I’ve been reading the smoking thread, and I’m curious about something. The people I know who started smoking in high school were all people who had parents as smokers, with three exceptions. One of the exceptions never smoked much, and quit when he was about 20. The other two were adopted. Then I had two friends who picked up smoking in college. They were both people whose parents didn’t smoke when I knew them, but who had smoked when they were younger, and this is key: their mothers had smoked when they were pregnant with them.
I know a couple of women who quit smoking when they were pregnant, but started up again after the baby was born. I wondered at first how much good they really did the kid, but now I’m thinking maybe a lot. It probably had a higher birthweight, and maybe it will be a non-smoker.
Oh, there’s no option for people who don’t smoke and whose parents didn’t smoke, because I’m not really interested in that. Feel free to note it in a post, though.
My parents were both smokers. My dad picked it up when he was in the Army shortly after WWII. My mom started smoking when she was in college as a social thing - her dorm had a smoking lounge at the end of the hall, and I guess it didn’t occur to her she could still go there and socialize without doing the smoking part.
My dad smoked almost his whole life (weirdly enough, when he was moved to a nursing home a couple years before he died, he never once put up a fuss about not being able to smoke - he was stepped down with nicotine patches, but never a word about not having cigarettes). My mom quit when I was in grade school. I never smoked because I got the distinct message that they would kick my ass if I started. Definite ‘do as I say, not as I do’ vibe there.
Swap Mom for Dad and that’s pretty much my story too.
I never had any interest in trying cigs. I was a pretty bratty anti-smoker long before there was any support for that heresy.
Of my two bros one is like me: lifetime never-tried-it nonsmoker. The other bro picked up a few bad habits working low-end jobs in college. He has smoked off and on for 30ish years now. More on than off the last 15.
My father smoked until my teenage years. My mother never smoked. When I was 7, I asked my father to smoke one of his cigarettes. He told me that I could but that I had to finish the whole thing. I agreed. After a few puffs, I had enough. He made me smoke all of it, even through nausea.
Today, I have the lungs of a Disney princess. One of the best things the cunt ever did for me.
I later unintentionally “vaccinated” myself in the same way against beer and hard liquor.
My dad smokes and has done so my entire life. My brother started when he was about 16 and then I did too. I finally managed to quit some time in my early 30s but dad and bro still keep at it.
I definitely started cuz dad smoked. None of my friends smoked and I hid it from most of them. I hid it from my parents too for a bit (easy when the house smells like smoke) but I smoked a lot in college due to homesickness.
Also no option for dad smoked and mom never did. I have several siblings that smoked tobacco regularly for years, none of us do now. Some sibs never smoked. My dad’s been puffing 2-3 packs a day for 65 years now, just like his dad did into his 90’s. My mom followed a fairly strict and healthy diet but died of colon cancer in her early 40’s.
Went with option #2. My mother never smoked and my Dad quit when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old. I gave up cigarettes long ago but will still have a cigar now and then. And yes; I do inhale. I also dip most days.
No option for self smoked, or used to, but parents never smoked.
My mother never smoked ( my father did, but he wasn’t around to influence ) and I started about the age of 16. My father drank alcohol, but I didn’t.
Smoking gave me more pleasure than anything except three other things.
I smoked at least one pack a day for 22 years but I quit nine years ago. My older brother never even tried to smoke. Both my parents smoked when I was very young. My mom quit when I was maybe 12. My father was not in my life after I was six. He didn’t quit I don’t think but he wasn’t an influence.
I was closest to my grands. My grandfather smoked when I was very young but I don’t really remember it. I think he was really good about not smoking in the house or with us in the car. My grandmother never smoked that I know of.
No option for me, either: My father smoked fairly regularly, but quit before my mother got pregnant with me, and my mother was a 1960s era social smoker, also quit long before I was conceived. I grew up believing that they were lifelong nonsmokers. I started smoking at 17 and quit for the final time at 36.
I never smoked and neither did my mother or sister, but my father did all during my growing up (in spite of my asthma), even at the dinner table, where he made a half-hearted effort to blow the smoke out into the room instead of at the rest of us. During this time he also used to bite his fingernails down to the quick.
He eventually quit, much later in life. At around the same time, I noticed he had stopped biting his nails. Some kind of correlation there, I suppose. Anyway, I did try smoking cigarettes twice, and both times it made me so sick to my stomach that I couldn’t imagine why anyone wanted to do it.
As a young adult I smoked pipes and the occasional cigar, but I didn’t count that, since I didn’t inhale, and didn’t do it for very long.
My father was a lifelong smoker, but the doctor said his death from a brain aneurysm at age 69 was not related to smoking. I smoker for about 17 years, quit once in May 1992 and have never smoked since, not once.
Nor an option for people whose parents didn’t smoke, but they did.
My parents were vehement anti-smokers (even when it was generally accepted by the rest of society) and I ended up being a heavy smoker for 20 years. Thank og I’ve kicked it now.
I can’t say I’m a non-smoker, but it has been over 40 years since my last cigarette. I dream about it very rarely now, but at times I idly wonder whether I’m close enough to death to start again. At this point something else will likely kill me before the tobacco does, right?
My parents were both chain smokers; they’d light the new cigarette from the butt of the old one. The first thing they’d do every morning is light up, and then they’d smoke all day.
There were four of us kids.bthe oldest and youngest both smoked pretty heavily, but not to the extent my parents smoked, and we two middle ones never smoked at all.
