the packs. I distinctly remember having a personal crisis when, after I was driving on my own, my mom sent me to the store to buy cigarettes for her.

Having grown up around so much tobacco production as a kid, I could never understand why cigarettes smelled so bad. It's still tobacco isn't it? Yet they smell nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like tobacco. Fortunately encountering cigarette smoke is a relative rarity these days.

 

[tonyb]

The fellow next door, whom I get along with just fine, occasionally smokes on his deck. When the wind is coming from that direction I can smell the cigarette smoke, which I don’t find objectionable at all.

Cigarette smoke residue is another matter altogether. I was oblivious to it back when I smoked, but some ten years or so after I quit and we bought our current residence it was obvious the second I walked through the door that smokers lived here. Putting fresh paint on the walls and ceilings showed just how yellowed those surfaces had become due to the smoke. (You can’t really scrub popcorn ceilings, as it turns out.)

 

[BobHufford]

My paternal grandfather was a chain smoker for all but 10 early years of his 76-year life. He sort of rolled his own with bulk purchase of empty filtered tubes which we grandkids loved to stuff for him using a cranked tobacco stuffer. He carried these around in his shirt pocket in an old metal Band-Aid box. On a trip with my grandmother to visit my aunt (who was also a chain smoker) eight-year-old me finally asked if I could try one. My grandmother as aghast, but my aunt said "OK". The deal was that I had to smoke the whole thing. After getting sick with the first one I stayed away and other than an occasional Swisher Sweet in high school I've been a non-smoker. Watching my grandpa die of emphysema when I was 19 confirmed that I had made the right choice.

I have found a few other vices that will probably kill me though ...

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
In my final couple-three years of smoking I lived maybe 10 miles from an Indian reservation that boasted, besides the obligatory casino, a cigarette factory and a store that sold its own tobacco products as well as other cigarette brands, and fire water, and junk food, all at prices significantly lower than what you’d pay in the stores in town.

I bought the tribe’s smokes because they cost about half what I’d been paying for the major brands. They were a lesser product, for sure, but they delivered the fix.

 

[Turnip]

I smoked about 25 or so cigs a day for about 30 years. One of the advantages joining the Navy has been two packs duty free cigs per sea-day, and the traditional Liter of booze per month.
I stopped smoking flicking my last cig out of my car window, three or four days of massive physical issues and that was it.
Ironically I’ve been diagnosed with cancer a year later...
During the rehab I met not too few guys who just had got a quarter or half lung cut away and went straight out to the smokers pavilion right after having finished their breathing training.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^
Hoping for your complete and speedy recovery.

 

[Turnip]

Thank you!

But currently done as far as possible, passed the official five years survival line some time ago. Just need to run regular after care screenings at this point, which are though still kinda nerve itching every time.

 

[Harp]

M2 monetary velocity 1/28/.21: 1.129
Secretary of US Treasury Yellen believes further stimulus necessary, discounts inflation.

 

[tonyb]

Thank you!

But currently done as far as possible, passed the official five years survival line some time ago. Just need to run regular after care screenings at this point, which are though still kinda nerve itching every time.

That’s great. And yeah, I know how those “routine” visits can be anxiety inducing. But you get used to it.

 

[Turnip]

Yes, that’s certainly true. I’ve been X-Rayed, CT‘d, MRT‘d, WhateverT‘d, Scoped...so many times over the years that I glow in the dark meanwhile...

 

[MisterCairo]

Buttergate. An actual thing in Canada. Our butter remains harder to spread at room temperature, because, hope you are sitting down, some farmers are using palm oil in feed:

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/mobile/...he-hard-truth-about-canadian-butter-1.5320211

 

[Turnip]

Uuuuh, very uncool! On the other hand, folks get what they’re willing to pay for.

 

[MisterCairo]

Uuuuh, very uncool! On the other hand, folks get what they’re willing to pay for.

If this is about the buttergate, we pay a lot for dairy, as it is supply managed in Canada. As one critic is saying (he coined the term "buttergate"), Canadians have been paying big for crappy butter for years, now it is worse!

 

[Turnip]

Ah, OK, that makes it even worse.