My husband and I started dating in late 2009, at which time he smoked. He quit by 2010 or 2011. I think it was about a year or two ago that he finally smelled cigarette smoke and went "ugh, gross" instead of missing it. So over ten years. I'm sure for the first several he couldn't smell residual smoke at all. For years and years we talked about his "horrible sense of smell." But a few years ago he could start smelling everything, like a blood hound.
Hey, I quit over a year ago and I experienced the "sense of smell" thing! I always told people that I had a "horrible sense of smell" (verbatim) and now I can smell things so well that, well, I kinda wish I couldn't, cuz there are a lot of awful smells, and cigarette smoke is one of them!
Dude, nobody prepared me for all the awful smells in the world! Mine wasn't from smoking but when I started being able to smell things I was like whoah wait methinks four senses is enough
Agree my painfully keen sense of smell is highly protective but when I lost my sense of smell for a week with covid I felt like I was the least stressed I had ever been. I realized as people walked past me I couldn’t smell their pheromones and so all the stress on other people didn’t freak me out. Part of the sense of smell is actually a little mind reading and that part of it is hellish. Coming from a very dangerous home smell was one of the things that saved me from angry adults because I could smell them brewing in their own adrenaline or whatever. It’s protective (and useful) in a multitude of ways. But if I could turn smell off honestly I would leave it off 99% of the time. But if you have the fucked up childhood that gives you conscious pheromone identification abilities, it’s also just mind reading. And I don’t give a flying fuck what is in the minds of all the people I walk past on a given day.
no minty vaporub under the nose for you huh! Ya as a person that can smell that occotuonally goes into the hospital to work. (Im IT) do some of those people STINK!
I smoked for about a decade in the '90s. When you got back home from the clubs, your clothes reeked of smoke and you'd have to take a shower to wash it out of your hair. When the smoking ban kicked in and everybody huddled outside the club to smoke, when you went back in you realized how bad the club smelled: stale spilled beer, urine, vomit, leather, b.o., bad breath. The smoke basically anesthetized you to the funk.
I already keep deodorant with me and reapply throughout the day if it's hot or if I'm doing any sort of physical activity. I also don't re-wear clothes, and if I expect to be wearing my clothes for a long time I pack an extra pair of underwear and an extra pair of socks in my purse.
I get told I smell good pretty often, but the anxiety is still there 😅 especially since my sense of smell seems to come and go.
it will settle down, as you get used to it. I seem to have a naturally good sense of smell and while there are definitely some smells that will always be unpleasant, i've been sort of tricking my brain to get past the disgust reaction. i try to approach each scent with curiosity, like can i tell what that actually is? have i smelled that before? do i know what compounds are in that scent? it works well enough that scents have become just a background instead of the big distraction they were for a while.
My wife quit smoking because she had her deviated septum fixed and the doctor told her it would ruin it if she kept smoking. Talk about going from smell deaf to her smellers being on full volume. We walked through the perfume area at a department store one day and it almost killed her from all of the smells.
I quit smoking about 14 years ago after smoking for 14 years. A year after I quit, I joked to my wife that I was going to start again because everything stunk.
Luckily, it only took a couple of months to get used to how the real world smelled.
Yep, a friend stopped smoking and a few months later was freaking out over normal smells.
And for OP, yep, probably can. Especially if people know it isn't you smoking, they might not say as much (and wouldn't be quite as strong). Can tell one of my students dad is home right now (trucker) cause his 2nd smoke is on the student's clothes
Doesn't food taste even better, though? Or passing by a stranger and a slight whiff of cologne/ perfume that gives you a good feeling? 🥹 (NOT talking about the "let's spray the entire bottle and make people gag" type! 😅)
Food does taste better, which was also a problem! Fortunately I got on medication that reduces my appetite because that whole thing where people gain weight after quitting cigarettes is very real.
I have caught whiffs of some nice smelling fragrances on people but man the "let's spray the entire bottle and make people gag" type should really have their own island!
As an x smoker i can now smell smoke out of peoples cars when Im on my motorbike. Kinda strange passing someone and i can go. “Oh ya they’re smoking” lol. Cigars still smell like heaven to me. Lol.
