So ... how's it going with the smokers?

The natives have for some reason decided that the sale of booze and cigarettes promote the advancement of the corona virus.

The idiot driving this is the same moron who promoted the use of beetroot as a cure to HIV.

Truly amazing that we have so many brainless morons running the show in this country. Is it any wonder that this country of ours is in the state it is?

Any way ... some of the folks I know are climbing the walls. Their booze and cigarettes supplies have run out.

I heard a man was so desperate for a smoke that he stabbed a shop keeper to death the other day when he refused to sell him a pack of cigarettes.

How are you smokers coping?

Thank god I don't smoke any more.

I know many who drink everyday. A bottle of wine for dinner ... a few relaxing whiskies after supper. A beer or 3 at night ... every night. They claimed not to have developed a dependency ... and yet they find themselves agitated ... easily irritated ... short tempered .. grumpy.

Goes to show that one doesn't have to be an alcoholic to be dependent on booze.

It really is amazing how an addiction can sneak up on you when you're not looking.

Grandpa headache powders had me by the short and curlies 10 years ago.

Any way ... best of luck to you. 

Just another reason why this is such a kak country to live in.

I am also lucky. I stopped smoking in 1977. I have never been a heavy drinker in any case but haven’t been drinking since January in any case. Alcohol and my treatment is not quite a good match. 

But then, you can buy alcohol in any cafe or supermarket in the U.K.  Even the ones at the petrol stations. And even during the lockdown.  

I miss the beer...the batch of pineapple beer I made isn't bad, but not the same thing. I have 2 bottles of brandy and about 3 bottles of red wine left( and some other miscellaneous bits of booze), but that doesn't quite do it for me either...not bad, but not beer...almost the same as water...first thing I do after things normalize is learning to make a proper lager myself and stockpiling enough ingredients to last a lifetime...never iny wildest dreams did I imagined to be deprived of both beer and sport simultaneously...luckily I quit smoking more than 2 years ago.

They stopped the sale of alcohol and tobacco to stretch poor people on lockdown's money.  Good thought, but it had the opposite effect...it just hiked the price till all the money was gone anyway. 

Ceradyne ... I thought your illness was temporary. Like a cold or a mild flu. Something you'd recover from shortly with medicine.

Sounds a little more serious than that.

Sorry to hear about it. 

I quit smoking in 2009. As for drinking, not much of a drinker myself. 3 beers is all I need to put me out of sorts.

I have a bottle of whiskey. Have had it for a few months now.

The one drink I can't seem to get enough of is Tomato Juice. Luckily it's part of the essential foods stuffs ... so I'm sorted.

Be safe.

Thanks CC. Nope it is a bit more serious than that, unfortunately. 

I heard rumours of quite widespread sale of cigarettes and liquor on the black market and that dishonest sellers are  making more than up to 5 00% profit on sales.   It is possible that some politicians may be involved in the scam. - but that is just a guess.          

" It is possible that some politicians may be involved in the scam. - but that is just a guess.  "

Nooit!

I stopped smoking over twenty years ago but to expect smokers to go cold turkey overnite is ridiculous........a tobacco addiction's comparable to junkies & crackheads hooked on heroin or meths.

 I've a friend who successfully underwent surgery for lung cancer & now celebrates his good fortune by returning to his daily pack of fags, which btw in NZ cost approx R300 a pack.

NZ bottle stores are closed but beer, wine & tobacco's available at all supermarkets.

“ I've a friend who successfully underwent surgery for lung cancer & now celebrates his good fortune by returning to his daily pack of fags, which btw in NZ cost approx R300 a pack.”

What an idiot! His medical insurance should bill him for the cost of the op. 

Well most of the R300 a pack goes straight into govt. coffers which in turn provides free hospitals for the volk.

Bliksem Blob. Are you really condoning a guy who was saved from lung cancer, who jumps back onto the kak habit of smoking?

Trust me, I do not wish cancer on anybody but I cannot see how this guy could be deemed cool. 

BTW. The fact that he had been “cured from lung cancer” through surgery is no certainty that he has been cleared from cancer. Those cells are microscopic and there is no guarantee that there has not been a single cancer cell left in his body. There is absolutely no reason to tempt fate by smoking again. 

Vlag, tobacco is a terrible addiction and hazardous to all forms of cancer.  I also know someone in remission who started smoking again.

I've smoked for years and quited and started again a few times. Luckily I know this time is different. Something in my head is just different...but I have lots of sympathy for someone struggling to quit. 

Having said that, coming back from lung cancer and continuing smoking is next level stupidity.

Draad, I fully understand the addiction of smoking and I have never in my life embarked on an anti smoking campaign like so many ex-smokers often do. I was lucky. I only smoked for about three to four years and I stopped in 1977 at the age of 20. Even that is as difficult as hell and I only succeeded on the second attempt. That is why I have never condemned smoking and smokers, despite that smoking and tabacco  smoke irritates the crap out of me. 

But the idea of surviving lung cancer and then start smoking again is utter bullshit and a slap in the faces of the medical personnel who saved his life. And then the audacity of Blob condoning it. 

Ja, a bit absurd to me too, but I've known quite a few people who couldn't stay smoke free after triple heart bypasses. Stubbornness??? What the hell for? I don't know why, but it happens.

Addiction is a bastard. I had a guy working for me as a rep who was a gambling addict. He gambled away a house of just over a million Rand in the early 2000s. He had himself banned from the local casino. Even that did not help. He knew the security guys at the casino. 

He once did a big deal where I paid him a big commission. I phoned his wife and asked if what I should do. She said that the safe option would either be to paid it out in increments or, if possible pay it out to her. They could not really afford loosing the money, since they really had quite a bit of debt and this commission would have made a huge dent in it.

I was really concerned about the guy and his family and tried to help him onto the trailer and narrow. His wife was also really supportive. Many wives would probably have kicked his arse out but she stood by him because deep down he was really a good person. 

In the end she decided that I should just pay out the commission and hope for the best because it looked like he was coming to grips again and she didn’t want to stuff up his self confidence, which was slowly starting to recover as well. 

I transferred the money and he was really proud of himself for pulling of the deal and he could start sorting his financial stuff. 

The next day he didn’t come into the office and I immediately phoned him. He told me everything was cool and he was on his way to see a client in a nearby town. After about an hour I phoned again and his phone went to voicemail. I phoned the client and he confirmed that they had an appointment and that the guy called him to say that he was running late. I waited another thirty minutes and called again. Voicemail. I decided to call his wife. She couldn’t leave her job and asked if I would do her a favour and drive out to the casino and check up on him. I found him at a slot machine. He was just busy feeding the last of his money into the fucking slot machine. 

There's so many different types of addictions out there.

Stuffing one's face with large quantities of food seems to be popular in my neighbourhood. It gets so bad that some have to have their limbs amputated.They start their day off with 8 bottles of pills all lined up nicely in a row. 

They know where their addiction is leading them and yet they're unable to stop themselves.

Hell of a thing.

A colleague of mine stopped smoking awhile back. He likes to sniff an open box of cigarettes. I can't relate to that. It stinks to high heaven if you ask me.

Breaking an addiction is tough. You have to want it bad to succeed,

The biggest favour I ever did for myself was quitting cigarettes.