What was it like for you?
Why did you do it?
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I was a devout smoker for the next eight years, and truth be told, I really loved it. I smoked after breakfast, after lunch, between classes, after dinner, and late into the night (cigarettes tasted better the later you smoked them). I smoked with coffee and beer, with homework and art projects, with friends and alone. I smoked pretty much anywhere, anytime.
I smoked a pack-a-day (more during finals). I joked that if only cigarettes had vitamins in them, I could quit eating.
My parents, of course, hated this habit and forbade me to do it. So I'd climb out onto the roof of the house. I'd lie there on the sloping shingles, watching the smoke escape into the Oak branches overhead.
I also became an expert smoking driver -- I mastered the art of lighting up without taking my eyes off the road, and of shifting with a cigarette in hand.
Smoking came so easily, so naturally, that it felt like one of my greatest talents. Pity I had to quit. ...I continued to smoke and being introduced to the world of alcohol didn't help. Fellow smokers can understand the Drink-in-one-hand Cig-in-the-other syndrome.
I was 20 when my parents first found out. They weren't pleased about it but dismissed the actions with concerned warnings.
For about a year, I was a heavy drinker and smoker. Take the bottle opener, open a beer, light a smoke. As I greatly reduced my alcohol intake, my smoking did decrease.
In times of stress, the nicotene was the calming factor. I was stressed. I smoked.
I wanted to quit and become healthier... I didn't think much about smoking. A cigarette was almost like another appendage to me - I used it, but didn't really think about it much. It was there.
I've got myself into certain routines over the years. I smoke when I drink, but I don't drink that often. I smoke at my desk at home. I always smoke while I'm driving... and I love to drive.
In the beginning, I thought this was a sign of "not being too addicted" but now I don't know: to this day, if I'm in a situation where I know I can't smoke, I'm okay. If I tell myself, "I just won't smoke until 11 pm" then I'm fine. It doesn't bother me. If I ever run out (which happens, though not often), I stress out while I have the last one, then I'm okay.
Smoking is an easy out for me. When I'm feeling something unpleasant, when I'm going through anything even remotely intense, the simple act of lighting up and taking that first drag lets me put my mind elsewhere for just long enough...
Then I'm okay.
The slow pull of the cheek, drawing in the smoke. The quiet crackle of the burning tendrils. The sudden release and inhale. It fills the chest, and spreads through my body.
And then the slow and visible exhale. You can see your breath, sometimes curling, sometimes flowing, sometimes forming a perfect "O."
Alexis Massie {pandora@pbot.com} I actually smoked pot before I smoked a cigarette. My stepfather was a heavy duty smoker. My mother smoked when she was on the phone or at a bar. My father smoked a pipe. My grandfather, cigars and cigarettes. I grew up in the pre-Surgeon General warning environment when everyone I watched on TV smoked.
I never wanted to smoke. It just never appealed to me. There was no peer pressure about it like there was about drugs and booze. I think I detested them - cigarettes - because of my stepfather. So I had the harsh burn of weed in my lungs which you had to hold in and mix the oxygen just right and pinch that roach... all requiring much more concentrated effort than just sticking a filtered stick between my lips.
I smoke only rarely and always when I am fairly well into my cups. I can cop a wicked buzz off the nicotine, but otherwise I can't stand the smell of it in my hair and clothes. See how I think? I couldn't care less if the cancerous discoloration of tar in my lungs eats my life away, I just don't want to stink.
Also I remember my first French was from a girl who smoked and I nearly puked when that tongue started lunging into my mouth. The experience did not lend itself to creating an altogether favorable opinion of smoking.
Lance {filled.with.guilt@glassdog.com} I love everything about the process of smoking. I love how the pack feels in my pocket. I love holding an unlit stick. I love lighting the match or flicking the lighter. I love the flame. I love the inhale. I love the smoke. I love how the lit cigarette feels warm in my hand. I love how it looks. I love watching the smoke twirl twist and disappear.
I hate it when people come up to me in bars and ask me for a cigarette. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I always say the same thing.
me: "Why should I give you a cigarette when you are not a smoker?"
them: "But I am a smoker!"
me: "You are not a smoker. If you were a smoker, you would be carrying cigarettes of your own. If you were a smoker, you would never take the risk of running out of cigarettes. If you were a smoker, you would carry an extra pack. Look, I have an extra pack. And you know why I have an extra pack? Because I would not be able to handle being without a cigarette. I am a smoker."
