I recently wrote about tobacco use in the redneck community and how it isn't as widespread as the social generalization would indicate. While there are likely no official stats on this sort of thing I believe that the redneck community is just as generally opposed to smoking as any other demographic. We may perhaps even get a bit more family backlash for doing so seeing as how we tend to be quite close with our families and times have changed since I was a kid.
When I was young neither of my parents smoked but when they found out that I had dabbled in them they were not accepting of it. Like a lot of people in the 90's though I didn't fully embrace how terrible of a habit smoking was and I continued to do so for many years, probably around 10 years before I finally decided to give them up.
A lot of people say that quitting smoking is really difficult thing to do but for me it wasn't and I think that is because I had already made it up in my mind that I wanted to stop and that I wasn't going to cheat my way through this. I just decided on a Monday that I was going to stop and I never did it again.
I don't actually remember what day of the week I quit but honestly, while there were moments of temptation I never looked back from the day I decided to stop and this was made easier by the fact that it was then a time of rules changing and smoking wasn't allowed in very many places. Even at the bars where previously it had been just very common for people to smoke one after another, including me and most of the people I knew.
When I did quit, there are a few things that I noticed about my life that changed dramatically, even though some of them took a lot longer than I thought they would.
For starters, I noticed that I felt a lot better in the mornings. Previously I had always woken up with smokers lung, which is a terrible thing and there is not pleasant way to describe it. Basically you spend most mornings coughing up horrible stuff out of your lungs and you never really feel like you can breathe properly until maybe a few hours later. Of course smokers being the idiots that we are I still smoked even while this clearing of the lungs was going on in the morning and I am sure my lungs were getting pretty upset with me at that point.
This phlegm-y mornings would continue for months after I had stopped and I had a nagging cough that remained as well. I would later be told that this tickling sensation you have in your breathing apparatus in your body is something called cilia that are tiny hair-like things that after years of smoking have been put in a lying down position from tar and other toxins that you get when you smoke. It takes them a while to stand back up again and that is why recently quit smokers cough more than the actual smokers do.
Next, I noticed something that I still notice a great deal to this day: I noticed how bad smokers stink. I was unaware of this before because I was one of them but I all of a sudden became extremely aware of how bad smokers smell and how easy it is to identify them in a group. I was at a restaurant one day and a guy walked in that was several tables away from where I was sitting and I could smell him from where I was. I didn't turn into a bloodhound over a few months that is just how pungent smokers are. It was a bit alarming to me that we smell that bad and I all of a sudden was very aware of why it is that my teachers, parents, and others were very aware of the fact that I was a smoker, even though I went to rather large lengths to cover it up when I was doing it.
Next I noticed that I was sleeping better. As a smoker you frequently have coughing fits even if you aren't aware of them, while you are in bed. Someone that I shared a bed with would tell me that I would wake her up many times a week with coughing fits that I had no idea I was even engaging in. I suppose this would happen frequently enough that it was negatively impacting my overall sleep and after a few months of becoming a non smoker, I all of a sudden started feeling more refreshed in the mornings despite the fact that my sleep schedule had not changed.
I was never really much of an athlete because all of my jobs, including the one I have now, were quite physical. There aren't many jobs in the construction industry outside of planning that doesn't involve physical activity so I never felt the need to join a gym or go jogging. My job was really active. I noticed after quitting smoking that I would get "winded" a lot less frequently and well, even though I was the employer I noticed my increased productivity.
I also wasn't taking smoke breaks, which is something that is really irritating on a work site like the ones I run. Smokers cannot smoke on site because we have too many flammable things there, so when they take a "quick smoke break" they are gone for 15-20 minutes. This has become enough of an issue that we actually stopped allowing them. It would have been very tough for me to implement this system if I myself was a smoker as well.
I haven't noticed many of the other benefits yet in my life because I am not really old enough. I can look around at a few of my friends who didn't quit smoking though and we don't need a doctor to realize that the smokers are falling behind in many avenues of overall health. I remember hearing the stories about how the long-term effects of smoking are detrimental to many aspects of life but just like most teenagers and people in their early 20's, I thought I was invinceable. I am extremely happy that I made the choice in my mid 20's to stop because the people I know that carried on and have now been smoking for 30 years are generally speaking, in very bad health for someone that isn't even 50 yet.
I think you reach a certain point of no return with smoking because my own grandfather stopped smoking after something like 40 years of being a smoker and well, it was too late at that point. The damage had been done and he would suffer from many different kinds of lung-oriented diseases that can be tied directly to smoking even though he hadn't touched a ciggy in 10-15 years at that point.
If you haven't quit smoking yet I really think you should. At least in the United States it isn't socially acceptable anymore and it is extremely expensive as well. That and the fact that this one thing increases your risk of horrible illness by a great degree are all the reasons I need to never even consider picking those things up again even though it has recently become fashionable in films again.
I don't regret that I ever smoked though. In fact, I am glad that I did so I actually know what it is like on the other side. Fortunately for me I didn't experience much difficulty in quitting and it is my understanding that there are millions of people that seriously struggle with doing exactly that.