Why did you first start smoking?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m looking for what made you try cigarettes in the first place, not so much what made you get hooked. More specifically, did you start smoking your first few cigarettes because you were looking for some kind of physical effect, or more for psychological/social reasons?

Among the people whose story I know, almost no one started because they really wanted that nicotine rush. Oh sure, after they’ve experimented a bit, they might continue because they find it calms them, or makes them more alert, or whatever. But those important first handful of smokes seem to almost always be for social reasons… they thought it made them look cool or grown up, or all their friends were doing it, so they tried it too. In fact, a lot of them had to actually work at it to be able to smoke without choking, so it’s hard to say those first couple of tries were even enjoyable.

One possible exception that I know of is the girl who was told smoking would help her lose weight. Even then, she probably wouldn’t have sought them out herself, but since her friend was there handing them to her, she tried it. So I’m still chalking this one up more to peer pressure than not.

I don’t smoke myself, but I’ve tried it twice. Both times because I was standing around others who were smoking and they offered me one. Both times it was basically, what the heck, might as well see what it’s like. Both times I hated it. No one pressured me to try, no one would have cared if I said no, but I still felt the desire to try out what everyone else was doing, even though I thought smoking itself was stupid.

My dad actually has the (to me) most understandable story ever for starting to smoke. When he was young he had a job where all the smokers were allowed regular smoke breaks and they got to go outside and stand around for 5 minutes. Since my dad didn’t smoke and there was no reason for him to go, he was expected to stick around and keep working. So, as you can imagine, it wasn’t long before he decided to become a smoker, too. Thankfully, he was able to eventually quit, but it was a hard road to do so and he always regretted starting in the first place.

2

Social reasons. My collegiate friends smoked, so I did too.

My father smoked because the army rewarded smokers with smoke breaks, while non-smokers had to keep on working. He said that by the end of basic training, everybody smoked. This was during the Korean War… I’m sure the attitude has changed a bit since 1950.

3

To be cool. Full stop.

I seriously limited a very promising athletic career for partying, but I had a lot of fun along the way. :slight_smile:

I quit when I got pregnant for the first time, and never looked back.

4

Probably because my brother and my dad did. I wanted to be like them.

I always contest that it was not a way for me to “look cool to my friends” because none of my friends smoked. I hid it from many of my friends. I couldn’t smoke around my friends. If I did, I certainly didn’t look cool!

In college I ramped it up 200x. It was because I was bored, homesick, tired and needed an excuse to socialize.

5

Peer pressure.

I started smoking as a kid when it wasn’t uncommon for an upper elementary schooler to at least try a puff. I did it on a dare and smoked (mostly) on again / off again for the next forty years. On 27 Dec, it will be two years since quitting.

Smoking has limited my vocal abilities (I sing), caused me to give up playing clarinet and cost me the equivelant dollar value of a couple of new cars over the years. I liken it to having had Stockholm Syndrome with my captor tobacco.

6

I started because my parents smoked and in the early 70’s all my friends smoked - it was the cool thing to do! I quit 13 month’s ago with the help of the e- cig. I can’t stand cigarette smoke anymore and my health has improved greatly.

7

Work situation.

I was working my tail off while others stepped off for “smoke breaks”. When raises were given out, the people who got elbow time with the boss (who smoked) got bigger raises than those who didn’t. So I started taking smoke breaks to get the elbow time and sure enough, better raise, even though my actual work throughput went down since I was now taking cigarette breaks.

8

I wanted to be cool. It worked.

9

I started smoking cigarettes after I started smoking pot, because we thought it added to the high. We called them power boosters. I smoked from age 14 to 25.

10

Forbidden fruit, basically. We knew we weren’t supposed to, so it was a teen rebellion thing. Same reason we drank in high school. Got hooked on both, sadly, but kicked the tobacco at age 35. It took another ten years or so to ease off the heavy drinking; I credit meeting my present wife for that, not because she nagged me about it, but because I finally felt really happy in my life. Nowadays, a couple glasses of wine on occasion is as wild as it gets.

11

I smoked a few cigarettes as an undergrad student - maybe a pack in total over the course of a couple of years. I was curious about it, and found that I enjoyed the buzz I got off of them. In the end, I didn’t care for the way they smelled and just stopped. Never felt any sense of addiction.

12

I was 18, and started working in a bar (late eighties.) Everyone smoked. The air was thick with smoke. When I actually took up smoking myself, I wasn’t so bothered by the clouds surrounding me - they seemed “normal.”

13

First start was a combination of social reasons and experimenting in college. That transitioned into being an occasional smoker with three main categories covering the times I smoked:

  • Hanging out with friends who smoked (par;ty social and partly the smoke bothered me if I wasn’t smoking)
  • When drinking (which had some overlap with the first reason :stuck_out_tongue: )
  • When I was stressed. I typically bought a pack for exam week. The little bit of nicotine combined with the break outside worked for me while studying.

It wasn’t till my divorce (with lots of strees and drinking) that I became a regular smoker.

14

I had skipped a whole school year and wanted to look older. It worked ! Now I’m 33 and I look damn near 50.

15

Boredom. I was working at a golf course the second summer out of high school. Eight hours a day I was sitting on a lawn mower, bored out of my skull. To pass the time, I tried shoving a handful of sunflower seeds in my mouth, but was stopping to get a drink every 20 minutes. I tried dipping (tobacco), but ended up puking my guts out behind a green. So, I asked one of the guys if he would bum me three or four cigs at the beginning of the day. I liked it, so the next day I went and bought a pack. (I went into the gas station and asked for “a pack of cigarettes.” The guy behind the counter looked at me like I was an idiot. I realized I should ask for a brand, so I asked for the only brand I knew, Vantage, which is what my dad smoked.)

This was also around the time I started going to the bar on the weekend, so one thing led to another and the next thing you know I was a pack-a-day kind of guy. Did that for 13 years, then quit cold turkey.

16

My parents smoked, my grandparents smoked, essentially all adults I knew smoked. I think I felt it was a gateway to growing up. I was about 16. Twelve years later I had a heart attack and have not smoked in the 49 1/2 years since.

17

because everyone did (looking back, this wasn’t the case, but I felt like it was in high school).

I quit a couple of years after my father’s initial cancer diagnosis, coming up on 9 years quit soon.

18

I first tried them just because they were there and I was an unsupervised 12 year old hanging out with other unsupervised 12 year olds. Maybe boredome and availability? Not nearly as interesting as how I got hooked.

19

Sounds like your dad tried them and got hooked in the same story. Why are you looking for differences?

20

Because I was an idiot teenager hanging out with others like me.

Managed to give it up after a couple of months.