subject: The Difference Between an Ex and a Non Smoker [print this page] The Difference Between an Ex and a Non Smoker
What is the difference between an ex-smoker and a non-smoker? You might say there is none, but it's important to see that there is a huge difference.
Remember when you were an adolescent, and you saw people smoking? Maybe it was your parents, maybe some of your friends had started. You just couldn't understand why they were doing this, even if it looked "kinda cool".
You did not understand what it was like to always be smoking but you DID know how foul smelling these things called cigarettes were.
And how about ex-smokers, how do you think they feel? For someone who has stopped smoking, many of them never stop wanting cigarettes. As time goes on it gets much easier.
Have you seen the movie with Danny DeVito where he keeps a cigarette in a glass case and eventually breaks it open and smokes it? This is a bit like my friend's father who stopped smoking for over 10 years and one day on vacation, a smoking family member offered him a cigarette and he thought "oh, just the one". Now he smokes a pack a day and has been doing since for several years.
Most ex-smokers still crave cigarettes. If you stop smoking then your body will gradually get more healthy and recover from years of smoking. But you still run the risk of temptation throwing you back into the lion's den, to a future of unhealthy smoking.
On the other hand, a non-smoker who has never smoked cigarettes does not crave for them at all. He might be curious but he does not have an "itch" for a cigarette.
When you understand what nicotine really does to you and addiction, then you will be like the old non-smoker self that you used to be. You will never have cravings for a cigarette again, unlike most people who stop "successfully".
Now ask yourself, which would you prefer to have? The mind of a non-smoker or the mind of a typical ex-smoker?