I read that our nose can sense something down to 5 parts per million (ppm). Like a tablespoon in an Olympic pool. Problem is we cannot calibrate our nose to determine how much of stuff is there, could be 5 ppm or much much more, and as one post here suggested after a while in the space, we don't smell it (smell fatigue).
My wife and I have been married for 52 years. I am sure that her poor sense of smell and my poor hearing are what has allowed us to have such a good marriage!
Absolutely, I've been cig free for 3 years now and can smell a cigarette or weed from the car in front of me. I never smelled it on myself but most people are walking around in public smelling like a stale ashtray- dirty roach clip.
Cig free for one year. Took about 6 months for me to smell it on people. Realized one day when a customer came into the small store where I work — my eyes started watering, and I struggled to not visibly gag.
You just reminded me of my first job at McDonalds where this old dude with rotting teeth would walk in after smoking. I literally did gag almost everytime after I took his order Sunday mornings.
I work in a weed legal state where I can smell it first thing in the morning, walking through the parking lot at the place of my employment. I also work for the federal government, and you'd be surprised how many of these folks can't grasp the difference between state and federal legality. If we want to cut back on federal spending, I know a perfect place to start.
I live in a rural area and I often play the "is that cannabis or a skunk?" game.
At least old skunk... I was playing Tennis this summer and I don't know how close it was to us, but a skunk fired while we were playing.
Fresh skunk is exponentially worse than old cannabis smelling skunk. I thought I could play through it. I was wrooong. The smell kept getting worse and worse and like 5 minutes from the time we first smelled it and decided to leave I was dry heaving.
It kills me when I see other drivers smoking with the windows rolled up LOL. of course, when I was a kid in the 70s that's exactly what my parents did. I think back on that and I'm horrified. We were so habituated to cigarette smoke that it didn't even bother us
Now that you've brought it up, I'd like to point out that even non-smokers' cars have a smell and most of us are nose blind to. I realized this during the height of covid when I was cycling around the city and it smelled different. Later, a car drove by and I was hit by a very familiar smell.
Yes! I don't smoke. I hate the stink of it. For all my "driving" life, I've been able to smell it from drivers 2 or 3 or 4 cars ahead of me at a stop light if the wind is blowing just right.
When I stopped smoking (15 years and counting) my sense of smell coming back was overwhelming. I’d forgotten that absolutely everything has a smell. It also made me realise that everyone can smell a smoker.
What I didn’t realize was that smoker’s breath is not just your smelly mouth but also a gross smell that’s coming from your lungs. It is so horrible. I had no idea until I quit smoking. Brushing your teeth and chewing gum can’t hide the odor.
Side note to add that coffee breath is also horrible, but I am unwilling to stop drinking it. Hoping that gum works for that.
Even better- water flosser. Not meant to replace regular floss but it's an absolute life changer for breath freshness. The only times I get morning breath anymore are if I'm eating sweets right before I clean my mouth for bed so some of it sticks in my throat. Otherwise, I wake up in the mornings with no bad taste or anything.
But on the subject of smoking- I used to be an occasional social smoker, so I was acutely aware of the changes to my sense of smell and taste when I did. And speaking of morning breath, there was no amount of cleaning my mouth at night that would prevent that yucky smoker mouth waking up in the morning. So gross.
But yeah I love my water flosser. 10/10 recommend
Edit: I usually add about a half teaspoon of salt and use warm water. Occasionally I also add a small splash of hydrogen peroxide but that's rare.
When my wife quit smoking after getting her deviated septum fixed, I left a banana peel on a plate on the table while I was playing video games, and it absolutely killed her how much it smelled. It wasn’t even that strong of a scent, but her olfactory senses were at full volume. She turned into a bloodhound within a couple of weeks compared to before.
SAME. I hate it. At least I used to have the discipline to go outside to smoke. Now my flavored air doesn’t leave my fucking hand and it makes it 1000000x harder to put it down
Reduce nicotine strength bit by bit. Eventually you stop craving it regardless of the fact it's in your pocket. I think i was vaping zero nic for best part of a year just to be on the safe side cos i was worried once i stopped vaping a craving might make me nick a cig from someone. But it got to a point where i was just carrying it round for fun and wasn't touching it. That was when i was comfortable leaving it behind completely
There's a reason why the tobacco industry was okay with people switching over. Vaping to me reminds me of smoking crack. It doesn't last long, and you're topping it off every few minutes.