They usually call me a bitch, or give me a hard time otherwise, but I do not care. Nonsmokers do not need cigarettes. Geez, rebecca. What about the unspoken brother/sisterhood of smokers? It's getting harder for us all the time, you know. Sometimes you just get caught short. I always have extras, tho. I like to hand 'em out to homeless guys in lieu of change; they're an international currency understood by all. So much more soulful than a grudging quarter. Ah, the joy of smoking...so bad for you, but so good. Those damn puritans will never know the bliss of the nicotine buzz, the intricate rituals you devise around lighting up, the toss of head as you casually exhale...The feeling of zen-like completeness that comes with a smoke after a big meal; All's right with the world... Hmm, I'm starting to sound like an addict. Nah, I can quit anytime I want... I, too, smoke more when I drink, which is hmmm most of the time actually...And driving makes me crave'em, it's the adrenaline I guess...My ultimate smoking experience was driving back from Mexico with a box of Cuban cigars; boy were they smooth, and each one would last for hours, clenched in my teeth as the desert dreamed by... And now it's just grimy city living with a pack-a-day habit and cigarettes for breakfast. OK, I need help. I'm just not willing to admit the glamour's worn off. well i rarely drink, so that has nothing really to do with it. until i was about 19, smoking didn't really do much for me, then i discovered i'd never really been inhaling enough. at least at the start, when i'd been smoking strong cigarettes. then i moved down onto weaker ones, settling on marlboro lights. those were the smokes i carried on using when i carried on my habit after the numerous times i quit, but when i was 19 i tried one of my friends' stronger regals and inhaled fully and got my first ever nicotine buzz. it's still not really worth it though, i cough and my throat feels bad for hours. but it's all part of it.
kaleid {kaleid@deathsdoor} At first I did it because "everyone else was doing it". God I hate the way that sounds. But it's true. I ran with a racy crowd of girls at the time...the ones who wore makeup with their uniforms and curled their hair every morning and sat in algebra painting their nails.
Now I do it because whenever I smell someone else's cigarette smoke it makes me crave one. The smell is like a memory for me. The smoke of a Marlboro Light brings back memories of an old boyfriend who I used to stay up with all night smoking and watching movie classics or listening to cd's in the dark. The smell of a Camel Light reminds me of a summer not long ago spent following the Dead (in the driving radius of my hometown) and working in an marina bar with some fun hippie-chicks from Mass. who stopped for the summer here to work, on their way to Colorado.
I enjoy it, am mesmerized by the tendrils of smoke as the curl into me and puff out of me. If I didn't have allergies I would do it more.
Susan Paulsen {netgrl@cinti.net} I was never what you'd call a real smoker, cigarette smoker that is...druggie? yep. drinker? uh-huh. weird? no doubt!...but smoker? w e l l...
but, for 5 years I smoked a pipe...I started because my boyfriend smoked one and I really liked the feel of a pipe...and the smell...and of course the looks I got.
women aren't supposed to smoke a pipe, ya know!
nothing focuses attention quite like pulling out your pipe and tobacco pouch and going through the act of filling and tamping and lighting in a chi-chi club.
ah! the bravery of youth!!
Jennifer {jworden@meadoworks.ns.ca} I was always one of those rabid anti-smokers. I would chastise anyone around me for smoking, and would chastise anyone who sang or played a wind instrument if I knew they smoked.
I grew up in a smoking household. My dad smoked a pipe, my sister and brother and sister all smoked (sometimes more sometimes less) and my mom was an ex-smoker (I don't think I ever actually saw her smoke.) I never smoked while I was growing up. My dad quit smoking when he was down to about 30% lung capacity (he is doing ok, but even to this day he can't go up more than 1 flight of stairs without running out of breath.)
I started smoking at the end of a year-long relationship. Some would say it was a response to stress, in the relationship, in the job, in my life, and perhaps there is some truth to that. My stated reason at the time was "to become less smug", to understand the disease of nicotine addiction. However, I think it may have been an attempt to become more smug, when I quit easily and could mock anyone who couldn't.
Things didn't quite work out that way. I was able to quit for a while, but started right up again when the opportunity arose (dxh).
What I like about smoking is the feel of the nicotine rush, the adolescent fumble of the fingers on the keyboard, the short-lived loss of fine motor control. I find that smoking only one cigarette every 6-8 hours gives good results, with the best results at a frequency of 12-20 hours.
