This is for anyone who has ever tried a cigarette, whether or not you continue(d) to smoke.
Why did you first light up a cigarette? How old were you? What do you remember about the experience? Do you still smoke? If so, how frequently? What part of the world do you live in – is it common or uncommon for others like you (gender, social class, etc) to smoke where you live?
I took hits off cigarettes a couple of times when I was a little kid – once when I was like 8 another time when I was 10 or 11. Both times was out of curiosity. Neither time did I inhale. I first tried seriously when I was 16, at a party, to look cool. At that time I was hanging around with mostly older people who smoked and my occasional bumming from them (which was basically just about novelty, rebellion and coolness) soon turned into a genuine habit. I started buying my own packs and I smoked a pack a day for about 12 years. All I remember about the first few times trying to smoke was trying to inhale and coughing my ass off. It was more about the look to me than any real satisfaction from the tobacco. Then it soon became about the addiction, pure and simple.
Cigarettes are a weird thing. Most non-smokers don’t realize that it takes some serious effort to get started on them. Young lungs simply don’t like smoke being hurled at them and inhaling (real smoking) is a learned skill. I got my first exposure to tobacco through Skoal. A friend shared it with me before a camping trip and I hung in there as long as I could before I keeled over and couldn’t stand up for an hour or two. I felt like absolute shit for a few hours but I tried it again a few days later being the typical idiot that most humans are.
Actual cigarettes came at age 15. I got a job in a grocery store and EVERYBODY there smoked on breaks or just by going into the back room or the bathrooms. Back in the day (1989), there was no minimum age to buy cigarettes in Louisiana so I tried them with my coworkers on breaks. They tried to show me the techniques but I couldn’t really inhale for a couple of weeks and I was determined to master it. Unfortunately, that is the catch. By the time you master smoking properly you are almost certainly addicted or close to it. I smoked a pack of Marlboro Reds a day from age 15 - 18 and then quit in college which was very difficult by any measure.
I was nine or ten I guess–I sneaked one of my dad’s Pall Malls. One puff was all I needed…I’ve never smoked tobacco since.
I have vague memories of trying one of my friend’s brothers cigarettes when he was about 16-17, which would put me about 10 or 11 at the time. But the first clear memory I have of smoking a cigarette was after an argument with my flatmate/friend with benefits at the time (who I later married, so we got over the argument).
Having decided to not renew our lease and go our separate ways, we sat outside and I had a cigarette. Since then I’ve probably smoked a total of fewer than 10 packs of cigarettes, and that’s coming up on 8 years ago now.
I’m in Australia (Sydney to be more exact), and while I read statistics that say 1/4 of people my age smoke, I have not seen much evidence to that. Out of our main group of 4 people, one smoked for years, quit, went back to it, and recently quit again. My wife and I smoke irregularly, and the other one just decided to take it up about 6 months ago. She still bumpuffs though.
Not me – I’ve never smoked tobacco, but I’ve tried smoking marijuana once. That was pretty rough on my unused-to-tobacco throat! (And I never ever tried tobacco, because no-one ever told me that there was anything good about it, while at least some of my friends got a pleasant high from marijuana.)
My favorite cousin gave me my first puff. She was babysitting me and my brother. I must have been 8 or 9. I got sick from it and she fed me a jelly sandwich.
I didn’t try again until I was about 14. My experience is similar to Dio’s – I thought it looked cool. This was 1959 or thereabouts, and all the cool, rebellious kids smoked. :dubious:
Yeah, it does take awhile to get comfortable with it. Not just inhaling without coughing, but learning how to hold the cigarette, how to carry them (pocket or purse, case or plain) how to light it (especially in the wind - cupping the cig in your hands), how to not get the end all wet and slobbery, how to get the stink off so your parents won’t know. It ain’t easy.
I did not mean to above to suggest that there are MORE smokers than statistics relay. My eyes tell me the number is actually far fewer than 1 in 4 people being smokers. The group discussion was merely my immediate social circle. In my ‘other’ social circle, I am the only one that smokes at all… so it swings both ways.