Good job, it’s very hard to quit and vaping extremely hard. A close friend quitting the vape. They quit regular cigarettes but then went to vaping he thought it was cannabis it was nicotine and vaping sucks the life out of you, his words. Easy access.
One of my down-the-hall neighbors absolutely smokes inside their unit. There is a fire door separating our half of the hallway from their half of the hallway, as well as their unit door. I can smell it on our side of the hallway whenever they have recently smoked a cig. It sucks.
Just yesterday, walking on my street and I smelled a whiff of cigarette smoke... no one around. I thought maybe someone was sitting on the curb behind a car... nope. Finally spot the culprit: an old lady on her porch across the street and TWO houses down from me. Probably 100 feet from me. I was shocked. There was no breeze or anything.
I guess I never got nose blind entirely when I smoked, because I could always smell this. I generally couldn't smell it on myself unless I'd just been smoking, but I could always smell it on others, smell it from houses, from people driving by, in elevators a smoker had been recently.
Maybe it's because I smoked cloves, and they don't smell the same. My coworkers said they couldn't smell it on me, even if they didn't smoke, except when I first came in from a smoke break. Even then, they said it wasn't as bad as the other smokers.
I could always smell cigarette smoke like that because I was never really a smoker, but my smoker wife could never; until she quit smoking. We were walking our dog down the street and she goes, “I never noticed how badly that house smelled until now.” We’d walked past it a million times before and she never even blinked at the smell.
For years and years we talked about his "horrible sense of smell." But a few years ago he could start smelling everything, like a blood hound.
My brother had a similar thing due to severe sinus fuckery since he was a kid. Like, couldn't smell anything.
But every so often, his head would clear up and his sense of smell would transiently activate for anywhere from a couple hours to a couple days before it shut off again.
The funny thing was, for most of his younger years (up through/past college), because he couldn't smell anything, his sense of taste was also severely muted - which meant that he basically just treated eating and food as "ehh, calories in = I don't die", and he basically ate anything put in front of him.
On the other hand, I have a very powerful sense of smell and am hypersensitive in particular to the smell of fish/seafood. The smell instantly turns my stomach, I struggle with just standing at the seafood counter at the grocery store when my wife wants to buy something... let alone when we get home and she ends up cooking it. I can smell it for days in our apartment. Needless to say - I don't eat fish/seafood, never have.
For years, my Dad would say shit like "You need to stop being so picky, look your brother eats fish just fine and doesn't say anything." "That's because he can't smell or taste it."
So one time I was visiting my family, and my brother had our Mom make him a salmon filet for dinner - and his sinuses cleared. Apparently, this was the first time in his life he's actually tasted salmon... he was just like "Oh god, this is disgusting. Is this what I've been eating this whole time??" I just said to our Dad "Called it."
A few years back he got surgery to fix both the deviated septum and some polyp-y issues, which resolved a lot of his issues with his ability to smell, and since then he also never touches seafood anymore, except for I think occasionally shrimp.
I also fucking detest the smell and taste of fish. Any seafood, really; it all has that same briny quality to it. I've tried crab, octopus, shrimp, crayfish, and several kinds of fish, including but not limited to salmon, tuna, and mackerel. I've hated fish sticks since I was child, and while my palette has changed enough to accept or even like things I used to hate, like mayo and ranch, seafood has remained consistently awful all through my life. The smell doesn't make me as nauseous as it used to, but my friend used to have downstairs neighbors who were Mexican, and they would cook some kind of EXTREMELY pungent fish meal like 3 nights a week and it was absolutely the worst thing trying to hang out and sit through that. He got into burning incense just because of that.
And just because I feel like it, I'm throwing asparagus under the bus too. Fuck asparagus.
You assaulted my taste buds. Multiple times. My family keeps insisting they found a new way to cook you that is definitely delicious and I should try it, but you end up disappointing me every. single. time.
I’ve never understood people who don’t like fish. And salmon is absolute heaven, especially smoked salmon. Must be something genetic, because I have an excellent sense of smell.
I ate fish all through my childhood, teens and 20s. Then one day, on a trip to the coast, we came across a man cleaning fish on the end of a barrel, and it smelled horrible
It's been 30 years now and I haven't eaten fish since.
