Have You Smoked/Used Tobacco?

[TigerWoman]

I have a friend who is also a black belt who is undergoing a crisis right now with major heart surgery. This is her second go-around. She was a smoking fiend all her life and after the first heart surgery, she said she gave it up but... Most of know that martial arts and smoking aren't compatible, just like life and smoking aren't but I am amazed how many people in MA still do. So I made the poll. I hope those that indicated that they are still smoking, try to get into a cessation program and use this as a place for support. Obviously those that get into this forum have a passion for martial arts. But you have to have life to enjoy them.... TW

Quoting Nightingale from a previous post:
Nicotine acts directly on the heart to change heart rate and blood pressure.

Nicotine causes a short-term increase in blood pressure, heart rate and the flow of blood from the heart. It also causes the arteries to narrow. Tobacco includes carbon monoxide, which reduces the amount of oxygen the blood can carry. This, combined with the nicotine effects, creates an imbalance between the demand for oxygen by the cells and the amount of oxygen the blood can supply. Nicotine also causes several changes in the blood that make clots -- and heart attack -- more likely.

Tobacco may increase the risk of developing hardening of the arteries and heart attacks in several ways. Carbon monoxide may damage the inner walls of the arteries, encouraging fatty buildups in them. Over time, this causes the vessels to narrow and harden. Nicotine may also contribute to this process.

 

[Tgace]

Bad habit...killed my grandmother (lung cancer) and contributed to the death of my grandfather.

 

[michaeledward]

Smoked for years. Drank alcohol for years.

I miss them both every day.

While walking into the movies today, I walked passed someone smoking on their way out of the movie .... MAN, was that good.

I miss them both every day.

 

[Raewyn]

Unfortunately I am still smoking. I'm trying to give up, but finding it really hard. I know Martial Arts and smoking are not a mix. I have to work twice as hard to keep up with everybody. I think it will take me to fail a grading before I really give up which is not a good attitude to have.

 

[jfarnsworth]

I won't touch the anything related to such crap. They're way too expensive and would put me in an early grave :idunno: why bother to even start.

 

[Kenpo Mama]

Grew up in a house full of smokers, starting smoking at age 12, worked in an office full of smokers, finally had the good sense to quit when i got pregnant with my first child at age 26. Missed smoking for a while, especially when out at parties. Now i can't handle the smell of it. Visited my folks last Thanksgiving and by the time the turkey was on the table i was completely green, feeling suffocated from the smoke. Didn't eat a bite. I hope my kids never start. It's such a stinky habit!

It really is a hard habit to break! It took me a few years to really get the courage and willpower to let it go, and finally it took being responsible for someone else's life to get me to do it. Think about that!

Kenpo Mama :ultracool

 

[shesulsa]

Grew up with 2 smokers - tried one or two cigarettes - just couldn't handle it. Even tried smoking illegal things. Still couldn't handle it. When to the hospital with chest pains at 17 and was diagnosed with reduced lung capacity. One lung will only inflate to about 85% of it's capacity and the other will only inflate to about 72% of its capacity. I was probably having an asthma attack and they never found it - found later though - about 20 years later.

Hate smoking - don't even hang out with smokers - I avoid bars because I can't enjoy myself in a smokey environment where I can't even friggin' breathe. Didn't marry a smoker. Kids won't smoke either. Not on my watch.

I understand it can be harder to quit than heroin. I think it's because of the digital - oral fixations - very reptillian.

Only the best wishes of luck to those of you who are still fighting that battle.

 

[hardheadjarhead]

I smoke cigars once or twice a year. I tried snuff and chew, and hated it. I never got hooked on nicotine...but I consider myself lucky in that regard.

Both my parents smoked, and it helped age them both beyond their years. It is indeed a tough habit to quit. My Dad had a stroke...and he kept smoking. My mother cold turkeyed it only after having her carotic arteries scraped out and bypass surgery...but she continued drinking excessively.

Addictions are indeed powerful things.


Regards,


Steve

 

[Cruentus]

I love cigars, and sometimes pipe. I put down about a cigar a week.

I didn't see on the poll "I Smoke and I like it!" so I didn't vote...

btw...I really don't like cigerette's. That *****'ll kill yea.

:armed:

 

[Cruentus]

I understand it can be harder to quit than heroin. I think it's because of the digital - oral fixations - very reptillian.

