Ever look at the average age a person starts smoking? Speaking for myself, I was 16, I didn’t know shit about what exactly addiction or lung cancer even was, and if I’d known, I might not have cared. On the other hand, smoking was cool for some inexplicably retarded reason.
If I had one thing to do over, I never would have started smoking.
Who told you?!?!?!
My father found smoking to be an effective mosquito repellent.
So, wait… if I get drunk I can get 20 Southern Baptists between my lips?
Damn, I wish I enjoyed drinking more.
I think the addiction ,cost and health problems have been known for a long time. My fathers generation gets a pass because they were lied to. Cigs were marketed as healthful and good for your lungs and throat. But since the 70s it was well known.
I saw Penn and Teller many years ago at the Chicago Theater. Their show was wonderful, of course, and at the end, Penn came out on a darkened stage, alone, to sit on a stool under a single spot light to talk to the audience. He lit a cigarette and told of his life-long fascination with magic, how illusion is part of traditional magic and how even knowing that a trick was happening, we choose to be deceived, etc. His tone was conversational and personal. The theater was in rapt silence. And when he was done, he said this: “And for all the kids out there in the audience, I’d like to say this to you - don’t start smoking. Unless you want to look cool.”
QED
I don’t understand why you did. You say it was an experiment… but you smoked up to a pack a day for months, years. And you say you didn’t enjoy it?
I don’t understand why you kept doing it.
I started smoking because it felt good and helped me focus my thinking better. I know I’m addicted now and have been for 15 years or so, but it still does both of those things and I have no desire to quit.
Because they think cigars are obnoxious and cost too much?
I’m with him/you - concentration increased, an excellent cataylst for other chemicals, the weird ethereal spectacle of smoke. I mean this - rarely - with complete sincerity. But I can’t help but fear the inevitable lung collapse and impotence. Especially the impotence.
I really hate the taste of cigarettes, the feeling, the smell etc… It’s that when I see others smoke, it looked so enjoyable!.. I felt I was missing out on something completely legal, and wasn’t worried about the health issues (they won’t kill me overnight) or costs. I wanted to know what that feeling was like.
At first, smoking small amounts I was working my “tolerance (to the taste, smell, and feeling I was getting)” up, in hopes that maybe some new sensation would overcome me, and I could finally understand why people enjoy it so much. At the point of me smoking more than a pack a day I felt like total crap after each cigarette. I thought maybe other people had to work their way through the bad taste, smell, etc, as a sacrifice, in order to one day get that buzz a true smoker gets.
It’s almost like drinking alcohol. Admit it, alcohol isn’t the greatest tasting product out there, but you’re not concerned about taste when taking a few shots of 151. It’s the feeling, the buzz you get, once the alcohol absorbs into your system. I’ll probably continue to drink (not an alcoholic, if that’s what you’re thinking) mainly because I actually can get the buzz. I simply can’t get the buzz from smoking.
Wow, I’ve been considering starting this exact same OP. Weird.
I took up smoking last year to try to lose some weight. I smoked about a pack a week for about six months. The last cigarette made me just as nauseous as the first one, if not more so, and I always had to remind myself to have a cigarette: I never, ever craved on. Totally non-addictive to me, and I could never get used to the nasty ashtray mouth. Gag.
I smoke cigarettes because I’m an addict.
Plus I’d feel silly trying to eat them and they wouldn’t taste nice
I used to smoke a bit. I enjoyed going out and smoking when I was stressed. I had a lot to be stressed about at the time. I smoked 1 - 2 cigs a day, although as an undergrad I smoked as much as a half-pack a day. I never once felt addicted. I wasn’t. Quitting smoking wasn’t a concsious thought for me. I just did it without really intentionally doing it. I do occasionally wonder what a cigarette would do for me now, but as long as I’ve been clean for five years it seams a bit silly to start. I know that my experience is extremely unusual.
FTR: While at first I only smoked when I drank, by the end, I only smoked when I was dead sober and hated smoking when I was drunk. A smoke always killed the good feel of the buzz. Smoking was a way for me to remove the bitter. If I was happy, there was no bitter to remove. All smoking did was make me dizzy then.
People are different. I was addicted by the time I finished my first pack. I really liked it. I liked the way they tasted, mostly. I smoked one brand, and sometimes I’d get a pack that was stale. When that happened I bought another pack, and kept the stale ones for people who bummed cigarettes. (I had a friend who would always smoke a couple of mine, even if she had her own, because she liked menthols sometimes. She didn’t seem to notice they were stale.)
But even being an addict I’m not sure exactly what I’m addicted to. Once I had some dental work done. It ended up taking a long time–one of those where they give you a shot, and before they’re done the shot wears off so you need another one. A real ordeal. When I got out of there the first thing I went for was a smoke to make me feel better. It didn’t work. I believe I was getting the nicotine, but I couldn’t taste it (or even feel my lips, at that point), and for whatever reason it failed to comfort me, until the Novocaine wore off and I could taste it again.
What I don’t get is how people can get addicted to things like Vicodin, Percodan, or --well, I’m blanking on the names of those other ones. I once had some Percodan (or Percocet) for migraines. I liked to always have them around but I wouldn’t have dreamed of taking them for anything except a migraine, and then they knocked me out. I had friends who would take them to clean house. They would take them if they had a crunch at work because they felt it helped them do their jobs better. (!) They would take them because they just had more energy and vitality under the influence of said pills. Energy? Vitality?
Not everyone who drinks a lot becomes an alcoholic. Not everyone who eats too much sweets becomes diabetic. People just have different body chemistries.
When I was a kid, nearly everyone smoked; my mother was one of the rare exceptions. I started when I was about fourteen and was firmly hooked by the time I was fifteen. I smoked about a pack a day for forty years or more. I smoked until after my third surgery for oral cancer. Giving up smoking was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done; nicotine is addictive stuff.
I am a smoker. Why do I smoke? Because I’m a smoker. That’s the sole reason.
However (and I am only speaking for myself here) I think it is safest for myself to keep smoking, until I can get on an exercise program to keep down the weight gain that comes from quitting smoking. Last time I attempted to quit (six months “smoke-free”, but I cheated a lot) I gained sixty pounds, and at my age & sedentary lifestyle that is potentially DANGEROUS. Weight gain can trigger diabetes, which is prevalent in my family’s bloodline, whereas lung cancer is not. (My aunt died of lung cancer, which of course was sad, but she was not a blood-relative.)
And frankly, I’d rather die of lung cancer than live with diabetes. Sorry if that sounds shocking, but for me, it’s the truth. (Now where did I put my cigarettes…)
We didn’t get the intense anti-smoking blitz when I was a teenager. I wish we had, it might have made a difference.
Not making excuses for myself, mind you, just pointing out that some teenagers are dumbasses. I was.
I smoked because it gave me something to do, as stupid as that sounds.
I started really smoking because I was in a high stress, low sleep environment at the time, and they seemed to really help with that. I can’t say now whether it was the tobacco, or the fact that I was just getting out of the building for 10 or 15 minutes and relaxing with other people… Either way, they did help.
I had smoked occasionally years earlier, at high school parties, probably because i wanted to look older/be cool or something, plus there is nothing so powerful for certain people as the desire to smoke when you are drinking, though for years it was only a ‘smoke a few when i’m really drunk’ habit.