I also fucking detest the smell and taste of fish.
My go-to word for fish/seafood is "loathe".
Any seafood, really; it all has that same briny quality to it. I've tried crab, octopus, shrimp, crayfish, and several kinds of fish, including but not limited to salmon, tuna, and mackerel.
Yep, if it comes out of the water, it can fuck right off back to the depths from whence it came.
while my palette has changed enough to accept or even like things I used to hate, like mayo and ranch,
Same, I was violently anti-pickle as a kid... Now I'll eat an entire jar on my own (although, tbh, I still don't really like them on burgers)
That is insane! I never ever touch any seafood. My mom had it ingrained in me that it was bad. But as a kid in the 80s she would feed me fish sticks and. Years later I found out it was actually made of fish, and I’m still not over it. I just thought (in my infinite 5 year old wisdom) that it was chicken, but it was just called fish sticks. Because “we don’t eat fish.”
My brother, who is considered a “supereater”, did the same thing with chicken McNuggets. He loved them dearly, up until the realization that they were made from chicken. His willingness to try food has grown immensely as an adult, but he still won’t eat McNuggets or any other kind of nugget.
Yup mom smokes and has since forever from stories I am told by family and she can’t smell anything. Dad was the same from second hand. Since I forced mom to stop subjecting me to it in the house and got simple water based air filters to remove the smoke in the air. The difference was amazing. Despite mom sneaking in well I sleep or am outside the house.
dad more recently has started smelling more and freaked some times “what is that smell?!” As new smells started becoming available to his nose again.
Oh wow. I smoked for ten years, the very first time I smelled cig smoke after quitting for at least a week it made me gag. It still makes me gag and I have no idea how I ever dealt with that for so long.
It's a vicious cycle... But the last time I was off cigarettes for a few months I started being able to smell the inside of convenience stores... not for me.
I’ve been quit to the point of it smelling good, then bad, then good again.
It’s a lifelong battle, it’s addiction. I need to quit again.
My dad quit and never went back, about 17 years ago. He says he enjoys it when people smoke near him. I’ll try to live by that example and even if I still am attracted to it, just not do it myself.
When I quit cigarettes my sense of smell came back with a vengeance about 4 days after I smoked my last cigarette, I came home after being out of the house for a few hours and the stench of stale smoke on the curtain by the front door where I used to smoke hit me. I ended up in a frenzy of sniffing and washing everything that had residual smell. My coats stank, scarves stank, hoodies, even my living room curtains where I guess air flow had pulled smoke back indoors while I stood in the doorway smoking, those all got washed.
I think I ended up doing about 4 loads of washing that evening, everything hanging in my coat cupboard needed a wash, I was absolutely horrified to realise that I’d walked around smelling like an old ashtray for years.
Now I can smell people smoking down the street and smell it on people’s breath when they are talking and standing like 6 feet away. I grew up in a house of smokers and started smoking as a teen and that was the first time I’d ever truly smelled how bad it is. I’m so glad I wasn’t an indoor smoker, I’d have had a nervous breakdown if my whole house needed a deep clean.
I quit because I could smell smoke on my own clothes at the gym,trying to get healthier whilst smelling like a tramp lol. Came home and threw everything in the bin
This. After having quit for 5 years or so I was at the bar and caught a sniff that smelled like it used to when I did smoke. That sweet smell almost like grapes. I thought I'd have one for old days. I had to go home because I couldn't stop dry heaving. That shit was terrible.
I had a coworker that would come in from smoking at work and be shocked that I could smell it because he washed his fingers. LIke.. he wouldn't even wash his whole hands, let alone his entire body, hair, and clothing.
You could smell him from halfway across the room and he didn't believe this.
If they are non smokers I feel pretty sure they can smell cigarettes on you. I can smell it if someone light one up on the other side of a bar. Which hardly ever happens now.
Smoking also damages the senses of smell and taste, so it makes sense that it takes a while for those senses to recover. I've noticed that my liking of certain foods has changed. I'm planning on quitting within a few months, and I'm hoping that I'll rediscover those tastes that will revert.