I know that smoking is not something I can do long term. It will eventually put me down the road my father took, if I let it. Activity is too important to sacrifice in 2 minute doses of jittery wired ecstasy. It will not be extremely easy, but I am confident that when the time comes, I will put down the pack for at least a few years. Never say never, though... Smoking is one thing. Rolling your own is quite another. I've been smoking for about ten years now. It's funny -- until I started doing it the European way, I always felt like something of a dilletante, even at a-pack-or-more-a-day. I just didn't identify myself as a smoker, somehow, even though I was as chemically-dependent as the next guy. Rolling my own made me one with the experience. When I met Johanna in Costa Rica, we smoked the endlessly available third-world grade-B Marlboro Red's on the beach. She told me that at home she always rolled her own with Dutch tobacco. I'd smoked Drum before, and enjoyed the taste, but that raw unfiltered smoke always had me wheezing on stairways inside of a day. She explained that you could buy little filters to roll into the cigarettes. A few months later, while visiting her in Germany, I got to try it myself. It's like this: You go to the tobacco shop and buy a pouch of Drum, or Van Nelle, or Samson, or any of the Dutch-exported tobacco's (Drum is actually a blend of Kentucky and Virginia tobacco -- go figure), a pack of rolling papers (the ones in the tobacco pouch are low grade -- Canuma hemp papers are my favorite), and a box of filters. You tear open the plastic wrapper on the tobacco pouch and savor the sweet, musky smell of the slightly damp, fresh tobacco. The papers and a handful of filters go into the pouch with the tobacco. You open the papers and pull a fresh crisp one off the top. You root around in the moist tobacco until you find a filter. There's a gummed strip on the side to hold it to the paper -- if you've got Efka's, it's conveniently marked with a red line, otherwise you hold the filter up to the light and squint as you roll it around, looking for the reflection from the gum. Lick it and stick it. Now the tobacco, pick out a clump the right size and lay it on the paper, fluffing it so it's not too tight (make's for a tough draw), spreading it out to make a nice even roll. Roll the paper between your fingers -- again, not too tight -- and then finish it off with a single lick across the gum (more than one lick and it'll fall apart halfway through). It doesn't take long 'til you can roll cigarettes that look like they came out of a pack. The smoke is different. It's like the difference between Budweiser and Anchor Steam, Taco Bell and Ninfa's, pornography and sex. It tastes like tobacco -- not the dried-out chem-washed cardboard substitute that's made R.J.Reynolds rich. It rolls over your tongue, and shoots a silver nicotine bullet into your brain. It taste's *good* -- like a cigarette should. It's more than just feeding-time-for-the-monkey, it's a ritual, a contemporary western tea-ceremony. Whenever you're back in the states, people look at you funny. Every SINGLE time you roll up in a bar, some moron's got to make a joint joke. You come face to face with that Pink Floyd line about 'nicotine stains on my fingers' and wonder why he didn't mention the one's on your teeth. Then the relationship falters -- you end up back in the states with a slowly dwindling hoard of 1,000-odd filters. The only ones you can find here are poofy, cottony things that only a complete moron would think acceptable for smoking. The last few days you keep managing to find another couple hiding under the seat, or behind the couch, in jacket pockets. Then you smoke the last one. And think for a moment about dismantling it from that last cigarette and using it again. And decide to savor the memory rather than pervert it. The next day, I bought a pack of Camel Lights. I still smoke, but I don't really enjoy it that much now. There's no taste to these damn things. Dunhill's, Spirit's, anything that comes out of a pack, anything with dry, dead tobacco -- it's just not the same. This time, I might quit for good.
dirk {dirk@highlander.com} There are times when the only desire I have is for a cigarette. There are times when it seems wrong not to have one, cool blue sky days in autumn, the first day of spring. I began smoking when America began to taboo it, no smoking in doors, with the lights on, and in ear shot of a non-smoker. I became accustomed to going outside for a smoke with a friend, taking a break from studying, and long nights during finals, putting on my flannel, grabbing my cigarettes, and walking outside letting the starry night sky and the smoke clear my mind. Im now living in Germany, where everyone smokes inside, with poor ventilation, every now and again I take a walk around town smoking, it feels better.
garrick {gvan0114@rz.uni-hildesheim.de} The first couple of years that I smoked, I did it for the rush, a cheap, easy and legal way to get high, if only for a few minutes. But of course when your body is used to the drug you don't get high from it. Then there were a couple of years where it was social, I smoked when I talked to my friends or played bridge. Now I can't conceive of not smoking. What would I do when I drink, work, after I eat, or when I play bridge? I would be lost, I'm sure. In other words, I am desperately addicted. I've tried to quit a few times but it never lasted longer than a week or so. I rolled my own for a long time, and that was a good thing, because you can't just take a cigarette out of the pack and light it when you roll, so you smoke a lot less. On the other hand, when you smoke a lot, you start to realize how much time you waste on the whole ritual of rolling. So now I smoke reds. My first sigarette nearly killed me, I was eleven years and had "borrowed" one sigarette from my father. I was sitting in a tree in a small forest behind our house, and after 2 deep breaths it felt like the world turned around and down was up etc. (..pause, looking after the matches...) Later at school I joined the gang with the tough boys. To become and continue as a gangmember one of the laws was to smoke at school between lessons. Now I have been smoking for 20 years,and I am looking for reasons to stop. I know there are lots of them, but its very comfortable to be blind in this matter..... Here in Oslo 20 cigarettes cost 51 Norwegian crowns, in US currency approx 7 dollars. For these money I else could get: -6 different newspapers, or -taxi to job, or -4 bottles of lager at the shop, or -one 10-pack of 3,5" disks, or I could work 30 minutes less each and every day.
