onthemark

Vaping is dangerous not only on the long term, but immediately. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/02/05/vape-pen-kills-man-after-exploding-his-mouth/?utm_term=.9d3bc18ed0a3

^THIS^

I'm fortunately out of the 5's and 6's but still have some 4s and need to get my teeth cleaned 3 or 4 times a year. I lost a tooth because it cracked and wasn't fixed in time for a root canal (long story). Whenever I have tooth pain I get trigeminal neuralgia symptoms that resolve when the problem is fixed but for that reason I elected not to get an implant so I just wear a partial denture for a few hours a day to stop the other teeth from moving. It is a back tooth and you cannot see it. I use a water pick, an electric tooth brush and floss every day. I have been regularly going to the dentist for cleaning for the past decade and that has helped a lot to save my teeth. Smoking did a lot of damage to my gums and they have receded but are pretty healthy now for the most part.

I hope it shocked you in a good way. It is sort of funny in a way until you get to the end and see how bad that poisonous gunk is. Yes, you are right that the body can repair but not all of it unfortunately. The sooner you quit the better. I quit when I was 52 and it was too late to avoid lung cancer, but, hey, here I am three years later and still doing ok, maybe done with that monster. At least I can hope so. Other people get copd, cvd and other cancers. It's never too late to quit but quitting when you are young is the best because the damage just accumulates.

I remember junior high they showed us movies with anti-smoking messages where the main graphic was comparing smoker's lungs to non-smokers, which was gross, but what happens decades down the line doesn't matter to a teenager. I am in my 50s so these educational videos were a long time ago. This is immediate and you see the effects cigarette by cig, day by day.

Yeah I smoked for over 35 years and it is really sickening to think of all those years of inhaling toxic pollution. It's a reality test for anyone struggling with their quit.

After many failed attempts, I quit successfully over 3 years ago by pledging NOPE (just for today) every day until I could just say "not one puff ever". The difference was being educated about all the lies of addiction that could possibly draw me back into smoking and having a response to each one, understanding that my mind was being hijacked by some kind of drug lords. I personally think will power is over rated. For me, it was about education and taking it one day at a time, one hour at a time, sometimes one minute at a time. Do anything except smoke.

After about 20 failed attempts to quit smoking I finally succeeded on the qsmb in 2015 by educating myself about all the lies that i believed about nicotine and my smoking. It worked and i am not a smoker to this day. Unfortunately a few months after I quit I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I am still here though but would have been glad to have missed that experience in my early 50s after 35 years of smoking. There are also lots of people on this forum who are suffering from smoking related diseases. I quit too late to avoid one of the worst. Be someone who quits early enough to miss the bad outcomes.

The reason that you are smoking is that you are addicted. All of my failed quit attempts were ultimately down to a lack of education about what it means to be addicted, all the lies that the nicotine addiction feeds you and strategies for getting through the first year. After that it is just a matter on doing the same thing over and over again. I am back posting after more than 3 years because I am having these weird occasional thoughts of 'having just one'... This is the biggest lie of nicotine addiction. But I am sure it will pass, it always does. These urges to smoke always go away and can remain thankfully dormant for a long long time but one has always to be prepared for them to rise again.

Wow, cbdave, I just checked to see what was up here at quittrain after being off for awhile. Sorry to hear you got hit with this. That must have been really scary to go through the TIA and the treatment. I have been well since my episode with lung cancer but I do have side effects from the chemo I had after surgery. It's also a 'gift' from smoking all those years. So happy we both quit and became long term survivors and quitters. I still get the odd twang of missing smoking and that's why I checked in. Thanks for posting your story. It's a great motivation to quit and stay quit.

um, well, he's hoping to pick up a million toxic cigarette butts.

I used to also put cigarettes out on the ground and leave them. Did you know that cig butts contain plastic? https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2018/09/13/this-man-is-quest-pick-up-one-million-cigarette-butts/?utm_term=.6ad2a093e204

I have been diagnosed and treated for lung cancer after I quit smoking and haven't died a horrible death yet (knock on wood). I asked for a chest xray as part of a physical after I quit. I didn't have any symptoms, not even a cough. I also know other people whose lung cancers were caught early by xrays. Get a yearly low dose screening ct scan if you can and if not then an xray is better than nothing. It is what caught my lung cancer at a potentially curable stage. That was almost 3 years ago and now I have graduated to yearly ct scans to check for recurrence or new disease. Of course as a lung cancer survivor I am at extra risk for any type of cancer now. I just wanted to say it is not an automatic death sentence if you are diagnosed early.

Keep NOPEing @Giveintowin. Good on you for posting an SOS. Every now and then I still get a ridiculous though about throwing in the towel but they are getting rarer and rarer. It's amazing how persistent the nicotine addiction is but many people break free and you are one of them!