Smoking cigarettes one day - and then... never again.

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So hilarious. Was on a 'health' site about something and one of the questions was:

"Have you smoked ONE cigarette in your WHOLE life."

Are they actually so stupid to believe that smoking ONE cigarette at ANY time in your whole life would make a difference in your health? Do they know something that everyone else doesn't know?
Oh, yes, I smoked just ONE cigarette THIRTY YEARS ago, so please, put me with the other ex-smokers. Put me with the people who smoke two packs a day and have been smoking two packs a day for twenty years.
You are BOTH the same, health wise. Both have the same chance of having cancer, both have the same odds of having ______. (enter whatever you wish in the blank)

What? All at once the body can't or doesn't heal itself over a period of time? Since when? Anyone have more info on this subject I could look at?

I haven't smoked in (as of today, right now at 14:00 hours) 29 years, 6 months and 14 days to the minute. From 18 March 1981 @ 14:00 hours, a Wednesday, until today 02 October 2010 @ 14:00 hours, a Saturday, since @ 14:00 hours was the last time I smoked a cigarette and that was just a half of one at that. A Marlboro, seems I smoked those most of the twenty one (21) years that I smoked. When a person stops smoking, at least with me, I tend to remember dates and times regarding such a thing happening, don't you?

I had TRIED to quit several times, over the years, before that time. Ah, by the second or third day I would dang near take your head off if you even looked at me. I figured out why that was. The part of our brain/mind that controls what we do regarding our body seems to end up being controlled by the subconscious part of our brain/mind. When I was "trying" to quit smoking, I was trying to shove the order to quit smoking through my subconscious. That doesn't seem to work well at all.
But when I finally decided in my subconscious that I didn't desire to smoke anymore, from that instant my body never had a craving for nicotine anymore.
On that day, 29½ years ago, when I lit that last cigarette, it didn't even taste good at all. I had smoked the usual number the day before, smoking right up until I went to bed. But, the next day, when I lit that first cigarette at 14:00 hours (2pm), should have told me something would be different that day. Usually I had smoked one or two cigarettes before I ever left the house in the morning. When I mashed that first cigarette of the day out in the ash tray on the 18th, the urge to smoke wasn't there anymore.

One thing that did happen though, was the fact that I became allergic to cigarette smoke and smell. It got pretty bad over the years. Someone would come into the shop with a lot of cigarette smoke smell on their clothes and within a minute or so if they were standing to close to me, close enough that I smelled the smoke on their clothes, my eyes would get all bloodshot, my nose start running, sneezing, the whole works. I would have to let one of my employees take over talking to them, the smoke on their clothes caused me too many problems, health wise.

Strange things happen sometimes. Have I thought about smoking a cigarette, just one, again to see what it tasted like? Sure, but just as a passing thought. It was never a strong enough thought that I would actually smoke one.

And yes, I AM proud of myself for dumping that filthy, nasty habit of smoking, 29½ years ago.

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