Smoking Kills

I am the son of a smoker and I had my first cigarette when I was 15 years old.

In the house there were ashtrays everywhere, Dad's friends were smokers and on TV, the man who had a cigarette was considered powerful, manly, intelligent, tenacious, and so on. All of that was impossible to avoid even if I wanted to; I was bombarded by the cigarette culture.

When I mixed smoking with alcoholic beverages, this became a very pleasant thing to do. Getting together with friends with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other was very common on weekends.

Even when Dad was a smoker, he would never allow any of his children to touch a pack of cigarettes, much less buy one from him. But smoking was in our genes, it was in the house every day. Out of six siblings, only two never smoked. The other four of us were in a disaster.

Four months after his 70th birthday, Dad dies of respiratory failure. Twelve hours earlier he had decreed that he would quit smoking. I am sure he was already feeling very ill; he was hypertensive.

I smoked almost all my life, taking breaks of two or three years. It wasn't really a goal I had set for myself, I just got tired of smoking. Especially because I used to go to the beach a lot and I found that when I swam, the air got exhausted very quickly due to the effort.

I don't remember the reasons that led me to return again and again to smoking, I only know that I took it, lasted a few years, and stopped.

Until I met a girl who smoked and I fell madly in love with her. Together we smoked as if cigarettes were going to disappear. I remember that without putting out a cigarette she would light another one.

She died and from that moment on I only lit a cigarette when I felt anxious, or worried about some problem or circumstance.

The answers I will give below are solely based on my experience with smoking.

Source

Give your opinion on the phrase "Smoking kills!"

I was always aware that smoking was totally detrimental to my health. When I was young, there was a chip in my brain that made me feel invulnerable, if someone said that cigarettes killed or smoking killed, I only answered that going out in the street could kill, something falling from a building, a car at full speed or any circumstance could cause death. So, what was the problem with smoking? The phrase didn't really matter to me.

Today, it is a frightening phrase that reminds me that I lost some very dear people

What are the main reasons why people become addicted to tobacco?

The desire to be in a social status (especially young people), to this, could be added depression, anxiety states, and a variety of mental, existential, and family problems

Are you addicted to tobacco or is someone you know addicted to tobacco? What changes have you seen after addiction?

I decided to quit smoking one early morning while sleeping with my wife. As I mentioned in my introduction, she was a heavy smoker. I was looking at her de ella beautiful face and golden hair and suddenly out of her beautiful mouth de ella came a horrible smell. Something I had never smelled before and will never forget.

My first thought was that I had that smell for sure. I didn't want that. After she died, I stopped the vice.

Years later, in a frightening circumstance in the family, I smoked again, but without the same intensity as before. It was impossible to smoke in the mornings without at least having something to eat or a coffee.

I have not smoked for three years now, just thinking about it makes my head hurt, the smell of that smoke makes me allergic and I reject it immediately. I can't be next to a smoker no matter if he has a lit cigarette or not.

Now I know who is a smoker, I can tell by their smell and I think also by the way they act. I don't know how I do it, but I can tell.

What should we do to reduce the smoking rate?

To put an end to it in its totality; to destroy it. But I don't think it will happen because of the huge advertising campaign and the economic interests that cigarettes represent. That is like illegal substances, narcotics, etc.; it is the trade that dominates that.

I believe that more education regarding families and a greater number of professionals dedicated to mental health, work in a preventive way in diseases such as depression, anxiety, etc.

Addiction, to me, is a mental problem that brings serious consequences to the rest of the body; it leads to death.

I never smoked when I was at home