My quite expensive tobacco addiction

I was a smoker for around 20 years, perhaps a bit more. I started smoking like most fools do, as a part of being youthful and feeling peer pressure from the "cool kids" to get involved in the habit. I think a lot of this has died down in recent times and probably is enforced a great deal more than it was when I was young but when I was in high school the staff were very aware of the fact that students were smoking in the parking lots outside of the school but the staff just let it happen. This has likely changed a great deal since the early 90's and I would imagine they have a zero tolerance attitude towards smoking now. Since I am an adult now I see the logic in nipping this in the bud at an early age, because like I said, I spent more than 20 years and lord knows how much money, on a rather silly and self-destructive habit.

It wasn't until I was around 40 years old that I finally decided to give up smoking for good and this time it actually worked. What motivated me was health-oriented in that I was starting to play some sports again and my breathing was affected by the habit. I also started to "wake up" in a way in that I realized that smoking wasn't actually doing anything good for me and I felt terrible most mornings because of it.

I can't claim to be some sort of spokesperson for health though, because I simply replaced the nicotine addiction with something else. At least with this sort of nicotine there is no cancer involved and trust me, the advocates against this and any other form of tobacco would have found it by now if they could.

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It is called snus, and it is of Swedish origin. It is just tiny little pouches or "pillows" of tobacco that can be flavored and comes in a wide variety of strengths or potency, but the above brand is my favorite of the few that are available here in Vietnam. This product is not manufactured in Vietnam and this country is not very keen on people importing things like tobacco.

The people that get this into the country advertise it only on Telegram or ever-changing social media channels and they are quite covert about where it is that they are actually located. Because of this and the fact that none of the boxes have import stickers on them, I can only presume that they are smuggled into the country, likely by a network of people that continually travel in and out of the country. You pay a very high price for this potentially illegal product.

Don't get the wrong idea about this stuff: It is not something that gets you high it merely gives you nicotine delivered in a way that doesn't affect your lungs or any other internal organs. The only bad thing that can come from it is tooth loss and other oral problems related to teeth. In order to combat these potential problems I brush my teeth an extra time every day and use Listerine constantly. This probably sounds like an excuse but the way I look at it I can brush my teeth but I cannot brush my lungs. There are exactly ZERO cases of cancer that can be traced back to the use of this product ever, also. Compare this to the very high statistics about how smoking increases your risk of lots of different things and I feel that it is definitely the "lessor of two evils."

The issue is that it is very expensive. I stumbles upon this brand by accident because the brands that the supplier had in stock was very limited. As the label say it is "extremely strong" and delivers quite the punch. It's so strong in fact that if I use too many of them in a day I will end up giving myself a nicotine headache. According to Swedish friends of mine Siberia snus is considered a "gutter brand" in Scandinavia and it is one of the cheapest well-known brands in the entire business. In certain countries it only costs a couple dollars per box retail, even less if you buy in bulk.

Here in Vietnam though, and the shady methods they have to use in order to get it here at all, it costs considerably more. This 10-pack sleeve that I have in the picture above costs 2.3 million VND, or just over $100. Thankfully, I am not a heavy user and it will last me a month. I know that in western countries this doesn't seem like a lot but when you consider that cigarettes cost less than $1 a pack here, you would need to be chain smoking in order to spend as much as I do.

For me the health benefits are worth it, and I wasn't even aiming at the important ones like preventing lung cancer and other respiratory diseases. I was more concerned with the immediate effects such as "smokers lung" and just coughing all the time.

I'm glad I made the switch and if you are struggling with quitting smoking I found this to be the ONLY product that I have ever tried that was able to get me to quit smoking. I never feel even remotely tempted to have a cigarette and this is a country where people can smoke basically anywhere they want to. There are virtually zero bans on smoking in public here.

I do regulate the amount that I intake though and keep it at a minimum. $100 a month could do a lot of good for other aspects of my life and I am a little disappointed in myself that I don't have it in me to simply quit without chemical assistance.

I do know one thing though: I now find smoking something that really dislike and can't believe that I was ever part of the group of people that engage in it. One of my best pals can fill up an ash tray in just a hour or so and I am constantly on his case about this because he is older and has enormous coughing fits on a regular basis. I don't try to get him to quit or anything because he has been doing this for 50 years. Even if he did quit, the damage is already done. I don't even know if I am in the clear after 20 years of the habit. I hope so! I do know that I feel less shit most mornings that I did when I was on the smokey sticks.

I toy with the idea of quitting and putting that $1200 a year into a fund of some sort but in the meantime, I'm just happy that I don't smoke cigarettes. I truly believe they are a safer delivery mechanism of nicotine than smoking and the evidence backs this claim of mine up.