I have a super power now.
 

It's awesome! Kinda...

I got asthmatic bronchitis, and as such, I had to quit smoking for a while. (Hopefully longer) I was put on an inhaler, and 3 different kinds of large pills. The side effect from this is that I now have super sensitive smelling!

It started with the ladies in my office... normally I smell perfume, or lunch or a candle or whatever, only if it is really strong, now I am smelling everything. I can smell the hairspray from 2 cubes over. I can smell the bread from 3 cubes over from someone's lunch... YESTERDAY, sitting in the bottom of their trashcan. Someone made coffee this morning down the hall and behind 3 closed doors, and I could smell it.

Until now, it has never occurred to me how closely scent and taste are combined. I had some Chinese food for lunch today, my favorite all time food, General Tso's chicken. It was different. It was horrible. Everything tasted like fish, everything that had previously been my favorite food was now disgusting.

I can't walk by someone that had smoked... at all ... ever in their life, or I would know it. I was immediately aware that they were a smoker. I walked by someone inside a store today and knew in an instant that they had just smoked a menthol cigarette.

Outside smells so much better than inside, I stood outside today for 5 minutes and just inhaled. It was amazing.

I think that I am going to go to the police dept tomorrow and apply for a job as a bloodhound. I have been working on my bark.... Still needs work.

Anyone else ever develop superpowers? Super-Sight, Ultra-Hearing, Can you shoot lasers out of your nipples?

I've got the nipple thing. It's great.

Crack, with great power comes great responsibility. Don't ever forget that.

My "power" is my severe allergy. My nose tickles when I'm within about 100 feet of a cat, assuming I'm downwind. When I'm really close to the cat, I also have the power to have my eyes water, to sneeze uncontrollably, and to have my windpipe close.

Still, if I was ever in a zoo escape situation my skill may actually come in handy.

That reminds me. I'm allergic to the sun. Anyone who knows me also knows that as soon as I hit sunlight, I sneeze.

Man, that's a situationally appropriate shirt.

My main goal in life is to be situationally appropriate. I usually fail.

Crack, how long have you been a smoker? I think what you are describing is just a normal sense of smell and you have just rediscovered it. Describes what I live with anyway...

I also have a super-sensitive sense of smell. I can guess what my husband ate hours after he ate it. He calls me "bloodhound". But as the OP points out, it can also be annoying.

I have highly acute hearing and often pick up on humming noises that other people don't. It doesn't necessarily make me a better listener though!

i can piss about 5 metres when ive got a full load.. does that count?

My former avatar reveals my hidden super power:

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a13...NotAGenius.jpg

That's better.

Will, I'm going to carry a picture of you in my helmet.

Unless I am mistaken I think that this happens to everyone at some point in time. Such as when you enter a new environment and notice every smell. My opinion is that it could be an evolutional type of thing where we subsonsciencely pay more sense to our senses and then they are dulled down again so that we may concentrate on the task at hand. Think about it. Isnt much more difficult now to think about something or complete a task without being sidetracked sense yours senses changed? Its probobaly a mental deal that takes place in the head. Hopefully that makes sense to someone.

BTW My super skill is being Super Stoned.

I already do.

Superpowers? Well, with my contacts in, my vision is very slightly worse than 20/10. I see sound. I have a freakishly high pain tolerance. I have very sensitive hearing.

And let's not forget the X-ray vision.

OMG I have super smell too!

I live a good 50-75ft off the road but if a car drives by with someone smoking I can smell it from inside my house! Smells like someone is standing right outside my door blowing smoke under it.

Congratulations on your super powered olfaction.
I hope your new found abilities do not drive you mad.
With special powers comes special responsibilities.
I should know, I possess both human-like strength and stamina!

Now tell me what I smell like from there....

I pulled an enormous glob of earwax out once. I felt like I had super hearing.

/grossout

Well not sure if you call it a super power but every time my girlfriend uses alcohol to cook I can smell it and instantly tell which brand/type of alcohol it is. She freaked out the other night when I asked her what the secret ingredient was in her chicken because it smelled weird. Mind you I don't drink and cant stand the taste of any alcohol but once I told her it smells like Heineken (however u spell it) she was amazed.

Beef and cheese.

What do I win?

I have really good hearing. I can hear people whispering in the other room if I press my ears against the wall.

i have the opposite super power. my sense of smell is so blunted that no odor bothers me. except a homeless drunks feet. thats just nasty.

Good luck to you on quitting. It was 20+ years ago that I quit when I too had asthmatic bronchitis. I really didn't want a cigarette for days. By the time I was better the physical addiction to nicotene was broken however the habitual portion of it was still there. That took several weeks to break. Don't go back. You're more than half way home. Good luck. :thumbsup:

I have really sensitive hearing as well.
My problem is deciphering what people are saying when they mumble.
But the jewelry counters at stores will give me a massive headache after two or three minutes and I can tell if I left my computer running across the condo.
My sense of smell has greatly improved since i quit smoking.
Now I can more intensely be offended by the stank of my coworkers' perfume.
Hooray.

My superpower is my insane ability to use logical reasoning very quickly. For example, I can use it to see if an associate is lying to me regarding a task they supposedly completed, or I can point out what is technically wrong with a movie or commercial. (My wife HATES it when I do that)

A close friend of mine has super keen smell. He has snorted a ton of coke so I have no idea how, but several times he has blown my mind with his smell. We were driving down the freeway one day, behind a semi. My pal starts looking befuddled by the air, sniffing about. He looked to me and said, "That trucker must've just gotten some coffee." I laughed my ass off, what a dork for even saying that. This persisted for like five minutes. I didn't smell a thing, but he insisted that the trucker had fresh coffee.

We sped up and passed the trucker. He had his window open and was pouring coffee from a thermos to a cup. No shit. Freaked me out.

Does anything else taste funny to you? The reason I ask is because I got Dysguesia about 7 years ago. I got a really, really bad case of Bronchidis without going to the doctor and it scarred my olfactory nerves for life (literally). Smells are all screwed up now and for a brief period (a few months) my sense of smell was WAY sensitive. Let me know if sweets or other smells are perceived differently now!!

Crack...I think you might have turned into a cat...check your mirror!

Now that you've got this super-sensitive sense of smell, you have to train it to recognize scents. That's the fun part! We did a lab in one of my biology classes to test our senses of smell, and had to smell 30 or so different scents and identify them. Most people have a very inaccurate sense of smell; sure, they can smell something, but they have no idea what they're smelling.

Go forth and sniff.

Does it make that awesome pew pew sound or is it just a boring hum?

That aside, it is strange. The question is whether it was due to the absence of smoking or the medicine. Were you prescribed any nasal sprays or similar type medicine. A steroid? In any case, it can be a blessing at times I suppose.. but there are many odors I could definitely do without.

As for my secret powers? I can put my feet behind my head.. that is about it, just a bit flexible. Sorry I couldn't come up with anything more impressive.

I think I can match you with the super smell. And my hearing is good, at least compared to many city-folk that I know.

On the other hand.... Line a bunch of coffee's, beers or scotches up and I can barely taste the difference. So maybe my sense of taste is just average.

you might like this then:

http://intuitor.com/moviephysics/index.html

Crack, move to France and rule the truffle industry!

All kidding aside, reread this post:
You may be on the verge of a serious lifelong nervous system disfunction. Get thee to the doctor to check this out. Or search for Lasereth's previous posts about dysguesia, then run to the doctor.

Thank you, Sion. It is an interesting site.

my sense of smell sounds like what you used to have before. i can't smell shit unless it's strong. my senses in general aren't that great, no spidey sense for me

What a great magical sense of smell!
My super power is the ability to organize a massive pile of stuff into a small, confined, orderly space. This comes in handy more often than one might think.