I can’t remember. It was definitely at some point in high school, but can’t pinpoint it. It wasn’t until college that I started buying packs of cigarettes (Camels.) I also hand rolled my own cigarettes, and also smoked cloves. (And also smoked a lot of weed, too.) This went on for about 3 years. I was never a heavy smoker and one pack of cigarettes would last me for a month - and that includes cigarettes given away to other people. I never thought of myself as having a habit, and I basically smoked on an as-wanted basis. If I felt like having a cigarette (usually when drunk or high, or while stuck in traffic or while waiting for something,) I had one. I never craved them at random times, and there would be months where I’d go without smoking any cigarettes at all.
Now, I don’t smoke anything anymore. OK, I will smoke a briar pipe now and then, very rarely.
I was about 12 or so. My mother (who at that stage still smoked) gave me one so that I’d realise how disgusting cigarettes were. A couple of puffs were enough. I haven’t ever smoked another one.
I can’t really remember my actual first one. I think it was in high school; we were at a karaoke place, and one of the girls offered me one. I really didn’t take a proper drag - I had no idea how to do it properly.
The cigarette that led to my becoming an irregular smoker was in Paris (I was 21); I met a Korean girl there and hung out with her a bit, and she was a chain smoker. I tried one and she taught me to inhale and how to hold it and stuff. It was interesting, but I wasn’t particularly keen on making a habit out of it until my best friend got back from her exchange program in the US. She’d become a drinker-smoker and because it was usually the two of us I started smoking occasionally to keep her company. Now I smoke more than she does.
Dad was sleeping, and his pack of KOOLS were in his shirt pocket, his shirt hanging on the bedroom doorknob. I was nine. Snatched one of his squares, lit it on the kitchen stove. I swallowed the smoke because I wasn’t sure how to inhale. After that, I smoked whenever I could bum from an older friend or purloin a pack from the grocery store (I would’ve paid the 26 cents, but they wouldn’t sell them to me). I learned how to inhale. By age 13, I was smoking close to a pack a day. My parents were unable to stop me 'cause I was stupid AND stubborn (but clever), so they tried controlling the amount I smoked. Yeah. I had the pack from which they counted, AND the pack they didn’t know about. I’m 51 now, and excepting the one year I successfully “quit”, have smoked ever since.
I now have chronic bronchitis and emphysema, which adds up to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder. While I’m anxious to “quit” again, I fully expect Lung Cancer to be the cause of my earthly demise. I’ve justified it all by reminding myself that “you don’t get something for nothing”, and to a great extent, I’ve enjoyed smoking. We’ll see what I think when I take my final breath…
I was around cigarette smoke before I was born - but essentially, from the day I was born. I think that has something to do with how “easy” it was for me to start.
I smoked my first cigarette when I was somewhere around 13 - for me, at that point in time, it was like coming home. I enjoyed the sensation of drawing smoke into my lungs.
This was around 1987 - I was in private school, and smoking was the cool, rebellious thing to do. I think I was hooked from the first one I smoked.
I do not smoke any longer. I quit 7 months ago using Chantix to help me. Sometimes I miss smoking, however physically I’m ok with not having one - it’s like my receptors finally got switched off.
I work at a university, which has it’s share of smoking students. There’s actually a fair number of people around this city that do smoke - but I think there are fewer than in the last place I lived. Smoking is pretty restricted in public places here, so maybe that means I notice those who are outdoors more.
My parents smoked. A lot.
I remember being about 12 and intentionally sitting near whoever was smoking and inhaling the smoke while the cigarette was resting, lit, in the ashtray. It gave me a kind of neat feeling if I did it long enough. Sick, but kind of a nice feeling sort of sick.
I started smoking regularly about age 14 because I was hanging out with a boy I had a crush on one afternoon and he offered me one. I was so used to secondhand smoke by then that I had no problems actually smoking it. He gave me a cigarette every few days; within a month or so, I was just smoking, openly, my parent’s cigarettes. Mom was mortified, but didn’t bother trying to make me stop. I started buying my own when I got my first job.
My siblings all smoked by age 15 or so too. Only two (out of 8) have quit permanently, although I quit for about three years. I just tossed a pack into the garbage one day, not feeling like smoking. I didn’t struggle at all with not smoking, but I picked it back up a few years later for no good reason - I just felt like a cigarette. Kept it up 10 more years, at least a pack a day.
