<p>Yes, my older S smokes. I can’t wait until he outgrows it, like I did!</p>
<p>Heck, I’m upset because two of my college-aged nieces smoke! I’m a former full-time social smoker, and I still don’t get it. (I stopped 20 years ago, and it wasn’t easy.) One of them is trying nicotine patches now. The other thinks her parents don’t know. So I would also be upset if my son smoked. But as others have pointed out, there’s not much you can do about it except enforce the no-smoking rule at home (which doesn’t apply just to him).</p>
<p>Donna, is your son aware that smoking increases the risk for Crohn’s disease? He may not be genetically susceptible, but if he is, that’s another reason to consider quitting.</p>
<p>Lung cancer is really the least of the worries for nicotine junkies. The way it destroys your health while you are still alive is the real cost. Living for the drug fix, all day, every day, for your entire life, unable to quit, until it kills you. It is a horrible way to live. </p>
<p>Donna:</p>
<p>PM me an e-mail for your son, if you like. I’ll take a stab at convinicing him and, trust me, I don’t pull any punches. I’ll probably make him really mad, because I’ll tell it like it is. I’ll call him a junkie. All that nonsense he’s telling you (like smoking “just a few”) are just junkie lies. I’ll ask him if he wants to live his life as a junkie slave to a drug addiction, a leper outcast, huddling in doorways, scorned by 80% of the people he meets, stinking to high heaven, dieing a slow death as his fitness declines a little bit every day. I know. I was gonna quit in college. I finally broke free of the trap 35 years later. It was the second best day of my life (after the day my daughter was born, when, I had to leave my wife’s side every 45 minutes because, of course, I needed nicotine). I kick myself for not quitting in college like I planned, but you can’t turn back the clock.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I think you should prepare yourself for the reality that he will probably smoke for decades. Kids never quit.</p>
<p>MOWC:</p>
<p>It can’t a “phase” any more than being addicted to heroin is a “phase”. Smoking is a drug addiction, a drug addiction that kills more people every year than all other drug addictions combined.</p>
<p>My daughter is major anti-smoking and was a major motivator for me. Then, I found out she bought a hookah in Dubai. She told me some nonesense about how hookah tobacco was different. I set her straight on that score right away (it’s all about the nicotine) and told her to smoke pot in her hookah if she had to smoke it. I also told her I would personally come wring her neck if she got herself caught in the nicotine junkie trap. Many teenagers are clinically addcicted after just a puff or two. There’s a theory that kids born to smoking mothers are born addicted to nicotine. The addiction is dormant during childhood, but comes back full-strength with the first puff of nicotine, just as it would for me if I ever took nicotine again.</p>
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<p>I probably would refuse to pay for any shelter, food, insurance, college tuition, or one dime towards anything else as long as the kid was stupid enough to keep spending money on tobacco.</p>
<p>BTW, in the United States, about 20% of adults smoke. The same percentages apply to teenagers today. The good news is that those percentages are way down from historical levels. The bad news is that the rate is no longer dropping. The current government/medical/pharma approach to smoking cessation is a disaster. The policy is to tell smokers not to do the things that work and to do all kinds of things that don’t work.</p>
<p>I smoked for over 30 years. About three years ago I just quit - cold turkey. Don’t keep nagging him unless that works with him. I had family members that nagged me about quitting - that just made me continue to smoke. He knows how you feel, he knows its bad for him and he will quit when he is ready.</p>
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<p>It’s the deep inhalation that calms them down, but more so it is the nicotine fix that is satisfied once you have a cigarette again.</p>
<p>It’s a habit and it’s an addiction, all rolled into one. Therefore, what makes it so difficult to quit is not just that there’s the drug (i.e. nicotine) and the constant withdrawal, but there’s also a “ritual”, which can take on many forms. A few examples:</p>
<ul>
<li>old pal calls you on the phone for a long chat. Cigarette.</li>
<li>having a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. Cigarette.</li>
<li>sex. Cigarette.</li>
</ul>
<p>If you’ve been smoking for a long time, those rituals are so much a part of you, that giving up smoking becomes similar to cutting off your arm. I quit smoking many, many years ago, and to this day, I still hold a pencil in my hand as if it were a cigarette.</p>
<p>Health warnings and statistics won’t matter to a young person this age. Truly the only thing that seems to matter is when they figure out that the opposite sex is turned off by the habit and do not like making out with ashtrays. </p>
<p>Also, when they figure out what it says about them to people who do not know they are in college. Statistically speaking more people with 9-11 years of education smoke than do college educated. Also, that it’s highest among people under the poverty level.</p>
<p>I too would be very upset. You might want to tell him that it will limit his post-college job opportunities. Not only are lots of people allergic to smoke and/or just dislike it, but smokers tend to need breaks to smoke and employers aren’t really sympathetic to people who miss 15 minutes of work at least a couple of times a day. </p>
<p>It will also limit his love life. If you are a non-smoker, to use my own kid’s words, kissing a smoker is like “kissing a camel.” And I’ve never met anyone who is turned on by the odor of stale tobacco on someone’s clothing. Living with a smoker is a decidedly unpleasant experience for anyone who doesn’t indulge. </p>
<p>Then there’s the financial element. I live in NYC, which taxes cigarettes to the extent that a pack at the local deli runs over $10. Add up the amount you spend in a year and think all of the other things you could buy with the money.</p>
<p>“a pack at the local deli runs over $10.”</p>
<p>r u serious?</p>
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<p>Nicotine works on the brain chemistry area that is responsible for teaching us to do certain things and not do other things. The mechanism is a neurotransmitter that releases dopamine. A dopamine release is the reward for eating, so it teaches us to eat in order to nourish ourselves and stay alive. Being warm on a cold night triggers a dopamine release, thuse teaching us to stay warm.</p>
