Does everything smell and taste better after you quit smoking?
Video discusses how your senses become more accurate after quitting.
Comments from the Freedom from Nicotine board:
The question was posed of whether or not an individual will ever get to the point that he or she will will not like the smell of cigarette smoke. There is real variation in this effect with ex-smokers.
Most will get to the point that they really don't like the smell of cigarette smoke. Some get there in a matter of days after quitting.
There are some people who seem to like the smell for the rest of their lives. They truly are the minority though.
There is one other interesting group. People who quit and still like the smell of smoke for quite a long time period–sometimes for years in fact. Then one day out of the blue, the person gets a direct whiff of smoke and it almost makes the person sick. The individual often goes on to despising the smell of smoke for the rest of his or her life.
I don't know what causes the sudden shift in senses, but I have seen this phenomena happen to quite a few people over the years.
Whether an individual likes the smell of smoke or not, he or she should know that by quitting that the vast majority of people that he or she encounters will like his or her smell more as long as he or she continues to stick to his or her personal commitment to never take another puff.
Also from that string:
Is it true that everything smells and tastes better when you quit smoking? Nope. Everything smells and tastes more accurate when you quit smoking. More accurate does not necessarily mean better. When your first spring time rolls around after you quit smoking you will likely smell the aromas of flowers that smell much more intense and also likely much more pleasant than you perceived while you were still smoking. You will likely say that these aromas do smell much better.
But drive by a garbage dump or a sewage treatment plant now and see how much better it smells since you quit smoking. The odds are it will not smell better but may in fact smell much worse and more pungent than before.
The same principle applies to tastes. You may find that you start to perceive new flavors in foods. You may find that certain vegetables in a salad actually have a flavor while for the years you smoked you may have thought they were only added to give the salad a crunch. This does not automatically mean you will like the flavor.
You may find that you were spicing foods a lot more when you were a smoker too just so you could taste them. If you prepare the foods with the same amount of spicing as you did while smoking you may find that it is way over spiced for your new found taste buds.
So while not everything is going to smell and taste better–things are going to smell and taste more accurate. While not all things will smell better, one thing you should know for sure is that you are going to smell a whole lot better to the rest of the non-smoking world as long as you always remember to Never Take Another Puff!
Joel
Related resources:
