My mother is about as anti-smoking as a person can get. She has never smoked, and I grew up with her telling us how yucky and nasty smoking is. During my childhood in the 1970s, smoking was the default in most restaurants, and the non-smoking section was quite small. The only time I have ever seen my mother engage in rude behavior (usually she is very gracious) was at times when we were sitting in the tiny non-smoking section and she would glare at smokers legitimately smoking and make passive-aggressive coughs and the occasional sotto voce comment.
However, she is also attracted to the accessories of smoking. Beautiful cut-crystal ashtrays, those cool art deco cigarette boxes, for years she carried a neat, sort of international modern cigarette case in her purse, in which she kept post-it notes. She does collect a lot of nice, stylish things, but for someone who hates smoking and has always hated smoking, she has a lot of ashtrays, table lighters, and other cigarette stuff. When I pointed this out to her, she was amazed to realize this – and admitted that on some level, she associates smoking with elegance and style.
I’m in. I take no recreational drugs except a little alcohol, and yet sometimes I feel an urge to light up. I’ve never lit one up in my life. I’ve handled them, very occasionally, mainly to pass from one person to the next. I have no interest in the actual smoking, but I do like the look of it, and sometimes it can be very sexy-looking, the movements, I suppose.
If pot was legal I’d be smoking it.
So…where do I sign up for this support group? Are there dues?
I know exactly what you’re talking about. When I was little I couldn’t wait to try smoking. Something about inhaling and exhaling smoke. In fact, I used to get cap guns, drill out the orange cap, then I could shoot off a bunch of rounds and inhale the smoke from that. I could blow perfect smoke rings years before I had my first cigarette.
Yes, my dad smoked, but he NEVER smoked in the house, so it’s not that this was an addiction waiting to happen, it was that fact that I was so fascinated with it AND I got to watch it everyday AND when I was finally ready to try, the cigarettes were readily available.
Interesting. It took me 15 years after I quit to stop craving them. Now, nearly 45 years after I quit, the whole idea is disgusting. I sometimes ask my wife how she put up with me. She has no answer.
Let me know when the meetings start. Neither of my parents smoked when I was growing up, but it has always seemed like a great way to unwind after a stressful day. One would think it’d seem less attractive, as smoking is banned from more places, but taking a quick break outside on a cool evening seems like a pleasant thing to do. As has been said, you have something to do with your hands, there’s the deep, measured breathing. Very ritualistic. I had a friend in college who felt much the same way, and we’d smoke together every once in awhile. Not enough to become dependent on it, maybe once a night for a few days, then nothing for a few months. If I could’ve kept that up, smoking without the addiction or health risks, I would.
I grew up with smoking parents. I’ve never smoked anything in my life, but the summer of '96 was very stressfull. I was commuting to college for the summer, taking 21 credits, and working nights in a convenience store. I was frequently tempted to light up a cigarette - it just seemed the thing to do. To light up, to take a drag, to stand still, calm my mind, exhale.
The only thing that stopped me was that I didn’t have a spare penny to my name. I had to beg my parents for gas money, all of my cash had gone to tuition, and a pack of cigarettes cost an hour’s wages.
I’ve never had the urge since.
Yeah, smoking is cool. Sorry. I’ve never smoked cigs much myself but I’ve tried cigars and a pipe for a while and I was hooked on dip for 20 years. The whole ritual with each form of tobacco was fun. The comradery when you find others with the same habit was fun. The taste and feeling of that first dip or smoke in the morning or after a meal - very tasty. So many things are attractive about smoking yet, in the end, it is a nasty, evil habit that is almost impossible to break. That lovely, tasty, pleasant smelling tobacco will not let you go without a fight once it gets its claws into you. When you find yourself scraping tobacco residue off the floor because the stores are closed and you need some nicotine, well, some of the glamour is gone at that point.
I have never smoked in a habitual way, but in my single years, when smoking socially was more prevalent and acceptable, I would do it sometimes when I went out. I could have a bunch in a night or over the rare weekend when my friends and I were causing mayhem, but would simply stop when the fun stopped. I could smoke for a day or three and then not do it for a year. So - maybe a pack or two a year over a few-year period in my 20’s?
That is a long-winded way of saying: yeah, I get the allure of smoking, but if I ever had the sense that I couldn’t just walk away, I would’ve freaked. Now I have maybe 1 cigarette a year when I am hanging out with one friend who smokes…and now that it is far less prevalent, I have no problem ignoring it…
…but when I was by myself or with a friend, hanging out at a bar, waiting for everybody to show up and nursing a Jack/rocks and gearing up for a night out? Yeah, I could get all Bogie behind a cigarette and enjoy the wisp of smoke curling up…
I grew up in two non-smoking households, and as a kid I was an annoying nag at my mom’s friends who smoked (which she subtlely encouraged).
However, I always had a real desire to try smoking–something about it just appealed to me. Like you, I think it was the **action **of smoking. I started smoking some time freshman year of college (late 2001), and I more-or-less quit in the fall of 2007. I still smoked on and off until last summer–I’ve had the occasional single cigarette since then (maybe a half-dozen total), but they’ve all resulted in me saying, “Yep, this wasn’t as enjoyable as I was expecting it to be, not gonna start this again.”
When I did smoke, it wasn’t terribly heavy–probably 3-8 cigarettes most days. I never went higher than a pack in a day, and that was only on rare, very stressful occasions (like on a particularly bad day during finals week)–never more than a few times a year. But I definitely got addicted, and I wasn’t able to actually quit long enough to break the addiction until I truly no longer enjoyed smoking.
So! If you want to try smoking, keep in mind that there’s a good chance that, since you’ve already expressed an interest, you **will **get addicted, and you **will **spend at least a few years smoking.
That being said… I’m not sure I would change my decision to smoke. Many of my best friends now are people I met through smoking, one way or another. Would I still have met them if I hadn’t smoked? Maybe, maybe not.
