No change. I could stop this tonight but well, one more day and it's done. Tomorrow night, I crack open the cigars.
Today a package of scary films arrived from Amazon so blogging will resume tomorrow. 'Cronos' is finished, next up is 'Pan's Labyrinth'.
Lots of lovely gore.
15 comments:
Being able to abstain for a period of time (or stopping permanently) is not difficult. It is all about your mind. If you want to quit, you will, cold turkey (how I hate that term with it's drug connotation it is designed to make people believe quitting or abstaining is impossibly hard). Do not let the anti smokers and public health frauds fool you. If you believe it is hard you will find it so.
Hospital stays, long haul flights, no smoking employer rules, whatever if you focus on the restriction to have a smoke you will suffer, if you shrug your shoulders and accept the situation and don't think about it, no problem.
Big Pharma and the Tobacco Control Industry have invested millions convincing smokers they are addicts because they need to. Don't fall into their trap.
Yes I do smoke, when and where I can. Where I can't is no problem for me for I am NOT an addict. No smoker is, it is just that some believe they are.
Pan's Labyrinth is a belter, although in my view The Devil's Backbone is better (by the same brilliant director). Not gory as such, but creepy and surprising. A rare director that understands how to make believable children's characters in movies that aren't for kids.
Definitely one to watch with subtitles and not dubbed, he uses the Spanish language so beautifully, especially the Devil's Backbone.
More surprisingly, I found myself at a loose end a couple of days ago and watched Resident Evil. Not half bad as it goes, I expected far worse (Milla Jojovich does help though to be fair). No 28 Days Later though...
Agree with Anonymous above.
I've smoked for about 40 years and really enjoy it but have no problem flying or in any area restricted, in fact its my missus who pulls her hair out yet she can easily go without smoking for days.
Its all in the mind.
The problem with long haul flights, long train journeys, hospital stays etc is you're generally bored for much of the time.
I know it's not on the same level but I'm a 20 a day smoker yet can set through a 2-2.5 hour movie without wanting a cigarette without any problem as I'm being entertained.
The problem with pub smoking restrictions is as soon as I take my first sip of a pint I want a cigarette. This is not a facet of addiction but a pure pavlovian reaction - and hence why I don't go to the pub.
Good luck with the experiment btw.
Hi Leggy,
Sorry for hassling you here but I can't see a search function on the blog anywhere. After spending 4 days away from home in a non-smoking office (obviously) then staying in a non-smoking hotel and actually finding that I enjoyed smoking less, I've decided to take the e-fag route. Not because I want to "give up" (that is where the issue lies - I have stopped smoking for months before now as the physical addictiveness of nicotene is extremely mild) but have always started again as I quite simply do not want to stop smoking completely. After all, I enjoy it! I feel smoking is similar to eating chocolate. Eat it every day for a few weeks then do without - you get cravings that are almost exactly the same as the cravings you get when you stop smoking. Not "withdrawal symptoms" just the lip-smacking craving for what you want. And I know if chocolate was a "never again in all your life proposition" (as they always say smoking is) then I wouldn't bother trying to stop eating chocolate, either. However, I do like the idea of being able to have a few tokes on an efag in my office or of being able to "smoke" in my hotel room. And then just leave the fags for those times I really want them - with a beer, with a morning coffee, after a good meal etc.
So what make do you recommend? I don't care what it looks like, I just want the most realistic approximation to smoking a ready-made and the ability to tweak the nicotene levels up and down. The only other proviso is I remember you saying one of the companies was pally with ASH. Needless to say, I'm not interested in their product.
Thanks a lot!!
I'm with Timdog above, I can definitely recommend Pan's Labrynth (in the original Spanish, dubs on foreign movies are usually pretty bad). I saw it in the cinema when it came out and it's definitely a corker.
Leggy,
Slightly off topic, but I shall be having a quick puff or two tonight (fnarr, fnarr), and the current favourites are these:
http://tinyurl.com/6kursop
They're probably a bit low-brow for a purist like your good self, but if you see them, give them a go - they're absolutely divine.
Recommendation to Mr A
I have been using an e-fag for a while now (started soon after Leggy did). I researched which one was the best to get at the time and it was a toss-up between the Ruyan DSE-901 and the 510 manufactured by Joyetech. These models were the most popular at the time and could be sold under different brands and names by a variety of companies. (I'm pretty sure that Leggy uses one of the 510 e-fag brands).
I was not terribly impressed with the e-fag but to cut a long story short my attitude changed when I took a flyer and purchased a second generation product which was getting rave reviews on the web. I got a Joyetech Ego kit which I have to say is so much better than my original DSE-901. The difference is night and day and I can strongly recommend this model which is now widely available from many sources.
I would recommend that you check out various e-fag reviews which can readily be found on Youtube. I would also suggest that you visit the e-cigarette forum where you will find a wealth of information on this topic. Here is the link :-
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/
When it comes to selection of e-liquids everyone has different preferences and it may take a lot of time and experimentation to find what you are happy with.
