Thank You for Not Smoking
By
Jesse Royster
English 1010
4/10/2013

Thank You for Not Smoking
For a lot of people it is tough to quit smoking and the longer you smoke, the harder it gets to quite. Many people try the patches or the gum which will only be successful to 50% of the people who try it. When I say successful I mean successful in “helping” quit. Some people don’t even attempt quitting and wind up smoking 2 packs a day until the day they die. Others try but simply give up because it’s too hard to quit. There are a couple ways to help quite but the difficulty of quitting varies from person to person. Very few people can quit cold turkey and most people need help and lots of motivation. Fortunately for me motivation wasn’t a factor and only 1 of the 3 methods helped me quite but what about everybody else?
I’ve been a smoker for five years now. I used to smoke half a pack a day but now I smoke only one cigarette a day, right after work. I started smoking in 2007 when all my friends smoked. First it was only one here and there, but then it grew to over half a pack a day. My friends asked me for a smoke when they didn’t have any and me vice versa. When I showed up at their house and they would be smoking a cigarette. Taking a seat, I always light one up with them and talk for hours. It was my routine. It wasn’t until I moved back from Indiana that I really noticed the toll smoking was having on me. When I worked out it would take longer to regain my breath. Not only that but I was losing my motivation to work out all together.
I came back from Indiana in 2011 and the usual group I hung out with dispersed. I cut back on smoking when I stopped hanging out with them however I still smoked. Then there was all this hype about the e-cigarette. A couple of months after the e-cigarette came out. I decided to try it out myself. I almost got the same feeling as smoking a real cigarette which was good enough for me. Because the feelings were so similar, I tricked my mind into thinking I was smoking a real cigarette. Every time I got the urge to smoke I would smoke the e-cigarette or while I was working chew on some gum. Chewing gum sometimes got my mind off of smoking. When I smoked the e-cigarette I would puff on it less than a real cigarette and plus it’s the equivalent to two packs. Not to mention it’s the same price as a real pack of cigarettes. So it was like hitting two birds with 1 stone. Smoke the e-cigarette less and save money.
The e-cigarettes come in a high, medium, and low nicotine level. As do the patches and gum. The e-cigarette uses hot water vapor that passes through a nicotine soaked cotton swab. The nicotine mixes with the vapor and passes into your lungs. Regular cigarettes