Friday, June 20, 2008

Ideal Conditions for Quitting Smoking

If you really must quit, as I'm sure you reconsider often, you need the following conditions to make it happen:

1. You're out of cigarettes completely. This means you have checked all possibilities of finding some tobacco, some cigarettes or any form of nicotine in your house. (Beware: This exercise can involve going through hundreds of empty cigarette packs lying in the corner of your room to find that one cigarette.)

2. You have absolutely no money to buy cigarettes. Yes, that means you have no cash, no money in your bank account, and all your credit cards are maxed out. Oh, and you can't borrow either (all your friends are broke).

3. You can't bum a cigarette off of a friend. That may be because you're in a foreign land with no friends, or because all your friends have gone to visit foreign lands. Or worst case scenario - you have lost all your friends. Whatever the case, getting a cigarette (or any form of nicotine) from any friend is just not an option for you.

4. You have a girlfriend or wife or mother or father or brother or sister or daughter or son or a good friend - just ANY loved one who can give you moral support as you whine about your endless nicotine cravings and withdrawal symptoms day and night. (This blog does that work for me - haha!)

5. You are able to become excessively busy with useless or useful activities (it doesn't really matter). That way, you get minimal time to 'miss' smoking. Of course the urges are still there.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Wanna Be a Non-Smoker Smoker?

When I realized I could finish a 25g pack of Drum tobacco in just three days, I thought I deserved the title of "SuperSmoker". But it seems that title is being used for something else - something much more advanced and healthier too!

SuperSmoker is actually a cigarette look-alike which doesn't have any tobacco, doesn't light, doesn't burn, doesn't have tar or any cancerous substances, doesn't require ashtrays and doesn't pollute the environment (no CO² emitted). Compared to a standard cigarette with 40 over cancerous substances, it has zero.

So what does it do then?

It is an alternative cigarette that looks like the real thing, tastes like the real thing and even smokes like the real thing. The nicotine that you receive can be varied in terms of the strength you desire, as it uses a high-tech invention of evaporation and computer technology. Basically the nicotine 'shot' you get comes from a cartridge containing liquidized food that gets vaporized in a chamber. But to cover-up the mechanical functions taking place, SuperSmoker has a tobacco-like flavour and even emits tobacco-like aroma! This means no real smoke being emitted and no harmful passive smoking. It comes with replaceable filters and works electronically on batteries that need to be recharged from time to time.

If you buy SuperSmoker Ultimo, you get four test cartridges of varying strengths, along with the 'atomizer' (that is what they call the stick!), a lithium battery with a charger, a cable and a manual. It might sound like a lot of work but compared to rolling your own cigarettes it still beats the time taken.

Their site has a disclaimer that says:

SuperSmoker is not designed for smokers who want to quit.

What I'm thinking is, if you keep taking lower and lower strengths of cartridges, you could actually use it to quit smoking. Either way, if you're just hooked on to the nicotine and not 'smoking' any real smoke, you aren't a smoker any more. (Talk about breakthroughs!)

The most interesting thing I would like to try out in Singapore would be to visit clubs and public areas where smoking is banned and to take out my SuperSmoker. What a funny scene would it be when they try to fine me and they realize (after many arguments from me of course) that it's not a real cigarette and that they can't fine me. Haha!

Whatever the case, £79.00 (S$213.12) is not affordable for me right now, and the additional cartridges that cost £7.95 (S$21.45), which include 6 cartridges and 12 filters only, are also very expensive. The website promises 65% savings on our smoking budgets, which is possible if each cartridge lasts very long, but the "down payments" for these are quite high.

But what if the taste is very bad! What a waste of money would it be then - if I revert to smoking normal cigarettes later on?