If you don’t count the cigarette my mother gave me when I was a toddler…
I was twelve. My seventeen year old married sister and her husband offered me a Chesterfield. I liked the idea of doing something conspiratorial behind mother’s back. The cigarette itself didn’t impress me much.
It wasn’t until my friends were smoking in high school that I became a smoker. I wanted to do grown up things and be part of the pack. That was when I was sixteen in about 1959.
Two of my friends were dead from cancer by the age of 66. Another died of heart disease earlier than that. Another took his own life. There were only about a dozen of us.
I started at 15 because my mother told me not to…I really showed her!
Now I’m 29 and I’ve quit about 10 times in the last few months. I go a week or so but then I get a craving that won’t quit. So I buy a pack, smoke it over the course of a couple of days, and then I quit again.
I remember being under the bleachers at a football game when I was 12 and being offered a cigarette. My parents smoked, as did most adults back in 1974. I liked the feeling of doing something behind my parents’ back and being a bit of a rebel. So I started smoking occasionally whenever we could muster the funds together.
I smoked throughout high school and for the first two years of college, and then went cold turkey. I always knew I would not smoke for life. Hearing my Mum coughing and coughing in the morning and then lighting up a cigarette immediately thereafter was not what I wanted for my future.
I occasionally smoked while drinking for a number of years, but about 15 years ago, at the age of 32, I gave it up completely.
I can smell cigarette smoke from 100 feet away now, and it’s disgusting. The entire habit is disgusting and smokers are the biggest litter bugs in the world.
I started smoking cigarettes when I was 16. I did it to look cool. I started smoking pot then too. I REALLY dug the pot. I basically went from being a straight arrow, “accelerated schedule,” egghead kid to being a longhaired, potsmoking delinquent overnight. I blame the guitar. Once I picked up an axe and started learning Black Sabbath songs, that led to joining a band, and that led to everything else. Best thing that ever happened to me except for the drug arrests and the hacking, smoker’s cough.
I quit smoking cigarettes when I was 28, but was still an occasional toker until my first kid was born. I had a brief relapse with cigarettes a few years ago. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I decided to have one after 12 years being off them, just for the hell of it. I was drinking, and one led to more and the next thing I knew I was buying packs agin and trying to hide it from my wife. I felt ridiculous sneaking out for smokes. It was like being a teenager again. My wife totally knew anyway. I got off them again. It sucked going through that whole quitting process again, but I made it. I’ve been nicotine free for two years now.
Other than an occasional beer, I’m as clean as a monk these days.
Both of my parents smoked. Everybody smoked! It looked cool as hell, especially flipping open that Zippo and firing up the cig. When I was in the Army I owned a Zippo with my unit crest engraved on it (9th Engineer Battalion, Combat). I nearly died on those five-mile runs, but bigawd I looked cool as shit lighting up with my Asisteremos Zippo!
I started smoking while drinking in college. As college wasn’t working well I started smoking more while not drinking. In Basic Training i didn’t even think about smoking and could have easily never had another one but for some reason I decided to pick it right back up. I smoked from then until about 7 years ago when I was 34.
If I could quit and stay off it now with all the bad crap that is happening to me then anyone can.
My father, who went to Korea in 1951, started smoking in basic training because when they would… bivouac? Is that the right word?.. anyway, when they would go on field exercises and have to set up the site, smokers would get a break every hour, while non-smokers were expected to continue working.
It doesn’t take a genius to guess the consequences of that policy on the non-smokers! Dad said that within two weeks, everybody smoked.
When I was 14 I acquired a 15 year old girlfriend. YEA me! She was one of the really cool kids and being her guy instantly made me one of the cool kids too. They all smoked. Within a week I was smoking.
Back when Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Elvis ruled the music scene anybody that had 25 cents could buy a pack from a drugstore, gas station or machine. Getting smokes was no problem. I’ve heard some of the older folk claim they didn’t know the dangers but I remember calling cigarettes “coffin nails” and “cancer sticks” back in '57.