Im an addict to coffe and cigarette and I need this special ritual to sit down with smoke, coffe and a newspaper. Should I quit this, I would need lots of Valium and other relaxing pills... While writing these words I have been smoking up 40 cents...and had my coffee-cup #6 today....
magne in Oslo {mhjelle@sn.no} My first cigarette was a Marlboro Red smoked in a pool hall in Tennessee. I was 17, on vacation without my parents for the very first time, and visiting a friend who was a smoker. It was bliss even though I couldn't inhale without a near-death experience for a long time. My parents hated it of course. In my mom's eyes, smoking is akin to kicking kittens.
Before I turned 21, I used to go to the bar with friends and I'd smoke because I couldn't drink. I'd smoke them one after another, sometimes lighting the next from the smoldering butt of the last. I'd drag on them so hard that the filter would be solid dark brown, and by the end of the night the pack would be gone. I'd smoke when I was stressed, I'd smoke between classes. I'd smoke whenever I was with smokers.
In spite of all of that, I'd give it up for months at a time. Every three months or so I'd buy a couple of packs and smoke them until they were gone. I'd start, joking that it was the start of my smoker cycle. I'd stop, hating the smell and the way smoking made me look.
The last time I bought a pack of cigarettes, my mother was in the hospital with a blood infection. I reasoned that with the nasal cannula feeding her oxygen, she wouldn't know that I was smoking again. I didn't want her to worry about me. My brother and sister guessed right away, but agreed not to tell. The day she was released, I crushed the remaining cigarettes and have resisted the temptation to buy since then.
Occasionally, though, I still bum one off of a smoking friend, just to taste that delicious, clandestine feeling of being bad again.
jenna {jennifer.petroskey@sdrc.com} I first began smoking after my engagement broke up 5 years ago. I needed the cigarettes, I just needed the bonding that only cigarette smokers have. I guess in a strange way I just wanted to die, and cigarette smoking was the "slow-exit" to life. A friend of mine at the time always smoked Marb-lights, so I too aquired this habit after endless nights with her, just staying up, drinking everything in sight, and smoking a pack between the two of us. Over the past 5 years I've tried to give it up almost on a daily basis. But it's always been my real sure fix for these past 5 years. Love it, hate it....live with it till I get the balls up to really quit. After my first few encounters with cigs in my teens, I decided I was the most die-hard non-smoker who ever lived. I never even tried pot, because it involved inhaling *smoke*...yech! [20 years pass...] I broke up with my current husband about a year ago, and weeks after the splitup, I bought a pack of cigarettes. I hate the taste of cigarettes. I hate the smell of cigarettes. Every time I light up, I ask myself, why am I doing this? I don't smoke in my own house, but sit out in the cold and smoke on the porch. I have tried to quit 3 times, each time lasting about 3 weeks. This year I made a New Year's resolution to "really quit"...that was the worst thing I could have done. I really rebelled against the idea that I would never have another one, and after 3 weeks started smoking more devotedly than ever. I am such a dingbat...why am I doing this?
Mary Rawle {mtrawle@metro.net} I most enjoyed a cigarette with my coffee. Maybe two. Sit down in the dark corner of a small coffee shop, with a friend or a book. Sip. Inhale. Sip. Inhale.
Remi {erd3515@umoncton.ca} When I was very young, I threw a carton of my father's cigarettes into the garbage. It was a bigger deal than I had guessed. I loved the smell of a cigarette freshly lit--not the stagnant barroom smell, but the smell of freshly-lit Kool as my father put that big Electra 225 in gear and pulled into traffic. It was the seventies--smoking was bad, but almost all of the adults still did it.
I started because you could smoke a cigarette and get a buzz that went away in time for class. I was fifteen, and experimenting with anything I heard people talking about. As time went on, I couldn't imagine NOT smoking.
What is it about smoking that seems to go so well with driving? I regularly smoked Marlboro lights, but for vacations or road trips I got Camel filters.