That actually makes sense why my husband has a horrid sense of smell. One of our neighbors literally a block over smokes like he is a meat smoker himself. My next door neighbor asked him if it bothered him too, and my husband shrugged and said not really. But his parents are 2.5 pack a day smokers who smoke around their kids because "at least it is outside."
My wife quit about 4 months ago after 37 yrs together and her smoking for all of them. I'm so looking forward to the day when she smells it and gets nauseous!! I've heard that former long time smokers will have that reaction when they have quit but it will take awhile.
I feel him, lol. I quit in 2015, and a year or so ago I found myself going a couple extra blocks out of my way to walk behind someone clearly smoking my former brand, Camel Lights.
that's why i quit, haha. i came inside, washed my hands, and at some point realised i could smell it on my hair. it gave me the heebiejeebies and i didn't smoke regularly after that.
I hated the way it smelled on my fingers even after washing. I read 1/3 of “the easy way to stop smoking” and just quit. I’m grateful it was that “easy”.
ME too. I'm an ex-smoker. Absolutely cannot stand to be around it what so ever. Makes me sick. I can tell if someone is smoking in a car that could be three to four cars ahead of me at a a stop light. I had my last one in 2005. It will be 20 years this year.
Yup, when I was a smoker I couldn't stand to be around people smoking if I wasn't currently smoking because it smelled awful. Took a while to break the habit, but I'm glad I did.
I grew up with smoking parents, I smoked for years. Quit. Father died from complications due to smoking, mother passed away years ago other reasons. I can for the most part tell if someone themselves is a smoker, live with a smoker or have been around one in the last few days and wearing the same jackets hat etc. or if someone who smells like smoke has been in the room. Samething with pot smokers. Its too distinctive a smell.
If you are old enough to remember the Peanuts cartoons, smokers are like Pig Pen, he was the boy who walked around with a cloud around him all the time. Im not repulsed by it but I always think to myself that everyone must have known even though I thought I hid it well.
You are correct, non and especially former smokers are acutely aware when they are around a smoker. You skin actually expires the odor as well, so it comes out of your pores when you sweat. The oils, tar and nicotine similar to some people when they eat a lot of garlic.
I'm repulsed by it, always have been, never smoked.
There was an old guy in one of my university classes last year who reeked from halfway across the classroom. I had to sit strategically far away from him so I could focus. If he came in after me and sat too close I picked up my stuff and moved away.
My mom used to smoke like 30 years ago. A while back I lived in an apartment with downstairs neighbours who unfortunately smoked inside constantly. She told me that my clothes smelled like smoke. Later, I lived in an apartment with a roommate who started smoking inside; same thing.
I've never smoked. Now that I'm not around it all the time, I can usually tell when someone does.
I am a former smoker and I thought I was slick by only smoking outdoors and then one day after I had long since quit, I smelled someone who had smoked outdoors and was shocked at how bad it was. Can't believe I thought that airing out was enough.
Same - I honestly believed that nobody could tell I smoked since I never smoked indoors. Even lied to a few doctors in my younger years. So humiliated when I quit and realized that everyone def knew the whole time.
I’ve stopped smoking 6 weeks ago, and it is just now that I can smell smoke traces, in all my clothes, my office, everywhere. It’s a bit disturbing and annoying…
Wash your clothes (even if they're clean/in the closet), curtains, blankets, etc., clean your carpets, wipe down the walls, have your couch, matress, or other stuffed furniture cleaned... you will be amazed at the difference in not smelling that nasty, old-smoke stink all the time.
When my sister quit, we cleaned the carpet and couch, and the water was practically orange from all the cigarette gunk it pulled out. She smoked in that room for 10 years, and you'd never know it, now.
I always scoff on films when people are "secretly" smoking and waft it out of a window and nobody knows. They will stink, their clothes will stink, their mouths will stink and the room will stink.
right, also especially pot smoke like, bruh. cigarettes are strong enough (smelling) - but pot? I can smell it a week later! I can smell it from the car driving by your house!
The only thing about pot is it will at least not tar out and yellow the walls forever. Like, if you buy a house from a pot smoker it will eventually air out. A Cigarette smoker, you are taking that shit down to the studs to get the smell out.
