I get why someone who is already addicted would keep smoking; It’s apparently quite unpleasant to stop when addicted and relief is one smoke away, every time.
But why do people take up the habit? I get the idea of trying it but then, what makes people say: “Yeah, I’m gonna keep doing that several times a day.” until they become addicted?
If you’re not addicted to it, does it make you feel better to smoke? If so, how?
I gather that part of it may come from a desire to portray oneself as a rebel. Tobacco smoking has been heavily discouraged for at least 2 decades by now. Shouldn’t that increase the kool kid appeal of smoking? Also, isn’t smoking pretty mild towards society as acts of rebellion go?
I don’t use tobacco, but when I’ve smoked cannabis with Europeans and they’ve mixed in some tobacco with their weed, I feel a definite, distinct buzz attributable to the tobacco.
See** kayaker** above. Like everything people get “addicted” to there is some kind of buzz you get and you just keep going. Even long after the buzz has become meaningless once you are habituated.
It may be terrible for one’s health, but smoking looks cool in a whole lot of people’s opinion. And once you’ve ‘looked cool’ enough times, you might end up hooked
Lots of explanations exist, including having something to do with your hands in social settings, perceived rite of adulthood, alleged “cool” aspect etc.
I was watching a lame film noir last night co-starring Lucille Ball as the loyal secretary/sidekick/romantic interest of an embattled private detective*, and there was barely a single moment in the movie where they and the other characters weren’t smoking cigarettes (and/or downing glasses of hard liquor). You got the feeling it was a wonder that anyone in those days lived past the age of 50 before dying of lung cancer, heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver.
*the movie, “The Dark Corner” also co-starred William Bendix as a sleazy P.I. who commits murder for hire, thus putting the movie in the all-time top ten of hilariously miscast films.
Cigarettes ---- back when I was a kid and started smoking it was pretty much because most people smoked. Heck, my doctor would do the exam with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. And no, I don’t know anyone who thought it was safe or healthy back then. But like learning to drive a car (which has dangers all its own) it was just something we did.
Cigars (the one thing I still do smoke now and then) ---- that was more for the other people who smoked them. With the cigar stores, smoking lounges and cigar bars they were like some fun club that I enjoyed/enjoy. As a subset of people I find them the one I most like having contact with.
Not smoking but still tobacco; chew or snuff ---- working around gasoline smoking was a bad idea and out in the fields it helped keep your mouth from feeling as dry. And while I never felt a stimulant rush from smoking, a wad of Mailpouch is another story. That stuff always hits my system like a double espresso. Cigarettes I gave up easily, cigars I can live without. But dip is another story. Quitting is easy; I did it five times this year alone. But the success rate (I believe) for stopping snuff is the lowest of tobacco addictions and I can see why.
I must admit that as an(now) occasional smoker who started 30+ years ago at the tender age of 12, it surprises me that anyone still *starts *smoking today. Not because of any new information about the health dangers - hell, we all knew about that back then- but because of the social stigma. At least if I’m go by the attitude here on the SDMB, it seems it would be the kids who *do *smoke who would be the outcasts.
I definitely got a focusing effect from my first cigarette; second one was required because I was coughing uncontrollably (apparently, due to withdrawal to the other stuff in cigarettes made from cigar tobacco, which Dad smoked like a chimney; we were in Ireland, where only Dutch, French and Spanish visitors had those); the only other time I lit one again was in the middle of a mall in New Hampshire, to lift it up as bait for other foreigners (I fished a group of Dutch and several Spaniards).
The only reason I didn’t become a smoker was that my allowance was so small I had to choose between smoking or going to the movies. The movies won.
Dad was furious when he started the “I know I smoke, but please don’t” talk and I told him he was three years too late, with my brothers he might want to have it before they started HS and not once it was legal for them to smoke, hey?
There is some small evidence that tobacco, being a brain-affecting pharmaceutical, can have a beneficial effect for some times of mental illness and/or dysfunction. The claim is not substantiated, but it might explain why some people take up the habit, and it’s common among schizophrenics and some brain-injured people. Of course, there are negative consequences to go along with any positives.
After one of my nephews suffered a traumatic brain injury he took up smoking. Says it helps him focus and concentrate, something he now finds difficult. I’m not thrilled with the habit, but given his level of permanent dysfunction I think there’s an argument that in his case the benefits, if there are some, might compensate to some extent for future harms.