50 years later, with the help of the miracle drug Chantix, I finally quit. Been clean for 25 months today and have no urge to smoke again.
I sure did burn up a lot of money. In recent years, after the laws about smoking inside were phased in, the habit caused me to miss a bunch of cool stuff because I was standing outside in the sleet smoking while others were inside having fun. Such is the nature of addiction.
I started when I was 11 because everyone at my boarding school smoked. I quit when I moved to the States when I was 13 because I didn’t know anyone who would/could buy them for me here.
Started again in college when I was 17 or so. Quit (hopefully for good) last Monday.
Started when I was 15, within a few months of my joining the American workforce. Had a rough day washing dishes. While taking out a few garbage bags with an older fellow dishwasher he offered me a smoke and I accepted without question, and enjoyed every puff thoroughly. Suddenly taking out the trash became something I looked forward to, a brief and happy respite from the chaos and discord of the foodservice industry. One minute you’re awash in the cacophonous din of an urban restaurant, servers shouting orders, plates and glasses clanking together, sometimes shattering, managers barking at you for one reason or another, sweating from the heat, stressing about whether you’ll be able to get out of work by 11 in time to get to that party, obsessing about whether that girl who works the floor notices you; the next, a peaceful zen-like calm, breathing slowly in and out and watching the tufts of smoke curling through the cold Chicago winter looking like some kind of ancient calligraphy.
Yeah, fifteen years of working in kitchens and I’m still at it. Fifteen years and I still love it, every minute of it. I started out with Marlboroughs that smelled like piss; now I hand-roll Peter Stokkebye London Exports that smell like a campfire after a freshly fallen rain. I know in the abstract that I have to quit, I want to quit (in the abstract), but Goddamn if I don’t love smoking cigarettes.
Dad chews snuff, and as kids my brothers and I would occasionally sneak pinches from him. I started chewing big time when I was in the Navy, in one of my schools, where I was spending 90 hours a week doing classwork, give or take. I was nodding off in class one day, and a friend gave me a chew. Next day I went out and bought my own for the first time, and have been doing so ever since.
Someone really needs to invent some sort of non-harmful, calming, 5 minute activity people can do to take a break outside work/school/whatever to get away for a bit and maybe chat. I’m convinced that a good chunk of smokers (like santosvega) basically stick with it despite the expense/health effects because of the “smokers breaks”. It’s also a great social crutch, in our daily lives there’s not a lot of excuse to just hang out a shoot the breeze with people we don’t know well, but smokers have a perfect excuse to just sit outside for a few minutes and gab.
Granted non-smokers can could just go outside for a few minutes if they wanted to, but for whatever reason I think its hard for most people to just chill for a few minutes without some form of justification.
Seriously- I LOVE smoking and always did. If I smoked just one today, I’d be back up around two packs a day within the week. I still miss it, although the “crawl out of my skin, then kill you” cravings are long gone.
16 years, baby, smoke free and (mostly) happy about it.
Incidentally, if any of you out there happen to be looking for a method by which to quit smoking and also happen to be a huge nerd like me, check out this method by nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot:
I haven’t smoked at all, not a single drag, since my son was born almost six years ago, but when I see myself in dreams I still have a smoke hanging 'outta my mouth.
I started smoking when I was 17. I don’t think it was to be cool, seeing as how the concept of me and cool in the same sentence doesn’t scan. I think is was more that the town I grew up in was so boring that sucking on a tube of burning leaves seemed interesting.
I smoked for 25 years because I liked it. In spite of all the laws in place that make smokers pariahs, I’d still do it if it weren’t for the health risks.
I started smoking at 13. My whole family smoked and my best friend was smoking, so I tried it to see if I liked it. I did. Quit after a month because I didn’t have money for them. Then one night a bunch of us were out and someone offered me one. I thought about how good it would be and smoked it. Been smoking ever since. Have no desire to quit now.
