How I finally quit after 2,014 tries
I had a girlfriend back in 1986 and she came home with some alarming news.
Her doctor told her that she had to quit smoking of she might have a stroke like her mother did. The Doc said that he blamed the stroke on her taking the birth control pill back then and smoking.
To this day I don't know if he was right or wrong but he told her he has seen a pattern with mother/daughters and smoking while taking the pill. Also there was some kind of study on a bigger scale also.
Regardless she said that she couldn't quit unless I did. My immediate response was OK, I'll quit too.
She seemed to quit fairly easy but then I don't remember much about her struggle back then. I was in for the battle of my life but now I could quit and not only do it for myself but for someone I really cared about.
I smoked Marlboros and I figured out a way to make me realize how bad these were on a daily basis if necessary. I kept the pack of Marlboros on the dash of my car. It was almost a full pack.
I made it 3 days before I pulled one out and lit it but my plan was to light one up while I was driving the car, take a big hit and throw it out the window before I exhaled the smoke.
The first time after 3 days of cold turkey and the results from this blast were horrible. I got so dizzy I thought for a second I was going to pass out and felt very weak and shaky.
This was a wakeup call for how bad this was for my body. I felt really sick. 3 days of no smoke had let my body rejuvenate a little. My body was just telling me no mass.
This is how it felt when I first took a hit off a cig but I kept it up because I thought it was cool. Many of my friends smoked, in fact it seemed that almost everyone that played pool smoked. Some of my idols back then would shoot with one hanging out of their mouth. I even mastered this art and thought I was so cool.
I only did this little ritual, thowing it out the window about 4 times and soon I was sick of getting sick.
Soon I was making more money at work and my pool game jumped up to a level that I had never been able to achieve.
I still had allot of damage to my body. Had sinus surgery and ear surgery.
Quit drinking about a month or 2 later but still went in the bars to play pool and breathed in the second hand smoke.
Then about 3 months later I ended up in the bar business. I had Geno's Saloon in Chippewa, Falls, Wi for 13 years. I emptied ashtrays for smoking customers all this time and was there most of the time. It got pretty smoky for sure.
Once I got out of the bar business my lungs really cleared out. I got a great job and was not around the smoke. Whenever I did I would get sick. I quit playing pool because back in 1999 it was hard to find a place without smoking anywhere.
In 2008 I started playing again in the Kansas City area and they were just starting to ban smoking in some places back then. But the second hand smoke took a toll on my body and the great business that I had built up soon dwindled down to nothing. I was sick all the time and eventually found out that I was diabetic. Being diabetic, eating too much and breathing in lots of smoke every night is not a good combination.
I've never touched another cig and I still can't believe I did that to myself.
My wakeup call to stay out of the smoking places was a chest xray when I got back to Wisconsin. I had to sleep sitting up because my lungs felt like they were filled up with fluid. The left side was worse.
Doc didn't like what he saw and said If I wanted to live I needed to stay out of the smoke.
I'm a lucky person after all the smoke I breathed in to be alive.
The pool players have had the worst of it for years. The bars and poolhalls were always filled with smoke. Many of the players that have passed away and are mentioned on AZ died from cancer.
This thread is so pool related.
I am really overwhelmed by the unbelievable response by so many AZers to help and support the players that are trying to quit. But they all know how much it has meant to their lives to kick the habit for good.
The phrase; You don't know what you got til it's gone....
Fits right in with this smoking business somehow.
We can help one player at a time.
Good Luck all the players on here that are quitting.
