Well, this weekend was my part of my goal and every time I look at the silkquit, feelings I should reinforce my nonsmoking come up to the surface. I won’t stay quit forever if I don’t stay vigilant, due to what I was doing being so damn addicting.

So I found a nice list of businesses that have closed or have lost a lot of customers since the smoking ban, however I’m forced to wonder at the same time how many lives are spared since the people are obviously not drinking and driving now. I’m not against clubs and bars, even places to eat that are smoking only, and advertise that. For reasons unknown, no state or municipality that I know of has created a quota or any system that would make sure at least a percentage of places existed where people could smoke opium, oops, I mean tobacco.

I’m all for a smoking ban, but let’s give them somewhere to smoke after all, since we all can relate to being pushed out into the rain or cold to smoke.

My next stop was to realize that other people struggle to quit, hadn’t found prescription medicines to be so good ( such as chantix ) . I’ve heard it all from friends, relatives and even the bystanders. The joy of smoking is the number one reason they won’t stop, even I’ve used that one before but I really felt stupid to say so. I had a little voice coming into my ear canal saying “Ah, but you won’t like the lung cancer, or enjoy the trouble breathing”.

Following on down the path of certain death, there is the group that just can’t quit. It’s impossible and they don’t see any damn way they can quit. They won’t take medicine, they won’t stop for longer than a week and they sure as hell won’t tell someone to ride their ass until they stop. My opinion has always been that if they were truthful about what they were saying, they’d ask for help from friends if they couldn’t take a magic pill: and we do have one now.

Then we are arriving at the gates of hell and agony, waiting too long to stop smoking to find ourselves at the last bastion of a smoker: It doesn’t matter, I’ve smoked so long what use is it to quit now? . I pondered that question myself already, when I considered that a 10 pack year smoker has changes in their bodies that signal cellular changes are occurring and cancer or lesions are already forming in their lungs. One could postulate that since I’ve hit that mark, even went over I have no reason to stop smoking, I should just keep right on trucking. One reason is good enough for me to quit, that it does matter my cancer, stroke, hearth disease are decreasing every single day.

That said, I’m glad that I haven’t smoked over 3,000 cigarettes so far in the past 5 months and that by statistics purposes I’ve saved over 1 1/2 weeks of my life. I can take a vacation with the $300 I’ve saved with that time I also have back. (I know it’s statistical, but in reality it’s a number to hide behind)

In closing, all the times I thought smoking saved me time, made me more calm, in the past 5 months I’ve saved over 50 hours by NOT smoking, 55 hours if you count the number of times I’d have to find a lighter or the pack of smokes.