Share and enjoy the pleasures of smoking cigarettes

When I was in high school, I was fascinated by smokers. They looked like they were really enjoying their cigarettes. I longed to be one of them. I was secretly attracted to women who smoked. I wanted to try it but I was afraid of what people would say. Sometimes I would smoke in secret but I really longed to join in with other smokers and smoke in public. I just couldn’t make that leap. So instead I became an outspoken anti smoker. This had two purposes. The first was to deny my true feelings and the second was that it pretty much insured that I would never smoke because I was afraid to look like a hypocrite. I have also always been into fitness and was afraid to face my family and friends as a smoker. So I never really began smoking although I would have one in secret from time to time. I would have been mortified if anyone knew. However, I always wished that I had the courage to act on my urge to become an unrepentant out in the open smoker.
In my early 20’s, I started dating a woman who was a smoker. She was beautiful. Everyone liked her. People would sometimes comment however that they couldn’t believe that I was dating a smoker because I was so anti-smoking. But because she was so nice and quite attractive people understood my ability to “overlook” her smoking. Surreptitiously I enjoyed that she was a smoker. Eventually we married and have been together for over 20 years.
I confessed to my girlfriend (who eventually became my wife) about my desire to smoke but only at home in front of her. She tried to discourage me. She didn’t want to be blamed for getting me started. But knowing how enjoyable smoking could be, she gave me her support. Once I got started, she was into the idea of me being a smoker. After a while, smoking became a habit that I practiced only at home or when I was out of town and nobody I knew would see me. This went on for 2 decades. We never had children so smoking in front of kids was not a problem. However, I was never able to fully enjoy smoking because my fear of being seen in public by someone I know was unbearable. I envied people who had the courage to smoke in front for their friends and family. My wife and I would go out and she would be smoking. I did smoke in public from time to time but on occasion I was almost caught. So although I enjoyed smoking, my anxiety over being found out pretty much kept me smoking at home only. Eventually I quit altogether. The pleasure of smoking no longer outweighed the anxiety over being caught caused me. That was about 5 years ago. Shortly after, my wife quit also. So now we were both nonsmokers.
About a year ago, my wife started again. I didn’t complain or nag. I figured she would quit again. She hasn’t. About 2 months ago, I started smoking again. I smoked for a few days and then stopped. I was starting to enjoy it but I didn’t want to go through anxiety of having to hide it from my friends and family again. About a week ago, all I could think about was smoking a cigarette. The urge was so strong that I stopped at a drug store in my neighborhood bought a pack, and smoked one right in front of the store. It was very enjoyable. I went home and told my wife that I was smoking again. She rolled her eyes and said “that’s nice”. She figured that I would smoke the pack and that would be it. It had been years since I had smoked and I was really enjoying this pack of cigarettes. Finally I decided, I said to myself “I don’t care about my family and friends, I am going to smoke in front of everyone.” “I LIKE SMOKING AND I AM GOING TO SMOKE!”
The next day I went to my mom and sister’s house. I brought a pack of cigarettes with me. I told them “I want you to know I am smoking.” “I have been smoking on and off for years and am tired of keeping it a secret.” “I just started again and don’t want to have to sneak.” I was nervous. I felt like I was seventeen years old again but I didn’t loose my nerve. When I was young, I used to criticize my mom and sister for smoking. I expected them to call me a hypocrite and tease me for all of the crap I gave them over the past. When I finished speaking, I took out a cigarette and lit up right in front of them. I didn’t care what they thought or said. A weight was lifted off of my shoulders. That cigarette was one of the best I have ever had. They were both very surprised. They had no idea that I had ever smoked. We talked about it for a while and I smoked another cigarette. I gave them the whole back story. They were kind of shocked but I felt very comfortable smoking in front of them and talking about it. I was back over there today. I no longer have any anxiety. I smoked in front of them again. They have no problem with it. Smokers understand the lure of smoking. They said that it will take time to get used to me smoking but they understand why I want to. It was the best thing I have ever done. I wish I had come out long ago. My wife feels a little guilty about me smoking again but she is glad that I am out in the open. Today I bought a carton of cigarettes. I will enjoy them finally the way I have always wanted to. I have no regrets.

Found this information:

Excercise

Perhaps the best thing that you can do is to exercise regularly. Since smoking is something that is concentrated on the lungs, that is the place that you need to exercise the most. Doctors recommend that by doing aerobic exercises at least twice a week is one of the best things that we can do for ourselves. Its also been concluded that subjects that did 3 ten minute aerobic exercise sessions a day had the same benefit as those who just did one 30 minute session. So, it’s not hard to add a little here, and a little there. Consider taking the stairs instead of the elevator, or walking to a place that isn’t too far and you’d normally drive. Take a walk at lunch, breakfast or after dinner. Sex too is a form of exercise, and who couldn’t stand to add a couple extra sessions a week? (of course, that is if it is something that you regularly do).