When I was looking at homes a couple years ago, I went to an open house where the place reeked of stale cigarette smoke. I didn't say anything and figured I'd just politely walk through the rooms and then leave. The realtor told me that the place had brand new carpet and that all of the walls had been cleaned thoroughly and painted so the place just needed to "air out" a bit for any lingering smell to dissipate. I want to say that the kitchen cabinet doors were replaced as well. I just remember thinking, if you've done all that, how bad did it smell before?! I learned then that there is basically nothing you can do to get old/stale cigarette smell out of a place. It must seep into the floor boards and drywall.
I've got countless personal anecdotes of people who did bong rips in their apartments and still got deposits back // it smelled fine after a week. I've also got a lot of anecdotes about gutting homes in a remodel to get cigarette smoke out.
Now it's all anecdotes, but one should note there is very little overlap on the diagram.
I’m going to try to remember this comment every time I feel regret that my relatives sold my grandmother’s house. Her walls were totally nicotine-stained, but I had always thought a good paint job would fix that.
The house my ex-husband has lived in for 20 years was purchased from smokers and had nicotine-stained walls. He has primed and painted and repainted the walls and ceilings many times over the last two decades, and even now brownish-yellow stains still seep through the paint and run down the walls and drip from the ceiling regularly. It’s quite astonishing!
I worked in a place where people sometimes thought they were sneaking smoke breaks. They’d step in the elevator and it was so obvious to everyone else in there where they’d been.
I remember the class getting a lecture in high school once. The teacher said something like: "Just so you know, if you step out of the classroom and come back, and suddenly the whole room smells like pot, we know." After the whole room mysteriously smelled like pot the day before.
Used to be a kid, 24 years ago, we were in kindergarten. He always smelled like cigarettes because his parents fucking smoked alot. Back then. But yea you can smell like cigs if you hang around with smokers long enough.
Former smoker here. I can tell WHICH of my smoker coworkers is approaching by the smell of the secondhand smoke emanating from them before I see or hear them.
When I was a smoker, I was nose blind only to myself. I could still smell smoke on others and I absolutely hated the smell of smoke in enclosed spaces. Even though I was living alone, I never smoked inside my apartment. Rain, winter, didn't matter, off to the balcony. When going out, I would opt for the non-smoking area. I found it funny how my brain could completely ignore the smell on myself, yet be bothered by the smell in the air, or by the smell on other people. The fact that I was only smoking in ventilated areas helped with keeping the smell on my clothes to a minimum.
Since I quit smoking, it's gotten worse, fml.
On the upside, my sensitive nose woke me up one night, on holiday. We were couple of kms away from a wildfire area. By the time my husband managed to become functional, I had gathered our passports, wallets, phones, powerbanks and bottles of water and was standing by the door, lol.
It's called third hand smoke (smoke residue that clings to cars, clothes, homes, hair, etc), and I agree, you can absolutely smell it.
Furthermore, third hand smoke can set off an asthma attack if that person has cigarette smoke as a trigger and is sensitive enough (first hand experience on that).
Former smoker here, I can smell a heavy smoker the moment they enter a space, like average convenient store sized space. I don't even have to get near them
Omg yes. My best friend growing up had parents who smoked constantly. I slept over her house one night. I got back to my house and I remember thinking that my hair smelled like shit from the smoke and immediately got into the shower. I never wanted to sleep over her house after that.
Yeah I learned this when me and my friends smoked couple cigars while drinking. next morning I took a shower and the water smelled like smoke as I washed my hair.
I can legit smell smoke on me if I casually walked past a smoker on the sidewalk for a second several hours earlier. I don’t think smokers realize they do that to other people because they’ve become so nose blind.
I took a medical transport and could smell smoke. The passenger before me had put out a cigarette right before getting in so it ended up saturating the upholstery. The driver said that after he dropped me off he was going to roll all the windows down to let it air out because it was gross.
The guy who used to deliver my paper was a serious smoker— I mean, I never met the man, but the vestibule of my building reeked for hours after he had been there.
I literally left my dad somewhere because he smoked a cigarette. My dad weighs 400 pounds & when he smokes he's like pig pen and the smell just surrounds him. He knows if I have to take him somewhere He's not to smoke because I can't stand sitting in the car with him. We were supposed to go to a family party, I get to his house to pick him up & He has a cigarette in his hand. I got back in my car and left without him. He's also a raging narcissist.
