I started because I wanted to be part of the roughy toughy hard gang at school.
My first cig made me feel sick and I turned green, but after a while I became hooked on nicoteine and smoked for a good part of my adult life.
I’ve now given up for about four years and will never smoke again.
Good question. I got sick the first few times I tried smoking. I had to actually try to get used to smoking. Dumbest thing I ever did.
I think I first tried smoking cigarettes out of curiosity. I started buying them to smoke on long drives to relieve boredom, even though they still made me slightly sick. During those drives I got used to the nicotene and actually started to enjoy them. I started smoking my friends’ cigarettes while hanging out with them, then finally started buying my own packs.
I enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning. The caffeine wakes me up, and I like the taste.
ITS THE ADDICTION TALKING!!!
If you want to smoke, I say, smoke. It’s not for me, but you are free to do as you wish.
That said, I quoted the above because the smokers I know (my wife’s family) all do this. Some of them won’t go to movies or fly on a plane because it’s simply too long to go without a cigarette.
It drives my wife crazy. We can’t have a meal with them without one or two ‘breaks’.
Now, it’s possible that my wife’s family isn’t typical, but from my perspective, this kind of attitude is common.
You know, it’s weird. I don’t notice when people smoke, unless they absolutely reek. I’ve never been addicted and I’ve only smoked maybe two packs in my entire life (over the course of a year, eons ago). My wife, who was addicted for a few years, does notice when people smoke. It’s almost uncanny.
In fairness, i think that years of afrin abuse has deadened my nasal cavity…
Hygiene has nothing to do with it. Showering doesn’t stop it. It’s in their breath, their sweat glands, their clothes. The odor isn’t always strong, but I can always detect it.
When I had a temporary smoking relapse a few years ago, I was meticulous about trying to hide it from my wife. I only smoked outside, held the butt away from my body, blew the smoke away from me, washed my hands and brushed my teeth (or showered) afterwards. None of it mattered. She could tell from the beginning, and said she could smell it the instant I walked into the room.
I don’t smoke anymore, but when I did, I did it because I thought it made me look cool, everyone did it in South America and it was something to do with my hands. But I stopped when I came back because it was also super-stinky.
Question–did we have a thread this week on a smoking toddler in Sumatra? I can’t find it now but I thought I’d ask here since, well, it’s a smoking thread.
I dont’ think it’s “reality” to portray the attitude in this thread as one of intolerance for a smoking addiction at all, in terms of whether smokers can change or not, nor a lack of sympathy for those who smoke. A lack of tolerance for the smoking itself, yes, because it affects others directly.
I think it’s reality to point out that there’s a tendency on the part of many to respond to conversations about their addictions by turning the conversation to “Yeah, well, you’re fat, so you don’t have any room to judge!” which is what this was.
Another reality is that there’s lots of unhealthy habits and addictions and personal struggles to go around, plenty for everyone, and they are actually all very similar in many ways.
Psst, post #61.
Thanks, Alice!
But wasn’t there also a whole thread about it? Or am I hallucinating that?
I didn’t see it- maybe you dreamed it? 
I was really lucky that 3 days after I quit I had an appointment for a mammogram. While I was in the waiting room, a man came in who absolutely reeked, in the most foul and ground-in sort of way, of cigarettes. (i’m sure you know what I mean - the freshly smoked cig vs. the deep in the pores stink) On top of that, he had an excrutiatingly repulsive cough…deep, wet, you could hear the foul-smelling mucous rattling through every passage of his respiratory system. He was stomach-churningly gross, all thanks to his love of the cigarette.
If I’d ordered it up myself I could not have invented a more vivid and effective reminder of how vile the habit is and what it can do to you. If I had been in any danger of relapse, that stopped it cold.
I wasn’t aware, until after I’d quit, of how much I cleared my throat when I smoked. A few people mentioned it to me after I’d quit, and now I notice it with my one friend who still smokes. Drives me crazy when she does it on the phone. And it’s so gross…clear clear…hack some mucous, clear. Ugh! It’s one thing when you’re sick, but to engage in something that makes you sound sick virtually all the time? Yeesh.
