I don’t smoke unless I’m drinking or stressed. I don’t get stressed that much. I drink all the time.
Since I started the thread I want to be clear that I wasn’t trying to create doubt about the addictiveness (physical or psychological) of smoking and I would have been fine with it if it turned out that studies showed that smoking once resulted in addiction 99% of the time.
As was suggested I am sure the thread title is drawing the “casual” smokers out of the woodwork. I also wouldn’t be surprised if many of the “casual” smokers who have posted would find they were wrong about whether they were addicted if they really did try to call a complete halt to it. And I’m sure that if they were compelled to post in this thread that the social smokers would be dwarfed by all the Dopes who have a hell of time quitting (successfully or not).
I personally have no direct experience. I smoked once when I was 8. I was caught by my mom (and hadn’t liked it anyway) and never had an urge again. I’ve never smoked pot either.
Because I was just trying to provide a demonstration of what I was looking for I left off the second half of my mom’s story in my OP. She quit in her late 20s with no difficulty at all and then didn’t touch another cigarette for 20 years (meanwhile my stepfather quit a thousand time over that period, I even saw him smoking while chewing nicotine gum). After 20 years she had a boyfriend who smoked so she took it up again. A few months later she decided she didn’t like it after all and it has been three years since she tried to quit again and has not found success. So while she wasn’t addicted the first time, it happened very quickly the next opportunity she gave it.