Smokers: just out of curiousity, how did you overcome your first smoking experience to continue smoking? I’ve heard (I’ve never tried it) that most everybody coughs and chokes on their first cigarette and generally it’s a miserable experience.
This isn’t one of those “why do you do it?” threads, just wondering what made you stick with it?
I haven’t smoked for nearly 25 years. That means that I was 30 when I quit. It was a 2 pack a day habit.
Why did I start? All the cool guys did it and I was a teenager that wanted to be cool more than anything else.
Sure It made me cough. Made me dizzy too. Real cool guys are tough you know.
my first cig was great. i got quite a buzz off of it, didn’t cough or anything (well, i coughed lightly on the very first drag, but it was hardly miserable). so i kept doing it.
and for a while, i was only smoking about 3/day so each gave me a nice buzz, though nothing close to the first time.
now i smoke a pack a day and it’s been years since i’ve had any kind of good effect from cigarettes.
all my friends seem to remember their fist cig’s effect as something you wish you still got from smoking. i’ve only heard the horror stories from people who smoked some in high school but wisely quit soon after.
My first cigarette was a Marlboro Menthol (icky yucky plech blech ug). I didn’t like it, so I tried a Camel Light mmmmmm smoooth.
I coughed. My mouth tasted like a wet ashtray. I almost fell down each time I took a drag from the dizzy buzz, but I kept going.
I think I just kept at it because all my friends smoked, and I’m pretty sure I have an oral fixation (there is nothing you can say that hasn’t already been said about that)
I quit in June though. Yeah me! I can taste again!
in ninth grade, my physical science teacher told us that it is possible that humankind could destroy earth in our lifetimes and a lot of us would have to go live in space. (i don’t know if this has any legitimacy, but i thought it was true at the time) he also said that only the really healthy people could go and smoking just one cigarette would impair the lungs enough to not pass the physical required to go into space. i am terrified of the concept of infinity and therefore the thought of going into space is not comprehendable by my terrified brain. that day after school i went to my step-sister (the “evil” step-sister who was always doing scandilous things and rebelling to the furthest extent) and got a benson and hedges 100 and choked so hard i never thought i would stop.
then i smoked for about five more years and quit the night before my 18th birthday.
I think this is actually quite an interesting question. You’re absolutely right - with very rare exceptions (like acconav) the first cig is a very disagreeable experience. So why does anyone go on to develop the habit?
Well, it usually only takes 1 or 2 more, and the opportunity to try a couple more times is almost always there. I’d guess maybe the addictive power of nicotine means the experience can present itself as a kind of challenge and reward. It becomes a challenge to see if you can overcome that initial bad reaction. The lure is the ‘reward’ of the kick, the drug, the relaxation… or whatever seems to be the appeal at the time.
In my case, alcohol was a major contributor. It made things much easier. Plus, the girl I was dating at the time was a smoker and I didn’t want to look stupid. So, we’d be at a bar, I’d get a few beers into me and light up. Sure, I had to make like I wasn’t about to shiver and gag uncontrollably, but it was well worth it. :rolleyes:
I started smoking when I was 16 and quit about nine years later. I did not have any bad experiences such as described in the OP.
First there was pseudo-smoking. (Actually it started with this girl who lived next door…I wanted her to like me, etc., and she would offer me a cigarette when she lit up, you see…). I would light the cigarette, pull smoke into my mouth, then blow smoke out of my mouth.
It wasn’t until later that I was instructed on how the act is done: you pull it into your mouth, hold it there a second, then inhale it along with some fresh air behind it. I tried that, did not cough, got high on the nicotine, giddy, had to sit down, body felt good, hey I like this!
I was willing to accept addiction, reasoning that since I liked it, it was OK that I would not be able to stop.
What I didn’t realize is that with addiction comes minimization of the pleasant sensations that come with one’s first nicotine intoxication. When you’re a regular smoker, you smoke to feel normal, not to feel great. You stop smoking, you go through withdrawal symptoms. But I digress.
I was at a friend’s house with another friend and neither of us could get a ride home. We knew we were going to get into trouble for being late home and we hadn’t even done anything to deserve it. We’d sat indoors all day reading magazines and eating brownies. So we decided that if we were going to get into trouble, we’d do something to make it worth it. We found a packet of cigarettes. My friends had one each, I had two and threw up (three years later, I realised that this was because my idea of smoking was to swallow the smoke instead of inhaling it). I felt sick for the rest of the night.
After that, I started smoking whenever I felt stressed. I believed that smoking alleviated stress. My mother used to rush into the bathroom for a cigarette every time we had a fight, so I secretly started doing the same thing. I smoked for five years and then quit.