I also tortured my environment. I smoked at my desk for years, since I smoked at home. I gave my sister my computer when I traded up, and it just stopped working not long after. We thought it was a goner, but she took it for repair and it turned out the smoke by products had settled into the guts of the computer like a kind of glue. The techs cleaned it and it was good as new.
And of course, every house I lived in, when I moved out and removed pictures from the walls, the coating of smoker’s goo that was all over the walls was always a startling reminder of what I was doing to my body.
Its been ten years and I still stop and say thanks for being set free from it, and I’m still amazed at it. I was sure that I would never be able to quit, at least, not without going insane.
I’ll still have nanoseconds every once in a blue moon where I find myself with an impulse to smoke. But they are truly nanoseconds, I instantly recoil in horror from the very idea, thankfully. I can’t imagine being an ex-smoker who still wanted it, I’m sure that’s torture.
After a few packs at about age 12, I started really started smoking when I was 15. My older sister, who was 16 at the time had satrted smoking and waking up to the smell of cigarette smoke is one of the worst things for me. I discovered if I smoked a ciagette myself, it seemed to desensitize me.
I smoked for over 20 years.
This Oct will be…4? 5? I forget which, years since I’ve smoked.
Wow, you’ve got me nailed! I’m ugly, stupid, going nowhere and really depressed.
Or maybe I started when I was 45 because I really enjoyed the Cuban cigars I tried in Dubai and wanted something to take my mind off of my ex-wife.
Never smoked a cigarette so i cannot speak on that subject.
Low self esteem
Low IQ
Limited direction in life
Depression
How do any of the above mean that anyone is ugly, first of all… you think that all ugly people have low self-esteem, or that low self-esteem only comes from being ugly? (Both are ludicrous, by the way).
Secondly… trying to take your mind off your wife with cigars definitely sounds to me like someone who is depressed, and since smoking cigars hardly requires much in the way of mental processing, definitely not enough to crowd out other thoughts, it also seems a little dumb.
Me too, especially the grown-up part. Kids in the 50’s knew it took a lot more than just smoking to look cool.
Most of my friends smoked, but it wasn’t peer pressure, as in “pressure”. If somebody didn’t want to smoke, they didn’t, and nobody cared. It was more of a what are you gonna do while everyone else is smoking kind of thing. And maybe some self-defense – smokers don’t notice the smell.
But if the smell comes with a cute guy with sideburns and a ducktail, wearing a long-sleeved white shirt (sleeves rolled up) with blue jeans, and the shirt also has a lingering scent of the sun, from being dried outside on a clothesline and then freshly ironed, who’s gonna notice the smell of smoke?
This reminds me of a funny line from Two and A Half Men.
Kandi to Alan: My tooth hurts!
Alan: When was the last time you saw a dentist?
Kandi: Alan, I see people all the time – I don’t ask them what they do!
From here (a quit-smoking page btw): http://www.helpwithsmoking.com/effects-of-nicotine.php
“In high concentrations nicotine acts as a nerve poison and it is used in insecticides. However, in small amounts, nicotine is a stimulant that enhances brain activity and concentration and improves cognitive processing as well as a person’s memory. . . . It has been discovered through scientific studies that nicotine increases the levels of dopamine in a smoker’s brain.” Of course, you do build up a tolerance.
Me? I started because a girl I liked smoked, and we spent a weekend in Hawaii together. After that, I worked in a restaurant and taking a smoke break was the only way to get some rest really, at least if you didn’t want to be a social outcast. The smoker/non-smoker ratio there was completely reverse what it is in the rest of the US.
I smoked about 3-4 cigs a day for about two years, then quit for a year. Now I smoke one a day on average, but only if I’ve had a few beers. I enjoy the sensation, plain and simple. I don’t suffer any noticeable withdrawal if I go without for a while. Anyway, I will have to be careful when I go to Japan not to start smoking more, but so far in the states there has been no desire for me to smoke more what-so-ever.
Which is why I became a pack+ smoker from the first day I smoked - ADD. Treatment: stimulants that act on dopamine. I was very literally self-medicating.
I sure miss the effectiveness of it… I’ve only managed to read one novel in ten years, after a lifelong habit of reading anywhere from 3-10 per month. THAT has tempted me more than anything else ever has.