Actually, the chemical combinations in cigerettes are what is highly addictive, and can be more addictive then heroin in some people. The cigarette companies put the chemical combinations together in the manner that they do on purpose...to make you addicted.

I have had friends who have tried to kick the cigarette habit...I told them if your really going to cave and smoke something, have a cigar instead. After a few puffs (even after inhaling, which your not supposed to do), every time they've given me the cigar back and lit up a cigerette. The pure tabacco smoke of the cigar would not ease their cravings.

I think there is nothing wrong with a cigar or pipe every now and again....you just need to make sure that you take care of your teeth and mouth so you don't stain them, and your fine. Pure, clean tabacco in good cigars or pipe smoke is a hell of a lot better then chemical ridden cigerrete's, especially if it is not a daily habit.

I know I am going to get a ton of peopleon my case about my outlook on this...whatever...fire away :ultracool

 

[Ceicei]

SOAPBOX ALERT!!

Smoking.... Yuk. I'm allergic and asthmatic too. The allergy to nicotine can, on a bad day, shut down my lungs. However, returning back to martial arts was the best decision I made because my health overall has improved and my other health problems either decreased or disappeared (in other words, I rarely get sick now).

Drinking.... Won't touch it. I've had close friends killed in alcohol related accidents.

Drugs... I don't see a good reason to experiment. My childhood neighbor buddy became brain-damaged from overdosing on multiple illegal drugs. I'm surprised he didn't die. Since then, he isn't the same person nor does he recognize me or anyone else. He, a previously independent stubborn individual, is completely dependent on his mom for his simple basic needs.

- Ceicei

 

[Lisa]

I grew up in a house full of smokers.

Watched emphysema take over my grandmother...I will never forget watching her smoke and then turn her oxygen back on.

I smoked for a while when I was a teenager and into my early 20's... then I went to Nursing school. Nothing like graphic pieces of cancer filled disected lung to make a girl quit! :erg:

I think now that smoking is disgusting habit... we have one guy at our school that smokes and it makes me want to gag sometimes when grappling with him... I do admit that since being a nurse I have a super sensitive nose to bad odors. Comes with the territory I guess. Hopefully I am setting a good example for my children. Right now they both think it is disgusting. I don't let anyone smoke in my house either. I have one relative who refuses to visit because she can't smoke in my house.

I will get off my soap box now, thank you for your time

 

[shesulsa]

Tulisan -

Yeah, I've heard about the repeated re-saturation of tobacco before rolling and I agree. My father was smoking at 8 (in the South, post-depression era...you know) and he was asking for a cigarette on his deathbed in the ICU at the hospital. My brother (also a smoker from a very young age) tried to sneak some in to him...while Dad was on oxygen. >sigh<

My good friend visited a reservation on a trip southwest and loved their natural cigarettes. Unfortunately, it got her started again and she couldn't go to the reservation to buy her natural cigarettes, so she started up again with commercial products.

I think the chemical addiction is one part - the major part - of the problem quitting. But I also think the digital-oral fixation has it's part too - goes all the way back to infanthood.

----------

P.S. Tulisan - how did you manage to evade the change of avatars when we were all constructing faces? Or are you posting yours after the Presas memorial season?

 

[Scout_379]

But I also think the digital-oral fixation has it's part too

my dad used to smoke, but quit using a variety of techniques.
he told me that the patch eased his nicotine craving, but he was twirling sucking toothpicks and other objects for a long time afterwards. the craving was gone, but the habit itself was harder to break.

 

[OULobo]

My father passed away from a long fight with cancer this May. I didn't post on MT about it when it happened, because no one here knew him or of him and I hate tears on my keyboard. He smoked from 16 to 54. My entire life, he told me that smoking was the worst thing you could do to your body and mind, mostly saying this with a cig in his lips. It worked. I tried and never saw the value. Whenever anyone said that he was killing himself, he would glumly say he was sure he was already dead. The day he was diagnosed with cancer he quit cold turkey. He said it was like losing his best friend. I have no sympathy for that friend, because it stole my best friend, and like Mike said, I miss him everyday; like Father's Day. I wish I had kids so I could've showed them, this year, what smoking can do to them, and worse, those they love dearly; how much it can destroy. At the same time I would never want to scar a child by letting them see what someone they love looks like dying that way. My father fought cancer for almost 10 yrs with the help of modern medicine and battled with the will to see me graduate college, get married, and have children. He only got to see one of these. Ironicly enough, our best bonding sessions were over sharing the three stoggies a year that the Doc let him have. To this day I hate cigars (they make your breath and clothes smell, the taste lingers for days, can make you immediatly ill and long term they can kill ya), but I still have three a year to remember my pops.