I read that smokers tended to weigh less than non-smokers. That was a really good reason to keep it up, as I was guzzling beer on a regular basis. Plus, there was the contemplative smoke to look forward to at the end of the day. There was the I need to get out of this madhouse cigarette break to enjoy at work. The wake-up cigarette for the walk to work. The wind-down cigarette for watching the sunset from my fire escape. The cigarette as an excuse to postpone activity.
I never really wanted to quit. I want to smoke those stink-and-cancer-free cigarettes until I'm a hundered and two. When they invent those, I'll start again.
Tandy Margaret I smoked tobacco from age 14 to 49. For thirty-five years (with several periods of not doing so - quitting was easy - I did it a thousand times) I lit a cigarette shortly before waking and smoked it before doing anything else. I did the same many times during the day and, generally, shortly before retiring.
I started with kools and marlboros and switched to camels because that's what my dad smoked and there was always a carton in the drawer in the kitchen. I had free access to tobacco from age 14 until I started to have to buy my own.
I smoked every type of cigarette I could get my hands on. I would go to the tobacco shop and browse for interesting looking foreign brands and taste them and smoke them with gusto.
I enjoyed smoking and it satisfied something within me that was untouchable by any other drug.
As the price of cigarettes rose I was not deterred. Somehow I found money and justification to continue. When people or advertising advised me against it I responded by reaching for another smoke.
In the end, I was buying Alas Azules across the line in Mexico (I live on the border) for $ 3.00 per carton of twelve packs. They would last me about a week and, although unfiltered, were a better tasting and milder smoke than filtered american-made brands.
I think, though I do not smoke any more, that the stigma on tobacco smoking is another attempt by some to control the lives of others. I will support, in any way, the rights of smokers. Other people smoking does not bother me, nor does it tempt me to smoke myself. I allow people to smoke in my home, and anywhere else they like.
People who are so adamently opposed to smoking have never done it. Fuck them!
I will always remember my friend Duke who was an executive in a utility company. He had a sign on his desk that read: "SMOKING ENCOURAGED" Strangely, I'd been having a number of conversations about smoking in the days before this whole smoking section showed up here. Mainly, conversations about the question of whether or not smoking was cool.
Ultimately, we decided that if all of these groups trying to "curb teenage smoking" really wanted to have some impact, they'd stop lying to kids, who always know when adults are lying to them, and admitted up front that yes, smoking was cool.
The curling of the smoke in the air. The mannerisms and gestures you acquire the moment you place a cigarette between your fingers. The combination of having a drink and a smoke -- oh wait, we're talking kids... coffee and a smoke?
Picture an anti-teen-smoking public service announcement that began with someone smoking a cigarette and saying directly to the camera, "Ok, you know what? You're right: Smoking is cool." And then trying to pitch why perhaps the target audience shouldn't start.
If nothing else, they'd get credit for not triggering kids' bullshit filters.
I started smoking during my senior year of High School. It was the only thing that kept me sane. I continued during college. I went to an art school, so there were plenty of other smokers around. Nobody gave it a second thought. I certainly didn't. For seven years after getting my BFA, I smoked. I did enjoy the process. I enjoyed getting to go outside for a little break every day at 10am and 3pm during my work day. The physical items that you need to smoke are cool. More stuff to have on you. Very much like keys on a keychain: the more you have, the more adult you are. I even bought spiffy little accessories to dress up the habit. A pewter cigarette case. An engraved lighter. An ebony cigarette holder, for formal occasions. Cool ashtrays. I even enjoyed the sweet taste of the smoked phlegm that I coughed up every morning. I know it sounds disturbing, but it's true. I enjoyed absolutely EVERYTHING about it.
Mike Farris {mikef999@mindspring.com} Cigarettes were my best friend. Cigarettes were my communicator. Cigarettes opened me up to a world I thought I wanted to be in. Now I'm just a slave. Since I haven't quit yet, I can't write the third part of this tale. I can talk about how cigarettes made me feel, then and now. Then, cigarettes made me feel part of the crowd I hung with, made me feel popular, made me feel accepted. Now, cigarettes make me feel shunned, make me feel alienated, and make me feel shameful for the lack of will power. Then, cigarettes introduced me to several women who became involved in my life. Then, cigarettes made me think I was cool. Then, cigarettes gave me a sense of community, when I was doing the things local teens do, going out, throwing parties, having bonfires on the beach, and the like. Now, cigarettes made me hide my addiction to my current love, Jeanette, when I first was introduced to her. Now, I could tell her dissapointment with my habit. Now, I can still see her worry over my affliction. Now, I don't share a sense of community, instead, I step outside when the drug calls me, leaving all my friends inside having fun. Then, smoking was fun and rebellious. Now, smoking is not much fun, and is ruining my body. Maybe it's time to quit.
