Question about smoking cessation Young age?I am attempting to quit smoking tomorrow and while I am very confident that I will be able to kick this habit, I am having a large amount of anxiety regarding some of the long term damage. While I know that there are rare incidents, I'm interested in just getting any feedback. I am a 22 year old male. I started smoking just randomly when I was 17 years old and have smoked off and on during that period. I would say a majority of the time about 2 packs a month, but more recently (past 8 months) about 10 a day. It seems that every webiste online is trying to scare people into quitting smoking, and while that's fine, I really would like to know if my lungs already look like they were painted black. Also, I have read that after 10 years, your chances of lung cancer are cut in half. I guess what my real question is, about 4.5 years of mild smoking (lets say 5 a day, varying at times), if I were to quit now, could by age 30ish, could I really have the lungs of a nonsmoker? While it was my mistake and I take responsibility for smoking in the first place, it would be nice to know at 22 that I haven't already kind of "screwed" myself over. Obviously, my lungs will never be as healthy as a nonsmokers, but I just kind of want to know if my lungs are completely savable. I know this is kind of a ramble, but I really would like to thank anyone that could offer ANY sort of insight, but please be honest. Thanks for helping out someone a little frightened.
Amy
You definitely have not screwed yourself over completely. I don't know any official statistics, but if you smoked 5 a day for 4.5 years, that gives you a little over a 1 pack-year history (kind of a standard used to quantify the amount someone has smoked) and though that does elevate your risk for serious conditions like heart disease, COPD, and lung cancer, your risk is much less elevated than it would have been with a more significant smoking history. Yes, you've done some damage to your body. But smoking's effects are cumulative, and you're preventing a LOT of damage by stopping now.
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