sparrow wrote: Any answers to this with positive remarks would be appreciated. Cheers.
Keep it up, mate. Due to various things when I was a kid, doctors used to queue up to predict my imminent demise (they promised I'd snuff it seven times before I was twenty-one) and so, having nothing to lose, I lived every day as if it was my last. As a result I started smoking at 14 and kept on - with just one small break - until six years ago. By then I was breathing through treacle soaked cotton wool, everything tasted like it was being chewed through a sweaty sock, I couldn't have smelled a cess pit if I was standing in it, and I was having a heavy fall of soot with my waking-up, morning cough. I'd tell you about the various health problems but I didn't really have enough health to have problems with by that time.
Then, for no particular reason other than the fact that it was beginning to look like the doctor's predictions would finally come true, I decided to give up and dropped all my cigs into a sink full of water. After a bit of a struggle
(that statement will be entered for the all-England understatement tournament) for a few weeks, it started getting better. It's now been six years off the weed.
was it worth it? Well, all the respiritory problems I had vanished in about three months, the chest pains and headaches stopped, indigestion and stomach problems ceased, I suddenly could taste the difference between Guiness and milk, things started to have smells again, food became a delight instead of a habit, and girlfriends started commenting that whatever charms I might hold for them were greatly enhanced once I ceased to smell like a damp, overflowing ashtray. They also reckoned
(gives an embarrasesed cough and blushes) that since giving up there was a noticeable improvemnet in a certain other area of activity we used to share in but my naturally shy and retiring disposition prevents me from going into further detail.
Because of the predictions, I once hoped that I might live long enough to have kids, then I hoped I'd see them grow up, now - post ciggies - I've ambitions to be around for the grandkids and hope to introduce and indoctrinate them into the delights of TD in days to come.
Don't worry if it's hard. It's really worth it. If you fall off the wagon a couple of times, don't let it get you down. Just get up and do it again. With me, it suddenly clicked and became far easier. You might lose the pleasure of smoking but I promise you that practically every other pleasure gets heightened once you beat it. When you find yourself on the couch watching a DVD, with a scotch or other tipple in your hand, while curled up with your favourite lady and you suddenly realise that you're not having to peer through a fog to see the screen, that the scotch taste delicious, and you can actually smell your lady's perfume or the shampoo she used that morning, you'll see exactly what I mean.
Good luck!
