I used to smoke. I smoked for 25 years or so…. a pack or day. Started off with regular Winstons (Red pack) then went to regular Marlboros for maybe 5 years… and I spent the last 10 years smoking Marlboro Lights.
I quit smoking in 2008. Sometimes even now, more than a decade later, I miss smoking. It is not the taste, lord no. It is the feeling of holding the smoke in your mouth as it travels up your throat that I miss the most. There is nothing a non-smoker can feel, like that feeling. Plus I miss the companionship of smoking. You might no nothing about a person but if you and they are outside smoking together around one another you become instant friends and a bond is formed. I would smoke for many years while I worked and I would always go down to smoke the same time each day and I formed many friendships I never would have, and had many good days seeing my fellow smoking friends.
Again there is no such bond between non-smokers.
But given all the above I am so very glad I quit, and so pissed off that it took me 25 years to do it.
I now suffer from COPD and emphysema along with asthma. I am on 4 liters of oxygen 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Just being around someone who smokes and smelling them smoke brings my lungs to tears. I am non confrontational to the nth degree. so I would never say anything I just quietly leave the situation figuring it is not my right to tell others how to lead their lives. If they want to inject paint into their veins so be it, as long as it does not impact me. If it does impact me that is why I leave the situation and I support drug legalization (A topic for another diary at another time).
Which brings me to todays diary/rant. Please if you do chose to smoke be kind enough to not smoke right outside the door to an establishment. Today was my first outing other then to the hospital in months. I had to go to a doctor. Thanks to Medicaid I get a ride to and from the doctor office back to the nursing home. I just sit near the door so I see the transport company when they come.
Today though I was very sick. My oxygen ran out half-way thru my doctor appointment, so I had to go without oxygen for over an hour and a half. I was miserable I could not breathe, I was so out of it I and to concentrate on my breathing, but I fought tooth and nail with my doctor calling EMS to take me to the hospital to get on oxygen. I did not want to end up back for a few days in the hospital yet again. So I sat and waited.
There were two older men, I guess waiting for a friend or relative inside the office, who kept walking back and forth from the door with cigarette in hand. Unfortunately the door was one of those automatic ones so every time they came close to the door it opened the smell of smoking rushed in. Especially under the situation I was in it was torture.
So please, if you smoke do not take this as an anti-smoking screed. I do not mean it as such. Just please be aware of your circumstances and for the kindness of others do not smoke near doors. You might not realize it but this can impact more people than you might think.