Mike Johnston wrote: > > > Good on ya, Mike! You deserve all the praise we can heap on you. > > Staying off is incredibly difficult, expecially if you want to live a > > 'normal life' with other drinkers around you. > > Don't even know you, but I'm proud of you! > > Thankee Keith. It does get easier as the years pass. To tell you the truth, > quitting is harder with alcohol, but staying off cigarettes is harder. I > haven't had a cigarette since 1983 and I *still* dream about smoking every > once in a while. Very addictive stuff, nicotine.
Tell me! I started when I was 16. Smoked constantly until I was approximately 48-ish. 2 3/4 pack a day when I quit! Off for 13 years, and the love of cigars brought me back. I'm finally quit again, about 5 years last Thanksgiving... For the next 3 years, I thought about having another smoke at least 4 times a day, sometimes twice that! In the past year, the urges have dropped off considerably in frequency, but only a tiny bit in intensity... Sometimes 3 days or more goes by before an urge hits me between the eyes! If I were just a tiny, tiny bit more stupid, I'd be smoking Havanas again, guy! And loving it! I fight it continually. Toughest thing I ever did, bar none! Tobacco addiction is a bitch! When the balance of my life span gets iffy, and I think the reduction in longevity (from smoking) is more than what time I have left, I'll probably start with the stogies again... Drinking moderately is the last vice I have left... I think about that a lot. The time will come. Hopefully after my wife involuntarily leaves me... If you can't have any of your vices... screw it! Much good luck to you, Mike. keith > I had an uncle who was alcoholic all his life. Big, strong guy, natural > mesomorph, healthy as a horse, almost literally never sick a day in his > life. So guess what he died of? Lung cancer, even though he quit smoking in > the 1950s. All that booze didn't do him much harm, but the ciggies killed > him. His death was especially hard on his family because he was a real hero > to his many grandchildren, a real rock, a great influence on them (despite > his drinking, which he kept pretty well hidden from them). It's just a > crying shame he didn't live another ten years--he would have seen all of > them into adulthood, and been there for their teen years. Man, anybody who > thinks that the years that smoking takes off your life don't matter.... > > --Mike