I think that a good rule of thumb is to aerobically excursive the number of minutes weekly that you spend smoking in two or three days. The goal is to raise your heart to 80% of its maximum, and keep it there for at least a few minutes. The number of minutes that you do this is cumulative, so it doesn’t matter if you do it for three or thirty minutes.

Keeping active will keep you ahead of the destructive curve that smoking throws at you. As smoking tears down tissue, you’ll be building it up again in exercise. Also, smoking tends to speed up the metabolism, so with additional exercise, you may even loose weight!

Starting Late

If you’re someone who has been smoking for a while and doesn’t exercise, its never too late. You get too winded you say? Nonsense! Just start off slow, adding a few extra minutes (or seconds) to something that you normally wouldn’t do. After a while, it’ll feel fine to you and you can add more. Just remember, raise your heart rate a bit and keep it there for a few minutes, that’s the goal.

Started Smoking Later

If you’re someone who started smoking later in life, it’s important that maintain whatever lifestyle you had before, and add to it aerobic exercise. Remember the rule of thumb: add as many minutes of aerobic exercise weekly as you’d spend smoking in two or three days. If each cigarette lasts five minutes and you’d smoke a pack in two days, then 100 minutes (which sounds like a lot) of aerobic exercise a week should keep you at or above the aerobic level of where you were when you started smoking. That’s only fourteen extra minutes a day. A couple of walks is all it would take, or a half-hour every other day.

Younger Smoker

If you’re someone who is young and smokes, it’s important to stay active, and become more active as a smoker. It really doesn’t take much to stay fit. I stop by my gym almost everyday and put in about 30-45 minutes of aerobic exercise. I heard someone say that you can develop a habit by doing the action every day for 30 days. After that, it’s a habit. You’ve made smoking your habit, and now its time to make exercise your habit. I know many other women who walk out of the health club and light up. Just because you smoke, doesn’t mean that you don’t exercise.

well i started when i was 13 and i was at crawfish festival witch is like a fair down here in biloxi mississippi and i was smoking but once we got to the car this girl named tiffany said i wasnt inhaling i was like ya i am and she was right i wasnt i had been just sucking in my mouth and blowing it out so i did inhale for the first time and coughed a little and she made me give her my cigarettes i was like F**K!!! and then the next mourning i was at my cousin blakelees and stole a cigarette and went to the bathroom and was inhaling and smoked the full thing and omg!! it felt not good i was spinning light headed and didnt like it at all felt sick so i did this for a couple of days just smokign one and then moved to 2 a day and wasnt feeling light headed as much and then i smoekd the whole next school year and then the summer after that i was an expert it ahd been about 4 months and i was enjoying it me and my friend was sitting in his room for 5 or 6 days at a time not leaving smoking and having a blast i was using coke cans as ashtrays and it was awesome and then i found my favorite brand CAMEL FROST© and started smoking them and it was incredible and now im 15 it has been 2 years since i frist inhaled and i have had account on here ebfore called ars0n1st but were suspended so please tell me ur exeprience with smoking and for all the girls here is wha ti look like

Recently read on wikipedia (as you do – I tend to surf it when bored at work) that the addictive effects of nicotine in tobacco are enhanced by the presence of another chemical called Harmine (also present in tobacco).
Harmine is a reversible MAOI – or to put it another way it increases the length of time that the dopamine hit nicotine delivers stays in the system by inhibiting the normal process of restoring dopamine to normal levels.
MAOI’s are also used for treatment of depression etc. which might explain why a lot of folks who suffer from such also smoke (personal supposition)

Purely science geekery for which I apologise but I found it intriguing

I’d like to read the original study, but I found this article quite interesting:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61981-2004Jun22.html

Especially this part:
“The study also found, however, that kicking the cigarette habit had equally dramatic effects. He found, for instance, that someone who stops smoking by age 30 has the same average life expectancy as a nonsmoker, and someone who stops at 50 will lose four, rather than 10, years of life.”

It sounds too good to be true that I can enjoy smoking for 10 years and still be likely to live as long as if I hadn’t smoked at all. I’ll have to wait and see how I feel about quitting when I’m 30.

extract from a website:

Up until fairly recently most people, especially non-smokers, considered smoking to be a personal choice and that if a smoker really wanted to quit, he could easily do so.

Now, it has been medically proven, recognised and more widely accepted that the reason people continue to smoke, despite the severe health risks smoking entails, is because nicotine is a highly addictive drug.

In fact, some doctors have reported that nicotine is just as addictive as heroin or cocaine, which indicates quite clearly as to how people become hooked so rapidly and stay hooked for so long.

