For me, it was at the age of twelve. My sister convinced me that I’d never fit in with the cool kids unless I smoked. Tobacco and pot. Also, I’d need to skip school, shoplift, and drink. Cigs were 53 cents per pack in those days.
After about a year, I’d given up that stupid lifestyle. After about another year, my best friend Brad talked me back into it. Desperate for peer approval, I took it back up again. In those days, tobacco and pot were just what you did. It was more normal to smoke than to not smoke. By college, I was a career smoker.
35 years later, it’s no longer cool, but I still do it. I’ve taken up the habit of quitting every week, though.
I took it up at the age of 18 'cause this girl who I had a HUGE crush on smoked. Still didn’t get me into her pants, though.
Gave it up sometime in 1999, about 10, 12 years later.
Still occassionally smoke the ganj, though. Since I don’t drink, gamble, cheat on my wife, etc etc etc, it’s really my one vice. That and Mexican food. :drool:
I didn’t start smoking till I was **counts on fingers … takes off socks, keeps counting … goes back to fingers ** 25 – I was in grad school, finishing coursework and looking at taking comps that summer. When I was a girl, you had to take all four comprehensive exams – two two-hour exams and two four-hour exams – within a two-week period.
So I started smoking, which I continued to do at a two-pack-a-day pace for 19 years, not quitting till '99, when cigs went to $2.50/pack and I did the math on what I’d be spending on cigs, per annum, if I didn’t quit.
I was 18, out with my friends all the time, frequently drunk, everybody else smoked, so eventually I did, too. Smoke-free eight months and counting, as of now!
My dad smoked. My brother started smoking when he was 18 (maybe?) so I did too. It was plenty easy for me to get free cigs from my bro and dad but at the time it was also easy for a mature-looking 17-year-old to buy cigarettes at the store.
When I went away to college I was horribly lonely and missed home…and my home smelled like smoke…so I started smoking even more.
I actually kept my habit a secret from most of my friends and of course my parents. I don’t have any smoker friends still.
I never did it to be cool - I just liked doing it.
I needed something to do with my hands when I wasn’t drinking. The habit was short-lived, however. This was when I was 20 or 21 or something of the sort.
Started when I was 14; quit permanantly at 38. I thought it looked Brando/James Dean supercool when I started; I was also very shy so it gave me something to do with my hands (other than fidget or play pocket pool) and an excuse to break conversations into small pieces.
I started at 17 for the usual idiot teenager reasons: others were doing it and it seemed to help you fit in and look cool. Quit about 6 months later when I realized I didn’t really enjoy it, it was expensive, and following the crowd into stupid behavior made little sense.
Junior high- so that’s about 12. Thought it was cool. Quit 16 years ago at age 24- it was awful. I have never jonesed so hard for anything in my life, and I know from jonesin’…
When I started, cigs were 75 cents a pack and you could get them from vending machines. I don’t know how anybody can afford to smoke now- I was up to almost 2.5 packs per day when I quit.
When I was 8 years old, my older brother had me hit his cigarette. (He was 13 or 14.) Then, according to him, I smoked too, so I couldn’t narc on him to mom or dad.
Then after that, both my brothers would have me hit their smokes because they thought it was funny. I remember doing it for them and their friends, and everyone laughing…
It wasn’t too much later that I remember being upstairs, but smell the smoke from the basement, and it would kick in that urge to smoke. So I’d head down there and have one.
By the time I was 10 or 11 (sixth grade), I was smoking a half a pack a day, absolutely hooked.
I’m 43 now, and still smoking. I’ve tried several times to quit, but have never pulled it off. Recently I seriously contemplated trying again, and the thought of quitting depressed me. (It’s an old friend now, I guess.)
I know I need to, but honestly don’t know if I can do it.
To do something forbidden in secret mostly (my parents AND grandparents are very much anti-smokers. Well, my grandfathers wouldn’t have been, having smoked most of their lives, only they both had died of cancer by then. So… yeah), and because at first it got me high-ish. Having something to do with my hands and face while trying and failing to be a social creature was/is a plus as well. Can’t put your foot in your mouth when there’s a cig in it !
Still smoking, although I question the why increasingly often. I tried quitting a few times, but not nearly with enough motivation to go through with it for more than a few days - that, plus my SO and I never seem to do the “That’s it, I quit !” thing at the same time, so we mostly drag each other back down.
I did manage to quit smoking during Basic Training, but that was a given. Went to graduation with a pack of smokes in my Class A uniform.
At 28, I got stuck in a bad situation and took a hard look at my finances. I said to myself “I’m spending *what *on cigarettes?” I quit cold turkey that night. Two years later, I was bragging to a friend while in line at the grocery store about how I had been clean and previously couldn’t have passed a checkout counter without adding the phrase ‘and a pack of Marlboros’ as I paid. The clerk was a total automaton, bless her heart. She kept on going about her job. “…loaf of bread, stick of butter, pack of Marlboros…”. (They still kept smokes behind each register then.) I had just bought a pack of smokes. By 10:00 PM, I was walking to the store to make sure I had enough smokes for the morning. Dayum, these cancer sticks sure are tempting…
At 38, I managed to quit after a surgical procedure and didn’t smoke again for about eight months until I took a *horrible *job at a law firm. High stress, no justice, typical ball-crushing job. Smoking was just an excuse to take five and get away from the literally screaming in your face lawyers.
I still smoke to this day. And yes, I’m adamant about it. Deal with it or go away. Don’t preach to me. And yes, I know I’m killing myself. Wanna make something of it? Go away; the situation will take care of itself.
Other than that, I’m pretty easy to get along with. Just ask my friend.
I started smoking I think mostly to hurt my parents (I was an angry fifteen year old). There was probably an element of self-harm about it too; I thought that girl who always cut herself was an idiot but I was taking up smoking in an age when everyone knew what it did to you.
Started full bore about age 13, quit age 33. Why start? Anxiety. Tobacco ‘calms the nerves’-for about half an hour. Used to stay up late with my mom watching Prisoner: Cell Block H, both of us chain smoking (yeah, this was when I was 13. The 'rents had a laissez-fair attitude towards the kid’s vices. God love the 70’s)
I started smoking (maybe 5 cigs per week?) to look cool w/ my friends. Then when I got a job at a supermarket @16, I got hooked for 2 reasons.
#1: Smokers were allowed to go out every hour or so for a smoke, so if I’d light a cig I’d get an extra 4-5 10-minute breaks per 8 hour shift. (Dumb, I know)
#2: If I ate during lunch, I’d be looking at spending $6-8 on a meal. If I smoked 2-3 cigs instead, it curbed my appetite until I got home (to eat my parents free food). A pack was about $1.80 then, so 3 cigs were like 25-30 cents. When you’re making $5.50/hour, that seemed well worth it. (Cigs were no problem to obtain, when you work at the grocery store and know the clerks, they’ll sell them too you.)