 

[someguy]

I tried one time. I was lucky. I have only tried one time. My dad worked for B&W (they made kool but I think have been taken over or something now). I knew all about how bad they were. I knew that the can be extreamly addictive. There is plenty of nasty stuff in them. I got lucky and for some reason didn't get addicted or anything.

 

[shesulsa]

Flatlander -

My father died of acute lymphotcytic leukemia and never had any lung issues, amazingly. Though he was once tempted to quit, he never did...lighting up while being driven home from chemo. He stopped because he was hospitalized in the ICU for four and a half months straight. Can't smoke there. Come to think of it, he did come home for two weeks after that right before he died and did not light up - only because I ransacked the house and tossed all his stash. My brother had decided to try to quit then, so he had no smoke in the house at all for the last three weeks of his life.

But do you know something? I remember as a little girl, him coming home from the office in his suit, burying my face in his shoulder and breathing in deep the combined smell of dry cleaning fluid and menthol cigarette smoke (B&H). That along with a big hug is one of my most vivid - and favorite - memories.

 

[TigerWoman]

I have to say I tried it as a teenager to see what it was like. I gasped, gagged and that was it. My father died from lung cancer a couple of years later. I never even thought of starting. But all the second hand smoke I've had to endure at workplaces, restaurants etc. makes me ill as in dizzy and nauseous.

It takes away life, it is poison to your body, so I don't see why people equate the least enjoyment in knowing that. And in knowing that someday, in might be the difference for you living or dying. TW

 

[Kembudo-Kai Kempoka]

I'm sorry for your loss. Several of my boyhood friends have passed from congestive heart disease, as a cumulative effect of smoking and drug abuse. My senora lost her mom very recenlty to smoking related cancer. She was an incredible woman who transofrmed the trauma and tragedy of the concentration camps (3 of them, escaping with her foster mom and sister from the Auschwitz death march) to become a pioneer in play therapy psych for persons with deep disorders. Was an avid nudist into her seventies (yep, a little wierd, but I admired the determination to enjoy life at all levels, regardless of other peoples perceptions), and was planning on returning to school for her PhD (MFCC+ RN not "fun" enough).

She had COPD and lung cancer when she checked in to the hospital, but knew about that, and had been fighting it successfully. An abdominal mass had blocked her gut, and staph infection post-op is what claimed her vitality. What very few seem to understand is that smoking does not kill by lung cancer or heart disease alone. The carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke adheres firmly to the heme group in hemoglobin...the complex protien that transports oxygen in to the body from the lungs, and carries carbon dioxide back out again, allowing the cells of EVERY TISSUE IN THE BODY to get the oxygen they need to maintain their own health, and spawn new generations of healthy cells. A decrease in vital nutrients -- including air -- leads to increased mutagenesis...healthy cells giving birth to unhealthy cells...aka, cancer.

Smoking is directly correlated to an increased likelihood of endocrine tumors, sex organ tumors (testes, prostate, ovaries, uterine, breast, etc.), and just about all other cancers of the body. Smoking is the number one preventable cause of death in America. Roughly half of americans alive today will die of a heart attack; for approximately half of those, the first one will be fatal...the first symptom that they're sick will be death. The link between smoking and heart disease has been well-established. Doubt it? Ask a cardiologist who's putting his kids through college on smokers.

I smoked as a teen and in my early twenties. I don't anymore. Helluva addiction process, though. Still can't get my lady to stop, even though her mother's death wrecked her. She cried at the interment with a cigarette in her hands.

Dave.

 

[shesulsa]

I'm sorry for your loss.

And I yours.

...She was an incredible woman who transofrmed the trauma and tragedy of the concentration camps (3 of them, escaping with her foster mom and sister from the Auschwitz death march) to become a pioneer in play therapy psych for persons with deep disorders. Was an avid nudist into her seventies (yep, a little wierd, but I admired the determination to enjoy life at all levels, regardless of other peoples perceptions), and was planning on returning to school for her PhD (MFCC+ RN not "fun" enough).

Zowie.

Still can't get my lady to stop, even though her mother's death wrecked her. She cried at the interment with a cigarette in her hands.

:asian: