Why in the world did you start smoking? I understand why smokers continue smoking: nicotine is physically and psychlogically addictive.
But I can’t see one thing about smoking that would be attractive to a non-smoker to start. Smelly breath, hair, and clothing? Coughing and shortness of breath? Expense?
When people say, oh, my parents smoked, or, my friends smoked, I say in response, then I can’t think of a better reason not to smoke — you’re already aware of all the disgusting and unhealthy aspects, first hand.
I’m not a ‘real’ smoker. I’ve smoked off and on for the past 15 years or so. I didn’t really start smoking until I dated a guy that smoked. And all of our friends smoked. That was about 10 years ago. So I found that if we were out at the bar and everyone was smoking, by smoking a cigarette myself, it didn’t bother me as much. When we split up I stopped smoking, for a good 3 years or so. Then I met my husband, who is a smoker, and started again.
Now I pretty much only smoke when I drink. Normally I smoke anywhere from 3 to 6 cigarettes a weekend, and I don’t really smoke during the week. I never smoke during work hours. I cut back considerably since accepting the fact that I have asthma. Sometimes I’ll stop and not have a cigarette for months at a time, years at a time, then I’ll smoke nearly half a pack in a day. I’m not addicted. I just enjoy it.
It tastes good. It feels good. And you can get some pretty cool gear from Marlboro.
I guess it was that I had two best friends who were exteme goody goodys and nerds and I wanted to be the opposite of them. I wanted to feel like I was tough. I also didn’t think I would ever grow up. I started to smoke regularly when I was about 13 and started to smoke daily when I was about 15.
My father smoked and he didn’t have a cough. He ran 10Ks and was good looking and healthy*. So I didn’t really believe it was as bad as they said it was. I felt a sense of accomplishment by teaching myself to smoke, and by having a secret habit.
It’s also satisfying to light the cigarette and take a drag just because you are making a fire and inhaling it. It’s hard to explain, but the act itself amused me. Going to a secret place, making a fire. There’s something about it. And usually in movies, the cool people smoke.
I quit when I was 32, last year because I don’t like it when old people smoke. To tell the truth, if I could be 13 again, I would smoke again. I’m glad I don’t do it now, and if I were to pick it up again now I would surely have a major screw loose, but for the time I was doing it, up until my late 20s, it served a purpose in my life.
My mom has always been the same way and so I didn’t really believe it was addictive. She would say she didn’t need to smoke, and she would just forget all about smoking for months or years, then something would happen and she’s start again. So another reason I started was that I thought I could always quit. But when I quit it was very hard and I know I can never have just one.
People never seem to notice that for some people, smoking is not that addictive and they can just sort of forget to smoke and lose interest. I could never be that way though. For me it is a desperate addiction!
Don’t know, exactly. I was one of those annoying rabid anti-smokers until I was 21. My roommates smoked, and I just got the urge to borrow one one night. I got a wicked head rush from it, thought, “Wow, this is cool and legal!” and bought my own pack. Been an addict ever since.
I have maybe smoked two dozen times in my life (I’m 31), so I’m obviously not the respondent the OP was looking for, but for me, it’s because smoking is cool. People just look cool when they smoke. There’s nothing more to it.
Of course, after I started I discovered that it gives you a wicked high, and I’m much too infrequent a smoker to have ever become accustomed to it, so that’s another plus.
And it was probably the worse decision I ever made. I think the worst part was that I learned to socialize as a smoker, all those “let’s go have a cigarette” rituals, and the easy-way-to-meet-people-is-to-ask-them-for-a-light, sort of thing were such a crutch for me.
Another “not a real smoker” here (in fact I’m down to about one cigarette every six months), but in my case it was because I was fifteen and looking for a way to rebel against my family’s squeaky-clean suburbanite ethos without actually risking anything substantial. All things considered, I could certainly have done worse.
I wish I could say I was 14 or something, but no, this happened like six months ago.
Anyway, I’m one of those non-addicted smokers, I guess. I’ll have a few cigarettes over the weekend on occassion and then go a month or two without even thinking about it. I only smoke when I drink, really. Otherwise I’m too conscious of the fact that my clothes smell awful and my throat feels like ass when I wake up.