But such people are a very, very small minority of smokers and, as I said, nothing is proven. It might all be placebo effect and attempts at self-medicating.
If there IS a boost for brain function it might account for some of the appeal to some people. Heavy thinkers might use it for that reason. Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character but the notion of him smoking a pipe to aid thought shows the meme has been around quite awhile.
I wonder now if that isn’t a big part of the attraction today; a desire to be outcast at least in some small perception. Yeah - we had some of that say 50 years ago. But as you see smoking blending and thriving with subsets of youth (to borrow from the creators of South Park, Goths as an example) there almost seems some sort of firmer link than we experienced.
Could be. I mean, I see what your saying. I guess I was thinking about how when I was a teen, smoking was common enough that the smoking itself wasn’t “cool”; it was more the “kind of kids” who smoked were - the rebels- and that was because of all the other things they were doing; not because of the smoking itself. It seems like today it’s so frowned upon by and for people of all ages that a kid would be labelled “stupid” and “gross”. Either way, it’s considerably harder for a young person to get cigarettes today. Fewer parents smoke so they can’t steal theirs, their haven’t been cigarette machines in decades, hell, you can’t even steal them from the store anymore because they’re all kept behind the counter (just kiddidng). On top of that they’re expensive as hell. How are kids even getting them on a regular basis?
It’s mostly this. It may not be looking cool in particular, but emulating someone or getting some desired effect from people seeing you smoke. Someone may try it just out of curiosity, and some people can get hooked right on their first cigarette because nicotine is so addictive. You don’t become a hopelessly addicted smoker just from one cigarette, but I can tell you that even though the first one made me dizzy and somewhat sick to my stomach I wanted another one.
Other reasons for higher smoking rates among the mentally ill include the possibility that their dysfunction leads them to falsely believe that smoking is an answer to their problems.
*"Dr James MacCabe, a member of the team from King’s College London, said: ‘While it is always hard to determine the direction of causality, our findings indicate that smoking should be taken seriously as a possible risk factor for developing psychosis, and not dismissed simply as a consequence of the illness.”
The researchers analysed data from 61 observational studies involving almost 15,000 tobacco users and 273,000 non-users.
They found that 57% of people treated for a first episode of psychosis were smokers. Psychotic patients were three times more likely to consume tobacco than individuals without severe mental illness.
The study also showed that daily smokers became psychotic around a year earlier than non-smokers.
The scientists, whose findings are reported in The Lancet Psychiatry medical journal, acknowledge that causality is difficult to prove.
One theory is a possible link between smoking and excess dopamine, a brain chemical that plays a role in transmitting nerve signals.
Professor Sir Robin Murray, from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College, said: “Excess dopamine is the best biological explanation we have for psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia. It is possible that nicotine exposure, by increasing the release of dopamine, causes psychosis to develop.”"*
I started when I was 15. I knew cigarettes were addictive, that was common knowledge. No one had told me how nice nicotine makes you feel, though! I figured I could ration myself to 4 cigarettes per day (one after each meal + one before bed) and even if I was addicted that was a low enough rate that it wouldn’t fuck up my health too badly.
Were there things someone could have told me that would have caused me to NOT start smoking? Yeah, definitely. Just as no one had told me about how nice nicotine makes you feel, no one told me that when your body gets acclimated to getting its nicotine fix that nice feeling stops happening and you have to smoke to feel normal, to not feel high-strung and nervous and stuff.
I accepted addiction as a probability thinking that I’d get that nicotine rush whenever I smoked for the rest of my life. By the time I successfully quit—eight years and many cartons later—I wasn’t enjoying smoking at all.
I know a guy who at first, only very occasionally smoked cigars out of some kind of misguided attempt to be sophisticated.
But then on one of his cigar-smoking times outside our dorm in college, he had a number of good conversations with girls who smoked cigarettes, and realized that having cigarettes and lighters and hanging out where the smokers did was a very easy way to meet and have discussions with women (and by extension, get laid).
Over time, his cigar smoking increased, and morphed into cigarette smoking. He did land several long-term girlfriends and a slew of hookups that way, so I guess it was successful in those terms.
But yeah, that guy excepted, most people I’ve known have started one of three ways- they smoke when they drink, and it grows into a full-time habit, they think it makes them look cool, or worst of all, they don’t want to be the odd man out in a group of friends who smoke, so they pick up the habit to be one of the group.