Mark Prince {mprince@jumppoint.com} I started smoking when I was 15. My mom doesn't smoke, my dad doesn't smoke and none of my close friends were smoking yet. I have no idea why I started smoking. But I do know why I still smoke. I like the taste of a cigarette early in the morning before class with my first cup of coffee. I like the taste of a cigarette late at night when I'm finishing up my homework. And all of those times in between. I tried snuff and chew but they didn't give me what I liked. The nicotine was there but the taste, the feel of the smoke and the fact that I couldn't hold them between my fingers made me go back to cigarettes.
Joe Camel didn't convince me to start. I've been smoking for over six years and still haven't sent in one c-note. I don't know what I'm saving for but whatever it is I'm going to able to afford it.
This new anti-smoking movement makes me sick. It's just another cause for people who have to prove to themselves that they are trying to make the world a better place. I have never pushed anyone to smoke. So why are these people trying to force me to quit. Yes, I am addicted. But that is alright because I don't want to quit anyway. Prohibition was tried with alchohol and the success of that movement is obvious. It looks like history will repeat itself again.
"A Smoker's Creed"
Some people say that smokers suck,
Mark {MPol777@aol.com} I was thirteen. She was a year older and was the first girl to develop what seemed like the largest breasts in the junior high school we both attended. She kissed me hard with her tongue. All the blood rushed into the head on my shoulders, then into the one below my belt. She handed me a lit cigarette and walked away laughing. It was my first kiss and my first smoke, even after 25 years I still get flushed thinking about it. driving the family car when it's 15 degrees with all windows rolled down so the scent dosen't stay washing your clothes a lot hiding cigarettes all over your room, having to pay off younger siblings when they would get nosy buying a pack fo dunhills, for the hell of it, smoking one on an empty stomach right before class, leaving class 15 minutes later to go puke coffee and coffee and more coffee tastes better when the cup's in one hand and the stick's in the other gives you something to do when you're hanging out so you don't look bored having an addiction is kind of sexy. like, i think ppl who are needy are really attractive. yeah. and co-dependency is cool. I had my first cigarette on a boat going from Israel to Athens.
We were returning home and my father was ill in bed - the results of eating pork for the first time in six months. So I got bored and decided to check out the nightly disco that took place on the boat.
Being 14 and shy I perched on the stairs and watched all the 'cool' people dancing to bad disco music, when a French girl came up to me and offered me a cigarette. I thought she was the most sophisticated person I had ever seen - so how could I decline? I felt grown up and daring and the whole thing was immensely enjoyable.
I have been smoking ever since, and now there are so many important situations and emotions and people associated with that. I wouldn't have wanted to miss out on any of them.
Ruth {ruths@edcom.co.uk} Blue smoke. Rising. Curling in a laurel around my head. Coffee, black. I draw in, hear the light crackling sound...try to keep my hair away from the burning ember. I exhale, sharply, like an exclamation point. Perfect for arguments, or when you're telling off an ex. When I have one of *my* smokes, I know why I do this. B&H 100's Deluxe Ultra Lights. Oooh baby.
Nicole {noizangl@cycor.ca} This wasn't my first time, not was it my 200th time. It was simply a time when smoking was somehow tied to who I was.
