Quitters collect here...

I remember I got a random email in January this year. I had made an attempt to quit smoking around that time and I blogged about how I had quit. Apparently someone read that post and thought I had quit smoking successfully then when I really hadn't. So I was never able to answer the email. To be perfectly honest, I don't think I am currently in a position to advise on how to quit smoking, since my most successful attempt was also in vain. I intend to try to quit again (and I will never quit trying); till then, I will just share the email here.

Hey man,

You don't know me, and I dont know you. This is a fake email address, and that ain't my real name.

But I need your help. You quit smoking right. Its in that vein.

The guys I hang around with smoke, and till last semester, I was staunch against not smoking, but this sem, I dunno what happened, but I started, (half cos of the insanely cheap duty free cigs these guys had got). I thought that as long as I dont start buying packs, I wont start smoking 'proper'. Well, the duty free ones are over and I bought a pack today.

I cant even give a reason to why I started. Absolutely no explanation. Last week I decided that it was not worth it and that I wont smoke.

Apparently, that dint work, and 3 days later, I was smoking again. Today I bought a pack. Weekend, I smoked enough. (6 in a day is more than enough for me!)

I feel that Im getting hooked onto em, that too just for a few minutes of kick that the cigarette gives.

Fuck man, really, what do I do... Its tough being around these guys who smoke, my best friends.... but will power is something that's failed me, quite a few times now.

A month of smoking, i doubt its done any real harm to me yet, and I seriously dont wanna get hooked.. but I feel im getting hooked..

Please dude, if u can take some time out, and reply to this mail... ill be grateful..

Thanks a lot dude...

Marcos

P.S.: like i said, that aint my real name. This email isn't even how I type. Identity secrecy is a must.

Thinking...

I am somewhere in the middle of either deciding to stop buying more cigarettes or to quit. I have yet to make my final decision.

After all, I am able to quit during the day when I'm fasting. But the thing is, all day long I am looking forward to that smoke I have right after I open my fast. Hmmph...

The cigarette century

A new book argues that chemical waste causes cancer. - By Barron H. Lerner - Slate Magazine

Devra Davis wants chemical waste to become the new cigarette, an object that generates reflexive loathing from most Americans. And the pieces of the puzzle seem to be there: exposure-related cancers, decades of incriminating research, and cover-ups by the...

There you have it - something that is equally bad as cigarettes or smoking, yet no one chooses to look at it. These people who think they are 'enlightened' just because they think they know something smokers don't are not so enlightened after all. I mean, of course all smokers know smoking is bad for them. What sort of a comment is "Don't you know smoking is bad for you?"

Hello? A person who was born yesterday knows that. Here's some advice to all you people out there who think you're better than us just because you don't smoke:

Get a book on lung cancer. The odds that you get it are as high as any smoker getting it. Maybe even more.