My own experience was that all of the tobacco flavoured juices tasted disgusting (like sucking on a "dead rat") with perhaps the exception of virginia, cigar and RY4. I found RY4 to be the best of these three and RY4 is now the only tobacco flavour that I use. If you like menthol cigarettes then this flavour works pretty well as an e-liquid. With the tobacco flavours I would recommend you attempt to get trial size samplers (3ml or 5ml sizes) as otherwise you can easily waste a lot of cash on some pretty bad tasting stuff. Also be careful with the nicotine levels. I started out with higher nicotine levels (24mg and above) but eventually settled on the 16mg - 18mg range. I found that higher nicotine levels destroy the juice flavour and the nicotine itself is not a pleasant taste. One poster commented that this is because it is not combusted like it is in a cigarette. I intend to try some zero-nicotine e-juice in the near future in order to evaluate the personal impact of this change.
I found that I preferred the fruit flavoured e-liquids over the tobacco flavours (Your mileage may vary). I eventually settled on Banana and Mango after experimenting with others like strawberry and cherry which were too harsh for my tastebuds.
I had pretty much given up on e-fags after my first foray into using them. While these things are not as good as your favourite brand/style of real cigarette, the second generation products (Like the Ego) run things a lot closer and are very much worth trying.
Good luck
Expat Brit living in Canada.
It's been interesting following your experiment.
I have an addictive personality. I admit it. I also used to smoke 80 fags a day. One day, they went up to a quid a pack and I just thought to myself "What a waste of money - 30 odd quid a week!" so I decided to stop.
Like you, I was not addicted to smoking although I smoked heavily. However, what I did find was surprising. I never missed smoking and had no withdrawal symptoms, but one day about two years later I went to a wedding and just fancied a fag. They were on the table and several other people were smoking so I had one - and then several more. Then I stopped and bought a pack on the way home and smoked the lot.
The next morning I never even thought of a fag and I haven't smoked since 1980.
I did find that it was easy not to smoke provided I didn't light the first one. Without that first one, I never missed it. I was the same with wine - open a bottle and I will finish it if there is nothing better to do. I feel no compunction to go and open one in the first place. I think a lot of it has to do with boredom.
I am still addictive, I am just not addicted!
Junican - no withdrawal effects. The only time I have ever seen the spiders was due to sleep deprivation (another experiment to find out if sleep was really necessary, many years ago. It definitely is).
I did miss the smoking. Can't deny that, I enjoy a smoke so not smoking was a self-imposed deprivation. But it was more like giving up something for Lent than trying to get off heroin. Or maybe like spending a week in an airport departure lounge.
Or - the horror - being snowed in to a pub where you can't smoke inside and can't get outside.
Smoker Hell is a place where the pubs are open 24 hours a day and you can't smoke in any of them.
It's called Britain.
Rab - that's why I don't go pubs any more either. We can't drink outside and we can't smoke inside so the combined pleasure is broken.
Set yourself up a smoky-drinky. You know you want to.
Mr A - Electrofag is an intensely personal choice - like the choice to smoke Silk Cut or Marlboro, or between Drum and Cutter's Choice.
For me, I'd say try the Njoy first - very low hassle to deal with and (for me at least) pretty close to my preferred toke of Amber Leaf with menthol filters. It's also available as plain tobacco. If you're a readymade-smoker, the 510 Titan with tobacco flavour might be closer.
There are a lot of other types and while it looks expensive to try them, remember the starter sets cost between 3 and 6 packs of readymades, not even a week's worth for most smokers.
It's as hard to recommend a particular Electrofag as it is to recommend a particular tobacco. They're all just a little bit different.
If it wasn't for the hysterical harpies in the world now, we could call in at a high street shop and try a few.
Timdog - it was indeed the Spanish with subtitles. I actually had to go back and check - it was so good I hadn't noticed I was reading subtitles! The faun is a masterpiece, and I'm sure I've seen the child-eater before somewhere.
The third film on the list was 'Mimic' by the same director which was a little bit far-fetched as a storyline but well played nonetheless.
And beautifully gory.
Billy the Fish - I'm only a partial purist and only on whisky.
The price on the boxed and tubed cigars looks very nice, I think I'll exercise the credit card again..,.
Dioclese - I don't think there's such a thing as an addictive personality. A compulsive one, maybe, but I'm not a psychologist so maybe the difference isn't what I think it is.
I also find that I don't feel any desire to open a bottle of wine at most times, but if I feel like wine and open a bottle, it's finished. Addictive, compulsive, or gluttony, or maybe just someone who likes wine?
I have a friend who insists he has a addictive personality. He smoked Capstan, then was diagnosed with asthma and stopped all smoking at once. If he had an addictive personality he couldn't have done that. He also couldn't have continued to visit the pub that was full of smokers (which didn't affect his asthma) without getting addiction-withdrawal symptoms. But he managed it just fine.
So I don't personally, believe in the addictive personality meme.
But then how would I know? I have no personality.
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