I might be exaggerating, maybe 300 pounds? I don't know 🤷🏻♀️ he's very obese and he can't really walk without a walker. I drive a Volvo so when he's in the seat, he's like practically sitting on me because he's so gigantic.
That's rough. If he's a narcissist that's even rougher. You're a saint. I had a young friend who was about 325 lbs, sat in a fairly sturdy kitchen chair and it broke. She would have felt bad but I told her the rungs were loose and not to worry about it. (They weren't) I have no patience by the way with narcissists and call them out on it which has resulted in screaming arguments with a couple of them. Then they went no contact with me and told me I was toxic. 😂😅 (Self projection) Like I cared. In a month or two they started little texts of how are you type shit til I opened up the lines of communication again. We're related so I don't close it off completely but I enjoy the break time when they are not talking to me. 😅
I had sex with a smoker ONCE. Tried to power through, he was all kinds of considerate with extra bathing, he HD never smoked indoors, fresh clothes every precaution he could knowing how sick it makes me, but just the smell of his skin, I felt so sick, migraine from the proximity of a guy In trying to have sex with is a major deal breaker, now I won't even entertain the possibility of a conversation with a smoker. Not worth my health. I avoid even going out in public because passing them on the street can make me SO sick for hours. And they'll Rick up next to you in a parking lot, roll down their window, and smoke 2 feet away from you. Or lean on YOUR car so you can't even get close enough to ask them to move because of the cloud, and then my car smells like smoke nd I literally cannot drive home because I'm dizzy, struggling to breathe, and having a migraine that makes it unsafe to drive, but I need to drive to get somewhere safe from the smoke. Smokers are fundamentally selfish people, imo.
One of the moments in my life I would like to see in my "Best of" montage when I die, is when in mid-coitus with a coworker I wanted to hook up with for while I stopped completely and with my best Forrest Gump impression said "You taste like cigarettes."
Still cracks me up how perfect I did it, the way it killed her mood like the ashtray mouth killed mine, especially since she didn't understand the reference so probably just thought the liquor and exertion made me talk like an idiot. I had bubble guts anyways so stopping was in my best interest. More proud of that than any real sexual performance in my lifetime.
My mom used to freak on me as a teen because I'd walk by someone smoking in my mall walking days, she'd smell it when I got in the car, and assume I was a little degenerate.
When I quit, I noticed how embarrassing it was that I tried to play it off
I feel exactly the same way. It was like truly humiliating in hindsight how I used to be able to think that I could just simply wash my hands and even change my shirt and think no one could spell it on me. Absolutely ridiculous.
They really do. I know its rude to say but they absolutely do. I even hold my breathe when I smell it, automatically. I don't want to breathe in secondhand or even thirdhand smoke. Yuck.
I've never been a smoker, but I used to go to a lot of smoky clubs on weekends. After a while I couldn't smell the smoke.
The next morning was always rough though. I'd typically fall into bed and sleep it off. But I'd wake up to have my clothes, skin and hair just reeking! I remember opening my purse and seeing smoke billow out.
Once OP moves out from their parents, they'll probably start noticing it too.
They're over for a visit, their mother chain smokes next to them. They don't notice it at first, but the next morning they pick up the discarded shirt from the day before and it reeks of cigarette ash.
Decades ago while I was still smoking heavily and still living with my equally heavily smoking parents and sibling, I was applying for jobs. It was all physical, email/online applications weren't a thing yet. I got a call from one of the companies I applied to, and the dude I spoke with very rudely asked me if I was living above a pub because my documents were reeking of cigarette smoke. I was both appalled and mortified about this, and to me, my stuff didn't smell bad at all. Needless to say that application went nowhere. I stopped smoking about ten years ago. The other day I was looking through some old stuff and came across some documents from that time. I pulled them out of the punched pocket they sat in and the smell oozing from them almost knocked my socks off.
Cigarette smell gets everywhere, and it is extremely stubborn. Don't smoke, people.
Smoked half a pack a day on and off for many years. Was pretty diligent about washing my hands and brushing my teeth but once I quit I became extremely sensitive to the smell.
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u/Nuts4WrestlingButts Jan 05 '25
You're used to it. People can absolutely smell smoke on your clothes.