Put me under the “social smoker”/“smoke when drinking” heading."
I smoked for the first time when I went to Germany, and was bored just drinking beer. It was OK, and I realized that it gave me something to do with my hands while drinking. I’ve continued that, although I’ve drank maybe 3 times since this summer
I only added the “social” part in because I’ve smoked a cigarette a couple of times with people at work, and once when playing pool.
My father smoked when I was really young but stopped when my sister was born 3 1/2 years after me. But I don’t remember it (I remember seeing photos of him smoking but not the actual occurance which could be counted as a false memory if I said I remembered him smoking. Or maybe I really DO remember it but it’s just such a faint, buried memory that… oh never mind.). Perhaps the smoke smell made me feel secure. However, I didn’t have my first one until I was a senior in high school, in the boy’s room. And even that was just a few puffs and I didn’t start again until a couple years later when I would go over a certain friend’s house on Sundays after church. We’d go way off, away from his house to do it. It was Marlboro Reds. I didn’t pick it up again until… wait a minute. I remember sneaking off in the ninth grade at school, after hours, when I had to wait for my mom to finish up her teaching responsibilities. It was somewhat out of boredom. But I did stop for a couple years, picked it up again, stopped again, started again, up until this day. It always seemed to be triggered by being around other smokers when I was either having a good time or when were all stressed out about something together.
Now I’ve cut back to only smoking in the evenings or on weekends because I thought I had had a heart attack a few months back. The folks in the emergency room that night said I was fine (took x-rays of my chest) and asked me, among other things, if I smoked. I said ‘yes’ and the young doctor said “stop now!” I did stop… for about a week. Now I fluctuate between Camel Lights, American Spirit Lights (yellow pack) and Drum rolling tobacco. Seems to happen most when I’m sitting in front of my computer, like right now. My girlfriend says I have “runner’s asthma,” because she has asthma and recognizes the condition in others instantly. Having said that, I feel like a real bastard smoking in the apartment, even with the window open and the oscillating fan blowing and when she’s not home. She said it’s not the odor but the fumes and particles that irritate her lungs. She says she wants me to be happy and that’s why she tolerates it but sometimes she’ll just start coughing alot, feeling miserable and I HAVE to put it out and cease for the night (or day) in order to live with myself. Unfortunately, we live in an apartment building on the third floor, way in the back, with no porch or balcony for me to go to for a quickie. I guess it’s just makes me feel like some intense activitist for some project or cause when I have one burning in the ashtray while working away on computer or phone. Or sometimes it just makes me feel like an old-fashioned aristocrat, like in those black-and-white movies when it was done all the time, in fashionable settings. Or, like somebody said earlier - it’s just that feeling of inhaling fire.
I started smoking to try and get a friend to quit. I told him I’d smoke one cigarette for every one he smoked, and if he cared at all about my health, he would quit.
In retrospect, it was not one of my better plans. :smack:
I tried to smoke for the usual reason kids do (forbidden behavior only adults are allowed to do). Fortunately they made me extremely ill.
I do smoke cigars because I love the taste (from day 1). Not exactly the same as cigarettes because cigars are not inhaled. I limit myself to around 75 cigars a year so as not to get hooked on them.
I don’t know why I wanted to try it. Curiousity, I guess?
I enjoyed it, though: it was calming, the smell of a newly lit cigarette is heavenly, it kept me from snacking, gave my hands something to do, etc.
I never got addicted, though. Somehow nicotine just didn’t appeal to my generally addictive personality. I could smoke a pack in a couple of days and then not smoke another for months. I put 'em down for good in 1998 when I found myself short of breath and my heartbeat was doing weird things while taking a walk one night. I’d only had one that day, more than 12 hours earlier.
Every now and then I’ll smell the smoke when someone lights up and I’d like one, but I can’t because of medications I’m on. If smoking weren’t unhealthy and so expensive, I’d probably do it.
On a weird note, my love for cigarette smoke was amplified when I was pregnant. I stayed away from it, of course, but even if I passed someone on the street that was smoking, I’d want to go huff the fumes.