Now I smoke occasionally. I tapered off over a few months; now I’ll smoke two or three cigarettes a month, usually with a drink or after a crappy day at work. I have no idea why I do this, as I really loathe the smell now, but I still like smoking.
My dad was always a smoker. He once told me he quit chewing tobacco because it was getting in the way of his cigarette addiction. THe smell of Camels is a very, very powerful one for me, and even now, I find the smell to be very soothing. He quit around the time my little sister was born (I was 6) and didn’t start again until around 9 or 10 years later, at which time he switched to cigars. His parents smoked. My mom smoked, though she stopped when she got pregnant with me, and only smoked “socially” (and weed) after that. I’ve dreamt about smoking from a very young age, since way before I had my first cigarette.
With all of that influence and cigarettes available, I waited until I was about 17 to try my first one (a Marlboro red).
And it was like I had been waiting for it all my life. I got an immediate buzz, and thought it was the best thing ever. I didn’t have to teach myself to enjoy it. I enjoyed it on the first inhale.
Despite my immediate attraction to it, I threw away the rest of the pack. Now I smoke 1 or 2 cigarettes a day, and have kept up that level for about…4 years. I know I should quit, but I still get a buzz from my daily cigarette. Sometimes I’m forced to go without for whatever reason, and I can without any withdrawals or problems. But I still like that buzz.
I was three.
My mother told me she looked over the edge of the porch and there was my brother and I sitting on the grass. My brother swiped some smokes from my mom and was attempting to light up and of course he could not leave out his baby sister.
My parents forced him to smoke five or six unfiltered Camels with no response. My dad stated he was not a real man unless he smoked cigars. That turned him green and induced vomiting.
He still became a smoker several years later.
I did not smoke again until twelve or thirteen, coughed my brains out and left it alone.
I officially started smoking at fifteen and I still smoke.
Wow. Couldn’t that kill a kid or something? Do you have to build up your tolerance? (Serious question. Can you OD on tobacco?)
I have never actually tried smoking a cigarette. I grew up with my dad smoking, and hated the smell all my life. My sister was the one who first forced him to go onto the balcony or into the garage (in the winter) to smoke, because she hated it even more than I did. That was when I was about 13 or so. He quit a few years back, when I was maybe 21. My parents always said, though, that if we wanted to smoke we could just bum one off my dad, and he’d show us how to do it without getting sick. None of us 3 kids smoke at all, maybe because it wasn’t forbidden.
I have smoked pot, because it was the cool thing to do amongst my friends, but even that didn’t last long, because I was the one with a car and license, and people wanted me sober to drive them home hehehe. I actually didn’t have much pressure to smoke (cigs or anything else). People were pretty respectful of my choice not to, and when I stopped smoking pot, that wasn’t a problem for anyone either.
Just as a bit of an aside; my cousin and I were talking about the smoking culture in Montreal, and about how since the laws changed and there isn’t any indoor smoking anymore (and that was only, what, 2 years ago?), we have seen a huge difference in the number of smokers we see (we are both in our mid 20s).
In a lab department with 35 people where I used to work, there was only one smoker (and she had started up again after a really bad breakup after quitting for 1 year) I don’t think the numbers dropped all that much, but I think people maybe go out less often for a smoke, so the ones we do see, somehow look more alone and… well, my cousin used the word pathetic… and it’s a little true. Since that conversation I’ve looked at the expressions of people walking by the packs of office smokers, and they seem to look at the smokers with sad eyes.
I am curious to see what the answers will be to a thread like this in the next generation!
I do not agree with what my parents did but I don’t think he was actually “smoking” the cigerettes. He was only six at the time so I am sure he was getting some smoke but I doubt he was actually inhaling much.
I assume the smell of the cigar plus what smoke he did inhale from it made him sick.
I have no idea if you can OD on nicotine or tar.
I was about thirteen and hanging out with my younger and much cooler stepsister. We had swiped a couple of cigs from my mom and were standing around puffing on them where some boys might see us. Then she said, “You know, you’re not really smoking that. You’re just holding the smoke in your mouth and letting it out again. I’ll show you how to inhale. Take a puff…okay, now do this.” She gasped. I gasped. Then I coughed until I almost died, and when I was done, my throat was so raw the smoke didn’t seem to bother it anymore. Then I looked cool.