Bob, Sylvie, Jake, and I were sitting around my kitchen table on a cool afternoon in 1994. The four of us get together most every Saturday to drink and tell lies and play Gin Rummy. Sometimes Bob's ex-wife, Lorraine, came over to tell our fortunes. This particular Saturday it was just the four of us: smoking menthol cigarettes and staring real hard at our cards, willing them to fall into place. We'd started out with vodka and tonics, but the tonic was flat so we decided to skip it. At least we had plenty of ice. Bob, who felt he was in his last blaze of attraction, was talking about a woman he'd met last night . . . she'd had a forehead so smooth it had made his stomach ache. Jake, young enough to believe that no one has eaten it all before him and just around the corner is a fine feed, yammered on about his fiance, Larrilyn Ann Taylor. Sylvie was studying People Magazine. At 9PM, we ran out of vodka so we switched to rum and punch flavored Kool-Aid. Bob was ahead by 1500 points. Jake reached a conclusion: he lived in a rented mobile home and was engaged to a woman who wears red Lee Press-On Nails and is a checker at the Piggly-Wiggly, and was quietly rearranging his cards. Sylvie had been cleaning out her pocketbook, decorating the table with matchbooks, a dark brown compact, wallet, key ring with a pink plastic flamingo dangling from it, address book, white caterpillary straw papers, and half a Butterfinger, its wrapper shredded. She stopped, nailed to her chair by heavy sighs when she realized neither People Magazine nor her purse will hold the answer to why her life turned out this way, with a husband who snatches her Victoria's Secrets catalogs and hides them in the suspended ceiling in the basement. I left the table to dig though my albums, looking for Tracks of my Tears. Sylvie was out of cigarettes. Jake had one. Bob had three. I started Johnny Rivers and dug through an old briefcase, and came up empty. In an odd juxtaposition of self-pity and fellowship, we simultaneously ackowledged we'd know each other for 17 years. It was like a Carlos Castenedas moment. We had been together through thick and thin, through sharing a dark house with wiry rose bushes in front for $13.62 a month, per. The rose bushes survived only because we loved them so damned much. Marriage, divorce, birth, death, sorrow and joy, poling money for groceries and always ending up saying, "Rice, again? We just went shopping." We had managed them all. And we'd manage this crisis as well. We called Lorraine, asked her to bring her Tarot cards, pick up cigs. And a bag of ice. All would be well once again. Something to enjoy Something to define Something to be "cool" It has always been a religious experience for me...a way to stop for a second and think. Somehow, that smooth smoke rolling down my throat is introspective and revealing. I've learned more about myself from smoking than any other activity. Sometimes it's an image...sometimes it's a nic-fit...but it's always, repeat ALWAYS, a learning experience. At least for me.
Smoking was just a beautiful thing; it was a state of being. Where there was a meal, there was a cigarette, where there was a drive, there was a smoke. I couldn't picture myself going out for coffee without a pack of smokes. Smoking is truly a social event. :)
Joe Gruppuso {ilsundal@alfheim.net} it fills the void left by the abscence of "her"
Shawn I'm a smoker that doesn't want to smoke. The glamour has definitely worn off for me and now it's just a habit. A bad one at that. I also love a cigarrette after I eat and also when I drive. It is also an out for me. If I get stressed, which I do a lot being in college, I have to smoke, it calms me. At least that's what I tell myself. Driving without a cigarrette wouldn't feel right, like when you get so used to something, it not being there doesn't feel right. I have to have the comfort of that stick in my hand, the large inhale/exhale when I have a lot on my mind. Okay, I am addicted.
I haven't given up though, I don't like it and I won't keep up with it. When I have a family, I won't want to smoke around them. When I have kids, I don't want to give them the impression that smoking is a good thing to do. I watched my grandfather die of lung cancer, which makes me even more stupid for picking up the habit. I don't want my kids to go through that.
Lisa Winebrenner {lwinebre@indiana.edu} i started , though it might sound like a cliche, because of peer pressure. everywhere i turned, there was another friend smoking. when i finally succumbed to mob mentality, i found that i actually liked it. rolling smoke under my tongue. inhaling it into the farthest reaches of my lungs. it gave me a sense of power over my own life. now, i keep doing it because it's what i do. smoke. there is no middle ground. you are either a smoker or a non-smoker. all you have to do is find out which you are and just... be.
Juanito Ybarra {Ybarra18@hotmail.com} I didn't start smoking until I studied for a term in France. Going out to bars there, I figured I was smoking anyway, so I might as well get some enjoyment out of it. My first experience was chain-smoking a pack of Marlboro Reds while drinking my way through the beer menu of the local bar.
I kept it up once I got back to the States. I smoked on-and-off during college: more during times of stress like finals and tech weeks of plays, less (or not at all) during soccer and Ultimate seasons. At one point I figured that if I was going to smoke, I wasn't going to mess around with these damn Camel Lights, and started smoking Camel straights. The first one literally knocked me over. That phase lasted about 3 weeks, until I discovered Camel Wides. The Wides, for some reason, reminded me of European cigarettes, which one could not get in rural Minnesota. So I stuck with those until I got back to the big city and affected a Dunhill habit.
I quit while I was living with my parents and started again as soon as I moved out, because, hey, it was my place and I could smoke if I want to.
I quit again after about a year and started again (American Spirits this time -- healthy cigarettes!) last summer when my job and living situations got precarious.
I quit again once I got to San Francisco but never stopped thinking (and dreaming) about cigarettes. I just started again this spring, when my job and living situations got precarious again. Maybe when those situations resolve themselves, I'll quit again.
Or, you know, maybe not. I got hooked on cigarettes in my freshman year and even though I've faced the fact that I'm addicted, I keep hoping that every pack I buy will be the last one.
Inhaling a cigarette is like a little orgasm. It feels soooo good. It works on the part of your brain responsible for your evolution - that's why things like sex or eating feel "good". If you inhale slooowly, focusing on the resulting feeling of ecstasy, you'll know what I'm talking about.
