Conquering the Habit: A Former Heavy Smoker’s Journey and Thoughts on the Smoking Ban Extension

Lot going on about the smoking. Proposed extension to the smoking ban in social places at the moment. And I. For many, many, many years, I was a really, seriously heavy smoker. Easily 40 a day. If I have the money and have the time, I’ll be smoking 60 to 100. I gave up, but I struggled. I struggled to give up for, I mean, about seven or eight years. I’d give up, I’d be absolutely fine. And then I’d go out and I’d be around people who were smoking, and I’d had a couple of drinks and it’d be okay, I’ll be fine. And I wasn’t, of course. And the fact that you couldn’t smoke inside pubs then didn’t matter, because so many people I knew smoked and they went outside, so I could just go out and catch one and then I’ll be on the train again. The only way I managed to. I gave up. And then I just had to avoid for a long time. About a year and a half, two years. I just had to avoid people I knew and really liked and wanted to spend time with, because I knew that as soon as I had a drink, you know, or whatever, they would have a cigarette of which they were perfectly entitled to, and I would have 1 2, and that would be me again. And I just didn’t want to smoke anymore. It’s an addiction. It’s a horrible addiction. And when You beat the addiction. You’re like an alcoholic or an ex junkie. You can’t touch it. I know. Now, if I had a cigarette, it would make me feel really ill, it make me vomit and it would be disgusting. But I would be smoking 40 a day within the week, so I. That stops me. There are a couple of problems with it. The first one is, I’m not sure how you’d enforce it. How far would the distance have to be? Because trust me, when I was a smoker, I would have probably, you know, gone four fields over. Um, but the other thing that is relevant, and it’s very relevant, is pop culture has changed massively. Twenty years ago, in this small rural town, there were 1, two, three, four pubs in a probably a 200 yard space. And I would come home, I was worked on new. I always have worked on New Year’s Eve night. Private do, serve dinner, serve drinks, come biking home, you know, around midnight, 1:00 sometimes. And when I would come down for the first few years, there would, I mean, the noise, you could hear it all over the town. Thump, thump, thump of the music, the bands, people would be all over the high street. There’d usually be a couple of really nasty fights because they were fueled. Probably the last five or six years, it’s been silent. Occasionally, if I’m early, one of the pubs will still be open. But it’s all gone now. Some of that, yeah, pubs were hit by the smoking ban and some of it is that, but there has been a real sea change in a lot of places as to the way that they treat pubs and that. Sure, there are loads of people, and you’ve seen in the big town centres that. Because there’s enough people still getting there to keep them going. But all over the country, clubs, nightclubs, they’re all closing. Um, if people want to go on a mad one, they tend to do it in private houses. So is it a loss? I’m not sure. I’m not sure it is a loss, because the amount of harm that was caused by that, by those attitudes, was horrendous. You know, here there were probably five or six people who woke up on, you know, New Year’s Day in a hell of a state. Broken bones, black eyes, missing teeth, you name it, they felt terrible. The start to every year was awful. Some of them will still be doing it, but a lot of them won’t. And it doesn’t pull other people in, and that’s the thing. If you don’t see other people doing it, you won’t be pulled in. Difficult one, but, you know.