When I was diagnosed recently with MS I found out something about smoking cigarettes and MS that I did not know.
- Smoking can make MS worse. It can speed up how fast you become disabled from MS.
- It can mean bigger lesions
- It can mean more relapses
I reduced my smoking to 10 a day or so when I moved to an apartment. Not being able to smoke inside really reduced my habit for sure. But when I learned this I really needed to quit and I didn’t want to mess around with nicotine replacement therapies either. I read the ‘Allan Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking‘ ( very tedious book but it shoved the point into my brain) and then I just stopped cold turkey on Aug 2nd. Because if you read the book that is what you do at the end. Not because that is what I typically do. Definitely not. I typically do not quit that way but I typically start again so I gave this method a go.
“Fall seven times, stand up eight.” – Japanese Proverb
I’ve quit before. I’ve quit dozens of times before. A lot of smokers do. So I sure as hell hope that this time I never light up again. It’s not like they already didn’t have health risks. They obviously did. They are plastered all over every pack. And now in small print on the smoke itself in some cases. So obviously health risks existed before.
It’s not like they were not already causing problems because they were- I have asthma. Adult onset asthma so I already smoked when the asthma kicked in. And I had tried to quit when that happened. But smoking and asthma do not get along. Neither do forest fires and asthma. Plenty of those too lately. Smoke and asthma bad is what I’m saying. But also, yeah, smoking was obviously already causing me problems.
So why quit
It’s that enough is enough and I do not need my health to tank because of this one habit that serves no purpose. There is no benefit to smoking. I suppose if there were I would cling to that. But there isn’t. And there are so very many reasons not to. Cost. Health. Smell. Health. Cost. Health. You know, the usual.
“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” – Jim Rohn
But I’m tired of the habit. My brain going ‘ding ding craving time’ and just automatically reaching for that smoke. It is just auto-pilot really. Not enjoyment. Or satisfaction. Or wanting one. Or getting any sort of pleasure from one. Just my brain running a program it is familiar with because I programmed it to do so.
And now I learn about the MS and what smoking can do with that? Yeah, no. Just no. Not when it can lead to more relapses than I otherwise would have and earlier progressive disease onset than I otherwise would have or if I have at all. That’s not something to mess around with. Smoking can even be one of the onset triggers of MS, so that is something to consider. I know that a whole lot of people in my family have MS so there is likely a genetic factor involved there.
Anyway, something to remind myself before I consider having another smoke ever again. Nothing against anyone that smokes. Obviously. I smoked for 31 years. I know how hard it is to quit, if you want to. And everyone has a right to do as they wish. I just have been meaning to quit for some time and this was a hard shove in that direction. As of now, at the end of today 10pm the nicotine will be out of my system so that is one accomplishment. I just have to not put it back in there after it is out of there.
Here is Allan Carr’s The Easy Way site if you are interested in checking out his online content
King James of England wrote in 1604
“[Smoking is] a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”
Well, I guess smoking wasn’t seen through rose colored glasses in some parts of the past either. I feel like I should print this quote and post it somewhere I can see it. It feels so Motivational to me.
Chronically Nikki 
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