Why smokers hate ex-smokers

In a recent poll (commissioned by health drink firm Lactofree), people were asked to name the most annoying things in their lives, ‘ex-smokers’ came fairly high up the list. Ninth in fact.

I am an ex-smoker, and I know that I can be a bit annoying about smoking. But I can also remember what it was like to be a smoker; A fact that smokers often forget.

Here’s what I remember about ex-smokers (from when I smoked 40 rollups a day).
1 - When someone told me they’d given up several years before, I thought - ‘you never really smoked properly did you?’
2 - When an ex-smoker asked me why I smoked I told them that I liked it. I even believed it sometimes.
3 - Ex-smokers made me want to smoke more.

Why did I react in this way?

Here’s my theory. Your inner smoker is afraid. Mainly he’s afraid that you’ll stop smoking - because then he’ll die.

He’s afraid because he knows a secret that he’s not sharing with you - that smoking isn’t that hard to stop.

What I found out is that stopping smoking is stupidly easy to stop - all you need is the right frame of mind. Previous attempts to give up had failed, partly because I continued smoking tobacco in spliffs, partly because I was it expecting to be really hard but mainly because I was in the wrong frame of mind.

Right, this is sounding like an advert on how to stop smoking - and this is the problem with being an ex-smoker. When you’ve smoked for 15 years, and you suddenly stop without any real problems, it’s like a veil being lifted - and all you want to do is grab smokers by their metaphorical lapels and shake them until they see sense.

Unfortunately this will never work - it never worked with me, and I met a LOT of irritating ex-smokers.

So as an irritating ex-smoker I apologize to all those I know who smoke, but seeing you smoke cigarettes and keeping schtum is like not being able to mention that you have an axe sticking out of your back.

Oh and BTW - and mints/aftershave/perfume etc can never disguise the stink of it - the smell of stale tobacco on your breath is one of the worst things to endure at close quarters. No one ever told me that when I was a smoker, but I bet a lot of people thought it.

Written by exmonkey on August 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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