<p>Nicotine binds to receptors that trigger a dopamine release, thus teaching us to keep getting nicotine. More troubling is the fact that nicotine totally hijacks those receptors, swamping them even with the dose from a single cigarette, triggering a desenstitzing process that means nothing but nicotine can cause the dopamine release. So, now you have a “teaching moment”, the dopamine release rewarding nicotine use, every 45 minutes of every day of every week of every month of every year of your entire adult life. Needless to say, you’ve truly learned to associate everything you do with the dopamine reward of getting a dose of nicotine.</p>
<p>Thus, to become a comfortable ex-smoker (which is different than a smoker who is simply depriving himself of smoking), requires breaking the active drug addiction (so the altered brain chemistry can return to normal allowing stuff like eating and exericse to again trigger dopamine releases) and relearning to associate all the learned trigger events with not smoking.</p>
<p>It is obviously far easier to never get caught in the trap in the first place.</p>
<p>Thanks for the offer, idad, but I think I’ll pass for now. I’m afraid your approach would be counter-productive.</p>
<p>And, no, he’s not a junkie. Not yet, anyway.</p>
<p>I will mention the Crohn’s Disease issue, since I hadn’t thought of that. Now that I remember, smoking certainly didn’t help my condition back in the day, although I very much doubt it had anything to do with causing it in the first place.</p>
<p>And I’ll be sure to mention the “like kissing a camel” analogy, as well as the one about the ashtray!</p>
<p>And the class thing, which has occurred to me, although I haven’t brought it up yet.</p>
<p>PS: Oddly enough, once I made the promise to myself (and to whoever is out there, God or otherwise) never to smoke again, I didn’t find quitting the least bit difficult, even after smoking steadily for 15 years. For one thing, I’m superstitious enough to be convinced, emotionally at least, that if I ever broke my promise by smoking so much as a single cigarette, something awful would happen to my son.</p>
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<p>Then, why else would he smoke? Think about it. It’s not like it’s “cool” anymore. Everyone thinks it’s disgusting. Nobody smokes these days. There is no other explanation for smoking. He’s addicted. He may not want to face that yet, but he is addicted. If he weren’t addicted, he’d quit, because it’s insane to smoke if you don’t have to. Like I say, I believe in BSing smokers.</p>
<p>Donna, there are articles online about the link between smoking and CD. I have gone to a couple of ccfa workshops and heard this discussed – oddly enough, smoking decreases the risk with UC while increasing the risk with CD. Anyhow, maybe you could send a link to your son.</p>
<p>Interesteddad, there are certainly many people who smoke for a period and stop without much difficulty, just as there are many people who drink way too much in college and then leave it behind. You can never know who will be the person who gets addicted and who will be able to give it up. In the 18 years I knew my father, I never saw him smoke and he would get very upset when my mother would have her yearly cigarette (literally she would smoke one or two a year and managed to do that without needing another one.) Imagine my surprise when, long after he was gone, I put old family movies on video and saw images of him in his twenties smoking. I believe my oldest son smoked on occasion while in college, but not regularly, and now he doesn’t smoke at all. But on my husband’s side of the family is his sister, who was introduced to cigarettes at 13 and has struggled terribly with her addiction her whole life.</p>
<p>A lot of my college friends smoked but were able to quit later. So hopefully it won’t last too long.</p>
<p>Some people play Russian Roulette and don’t blow their brains out, too. The notion that you can “experiment” with nicotine and think the odds of you not getting trapped in a horrible drug addiction is pure folly. That’s how the trap works. “I can quit anytime I want to.” Nicotine is arguably the most addictive drug on the planet.</p>
<p>The impact of nicotine on brain chemistry is very well researched and very well understood. Experimenting with nicotine is much more dangerous idea than playing Russian Roulette. You have a 5 in 6 chance of surviving Russian Roulette. Smoking kills 1 out of 2 users and the rest of them suffer steadily declining health that may not seem like a big deal at age 20, but starts to take its relentless toll.</p>
<p>Endorsing the concept of “social smokers” who are not addicted to nicotine is one of the subtle ways that we as a society encourage smoking and, more importantly, make it much more difficult for smokers to quit. Remember we are talking about an expensive drug that doesn’t offer one single positive benefit. It doesn’t even give a buzz. It is pure insanity to be a smoker and all the perceived “benefits” are illusions.</p>
<p>^^^Re: perceived benefits: I used to have a college roommate who smoked. She even smoked when she had a cough or sore throat, claiming that it “soothed her throat.” I found that to be quite remarkable as my one and only puff not only induced coughing from throat irritation, but felt like sucking air out of a furnace. The heat was overwhelming.</p>
<p>I’m very glad my only exposure caused me such discomfort. My grandmother and mother were chain smokers, completely addicted, and I could have followed in their footsteps. My grandmother died of lung cancer and my mother has been reduced to a wheelchair-bound, hemi-paralytic, multiple and massive stroke victim. Cigarettes can’t necessarily be blamed completely, but they contributed greatly to her awful condition. Tragic, as she is only in her sixties (but looks two decades older). My mother, the great reader, proud holder of a Master’s degree in British literature, can no longer read even a word of text. </p>
<p>The benefits surely do not outweigh the risks in my opinion. Good luck to all who are trying to quit, and I sure hope the OP’s son gives it up soon.</p>
<p>I’ve only briefly skimmed this thread but I’m with idad on the addiction issue. I smoked for probably 6 years, off and on. Then quit cold turkey - haven’t had a cigarette since 1987. My son, along with all of his other issues, was definitely a smoker. When he went to rehab for alcohol addiction he also went through smoking cessation therapy and that was tough. Happily it seems to have stuck. There are better ways to alleviate stress and anxiety.</p>