Although the amount of nicotine that enters the body is extremely small, it is still enough for smokers to become dependant on nicotine, thus developing a nicotine dependency, which makes it extremely difficult for them to stop smoking.

Nicotine is an organic compound that is found naturally in the tobacco plant. It is composed of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen and belongs to a group of compounds called alkaloids. Plants usually produce these types of chemical poisons so that animals are deterred from eating them.

In high concentrations nicotine acts as a nerve poison and it is used in insecticides. However, in small amounts, nicotine is a stimulant that enhances brain activity and concentration and improves cognitive processing as well as a person’s memory. On the downside, nicotine increases blood pressure and heart rate, causes you to breathe faster and less deeply and it constricts the arteries.

Nicotine also suppresses the appetite, which is one of the main reasons why many women are not keen on giving up smoking. They assume that they will eat more, which will consequently lead to gaining a lot of weight. spr

Once smokers become dependant on nicotine, they may experience strong physical and emotional withdrawal symptoms if they try to give up. These symptoms may include irritability, dizziness, anxiety, headaches, lack of concentration, disturbed sleeping patterns, feelings of anger, depression, tiredness as well as incredible cravings for more nicotine.

These withdrawal symptoms are at their highest during the first 72 hours after giving up, after which they lesson slightly. Generally, after about 6 weeks these symptoms subside, although an ex smoker may still possess a desire to smoke 6 months or even a year after quitting.

When inhaled through cigarette smoking, nicotine is rapidly absorbed into the lungs and enters the blood vessels that are contained in the tissue that line the lungs. From these tiny blood vessels, the nicotine enters the bloodstream and travels directly to the brain. This powerful drug reaches the brain within ten seconds and produces immediate feelings of pleasure or euphoria, amongst other stimulating effects.

Nicotine does not stay in the body for very long and is quickly broken down by various enzymes and chemical reactions. It has a half-life of around 40 minutes, which means that after this amount of time the nicotine loses half of its effect and the smoker will soon feel the need to light up another cigarette.

When you exercise, you actually metabolise the nicotine in your body faster. This means that the level of nicotine in the body and in the brain decreases more quickly. Once the nicotine is metabolised, the body usually rids itself of the drug and the smoker must therefore smoke another cigarette in order to get the levels back up to a satisfying measure.

Some people possess an enzyme in their body that is not as effective as other people’s in breaking down and metabolising the nicotine. As a result the nicotine stays in their brain and bloodstream for longer, meaning that they will smoke less, as the high levels of nicotine needed to give them pleasure are maintained in the body for much longer.

It has been discovered through scientific studies that nicotine increases the levels of dopamine in a smoker’s brain.

Dopamine is linked to the pleasure and reward system of the brain and it releases feelings of enjoyment, as well as motivating a person to repeat certain rewarding activities that are usually vital for the body to survive, such as eating when you are hungry.

Smokers possess 40% less of a crucial enzyme in the brain that breaks down dopamine than non-smokers. As dopamine is not broken down as efficiently in smokers and the pleasurable effects are maintained and due to the release of extra dopamine through the nicotine, the brain therefore tries to reward the behaviour that has produced the increased amounts of dopamine. That behaviour or activity must also be maintained if the levels of dopamine and feelings of pleasure are to be sustained.

This is why smokers have a need to smoke more and try to maintain the levels of nicotine in the body. The absence of nicotine after a short period of time, can lead to intense physical and mental withdrawal symptoms, which are immediately relieved upon smoking another cigarette.

Over time, the body develops a tolerance to nicotine and its pleasurable effects begin to wear off after a while. For this reason the smoker gradually increases the number of cigarettes that he smokes in a day in order to maintain the same feelings of pleasure.

In summary, research has proven that nicotine is a highly addictive substance found in cigarettes, which causes chemical alterations in the brain that lead to a constant need for the drug.

Thus, the reason that so many people continue to smoke becomes somewhat clearer.

anyone tried this?

http://www.smokefreechoice.com/

sounds like it would suit me on my long haul flight coming up.

this website help me too…

Found quite a good website

Nothing to do with me but the following website seems to be quite good for women who smoke or are thinking of smoking. It discuss both pros and cons. And most importantly how to get maximum pleasure from smoking

http://web.archive.org/web/20010801144352/http://hermes.spaceports.com/~deesmoke/

here’s another great post.

Smoking is good for you!

Read this article…

http://www.data-yard.net/10q1/neuro-nico.htm

This article seems to indicate that even people who smoke 1-4 cigarettes a day significantly increase their chances of dying from certain diseases:
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/14/5/315

Even though I smoke more than this, this isn’t really motivating me to quit (though I imagine my mother’s nagging might get me to cut down.)