Ask a smoker

[emjay]

Yeah, my condition is quite probably caused by lack of blood flow. It's still undiagnosed after nearly two years but I do go to the hospital every few months for an ultrasound and thankfully at the moment it seems stable. Let's just say if the trend continues I could die as a woman as my testosterone levels are dropping. Are you a doctor?

As to your other point I fully agree... now 

You CAN quit!  I know how hard it is, I tried many, many times before doing so successfully. 
Think about the issue you are having now, and how it will only get worse.  Think about how it might ge better if you quit!  There are a lot of smoking cessation programs out there, many of them are free. If you live in the states, I think most states will give you one box of either patches or gum for free.  Counseling can also help.  If you know someone else who smokes, get them to quit with you, so you have a support buddy, or make a friend at the smoking cessation program and lean on each other.  Put $1 a day in a jar every day you don't smoke, save up for something you really want.  Use sunflower seeds when you get a craving (I ate bags of them, they really help).

Sorry, not to be on a high horse or anything,  I just know the pain of wanting to quit and struggling, so just trying to give helpful advice.  Its been almost 9 years for me since my last cigarette, and it is sooooo great not to be a slave to tobacco anymore. I still fear the smoking I did will come back to haunt me someday, so the sooner you quit the better. I hope you get to feel that freedom again someday.

Thanks Aroura for you concern   I think my biggest problem is not the actual quitting method, but having faith in the idea of what it would be like to be a non-smoker... and perhaps you can help me with that as an ex-smoker. I just can't imagine what it would be like not to be able to have a short mental break (which is ultimately what a fag break is) every time I'm triggered to smoke... say between different activities or when I'm stressed. Do you still have those sorts of breaks in a different form (eg coffee or something) or did the need for them disappear after you'd quit?

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Yeah, my condition is quite probably caused by lack of blood flow. It's still undiagnosed after nearly two years but I do go to the hospital every few months for an ultrasound and thankfully at the moment it seems stable. Let's just say if the trend continues I could die as a woman as my testosterone levels are dropping. Are you a doctor?

As to your other point I fully agree... now 

No, I am not a doctor.  But I am someone who generally looks before he leaps, and so I have avoided quite a few bad things that many people fall into.  (It is better to learn from other people's mistakes, than to make the mistakes for oneself.)  I want to live a good life, and I have done pretty well so far.  Eventually, though, age will catch up with me, if nothing else gets me first.


As I get older, compared with other men my age, I keep looking better and better.  Of course, I am looking worse than when I was younger, but I am deteriorating much slower than most.  I could easily pass for being a decade younger than I am, and most people seem genuinely surprised if I tell them my actual age.  They would find a claim of a decade younger more believable.

I have already had more good years than quite a few people have in their entire lives.  And I expect to have many more good years, though obviously something bad can happen at any moment.  As I age, of course, the chances of something bad happening increases.

Obviously, I cannot take complete credit for my situation.  I have been lucky, too.  But I also have avoided doing too many stupid things that tend to fuck up one's life.  I recommend thinking longterm for one's choices.  I get some exercise, and try to eat reasonably healthy foods.  Fortunately, I enjoy hiking, which helps with the exercise, though I also lift weights for upper body strength, which I do not enjoy.  But it does not take a lot of time lifting weights to make a difference, and I am not trying to become extremely muscular.  I just want to be healthy and capable of doing things that I want to do.  It makes my arms look better, too, but that is just a bonus, not my main motivation.

My wife was so impressed with the results I got from lifting weights for about 15 minutes, three days a week, that she started doing it, too.  Her arms look better, and she is able to do more things than before, without getting sore.  She sometimes has to travel for her job, and she used to sometimes get sore dealing with her luggage for her trips.  She no longer has that problem.  She even carried her own luggage up some flights of stairs at an old hotel that lacks an elevator, and it was no problem for her.

The key is repetition, not trying to lift the most one can.  I have no idea what the maximum weight is that I can lift.  The weights I lift are easy on the first lift, but on the 25th lift, it is no longer easy.  This also means I am less likely to hurt myself with my weights, as I never lift anything that is extremely heavy.

I did not originally intend to go so far with this digression.

Also, Aroura is right, that you can get improvement if you quit smoking.  It is likely that you will recover a bit of what you have lost, and will be able to have better sex in the near future (months, or maybe a year) if you quit smoking.  You can do an online search to verify this, or just ask your doctor.  Which matters more to you, smoking or better sex?  Think about that every time you want a cigarette, and it might help you quit.

You sound a lot like my dad - he does everything with the long term in mind like that... exercise, eating only natural sugar etc. It comes naturally to him to think that way but it doesn't come naturally to me. Long term goals like that hardly have an affect on me at all really, sadly, because I'm very impulsive.

As for the sex, that doesn't actually bother me that much cos I was never that much into it anyway. But still, yes I would like everything to be working properly again.