There are a few positive sides to smoking. I've had many interesting conversations and met many fasciating people because I went out for a smoke break. Most of my housemates smoked last year, and that's how we would catch up on each other's busy lives - over a cigarette.
I will quit one of these days, as soon as I convince myself that I really want to.
Thomas {thomask@igs.ca} I'm 16... never tried a smoke before and it seemed like everyone else had... so one night I stole a cig from my dad's pack, waited till everyone else was asleep and went for it... I've done this twice now and I still don't get the whole idea... Maybe I'm doing something wrong... Guess I'll have to keep on trying...
u don't need to know my name Well, not was like, but more what it is. I havn't quit yet. I'd like to pretend I could, but I dont want to. I just like the attention I get. "Is that weed man?" "Those smell funny..." "I can't believe you're smoking THAT here." and so on... The pack. the lighter/matches/flame source. The inhale. slow. comfortable. familiar. soothing. filling your lungs. Then the slow exhale. beauty of that smoke, slowly curling, waving, riseing. Sometimes watching it rise from it's source, shifting your hand around to see the different ways it can flow. (It's just so damn cool!) Anyway, you can also read all of the other experiences on this page. Most are (close)-(on the mark) to exactly how I feel. 5:55am 21/08/1997
Fred {fboulay@nbnet.nb.ca} I'd say my age but there's no way you'd all believe me...anyway,I love smoking...eversince I first tryed in summer school to know...getting caught,chased away from conveinience stores,fishing for smokes in front of 7-11s...it's all embarassing as fuck,but all worth it when I get a pack...just to open and to smell the shrink-wrapped (leastways,that's what it's like for canadian cigs) aroma is almost as good as smoking one...I could quit any time I wanted to...I have and probably will,I want to enjoy it a bit more I remember smoking my first rolley,then puking a few minutes after...then to take a real brand name it's like coming out of a coma after a 2 year long sleep...I figure i'll do this for a while..then quit...It's not as hard as they say....
Mike {...} I must start with the word unfortunately. This is not to say that I don't love and count on smoking as a way to exist in this life...but unfortunately, one day during the summer after 7th grade, I was walking around in my neighborhood and found an unopened pack of Newport lights. I quickly pocketed them and kept them secretly on person until several weeks later when my family and I went on vacation in North Carolina. It took me a while to find a pack of matches because no one in my family smoked...but when I did, I realized that I didn't know how to light a match anyway and was,furthermore, quite threatened by this procedure...so I came up with the brilliant idea of taping a toothpick on to the match to make it "longer". Once I had finally lit my user friendly match I put that cigarette in my mouth and just started sucking in as hard as possible until i realized that the actual smoking proccess had begun. I am not sure if I liked it or not...but I smoked the whole pack before I came back for dinner. I didn't try this again until a few months later when a friend of mine confessed that she had been smoking behind her parents back...I thought of encouraging her to just stop doing it, but instead I immediately suggested that we both go down to the creek and smoke together. During this time, she taught me how to light a match and informed me that I was "doing it wrong"...and it was at this time that the love hate relationship between my lungs and the cigarette began.
15 years have now passed since that day, and I don't think a moment goes by when I don't beg God to help me stop. I actually stopped for two years...but enough fear and frustration drove me back to the most acceptable vice in history. I still ask God to help me stop, and I am going to..especially because my whole life's work is being a singer...and even more especially because I want to trust in the God who loves me,rather than something that is in the process of killing me and everything that I do. Until then I found it very pleasing to see a bunch of people that know what it is like to love something so much and wish that it wasn't what it really is...
ramsie {myoung2@flash.com} Smoking was like the ultimate rebellion for me... my dad quit before I was born because my mom wouldn't kiss him anymore and my grandpa quit because my grandma and my aunts wouldn't leave him alone. I considered myself the most adamant of anti-smokers and I never lost an opportunity to really be a bitch about it. Then there was that day... It was senior skip day and Jill, Matt, Eddie and I had gone to the drive thru where they never card. We ended up at the park where we proceeded to get drunk off our asses. Then Jill turned to me with her Camel Filter in her hand and asked if I wanted a hit. It didn't occur to me to say no... it was weird. I'd never had the desire to have a cigarette in my mouth, but it sort of made sense... it belonged. Eddie and Matt thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. The buzz hit me almost immediately and on top of my beer buzz, I was almost incoherent... I wish I could have seen myself. Things just progress, don't they? After that, a cigarette was natural when we were out drinking, then maybe one or two after dinner when we were out... now it's different. They're a part of me. The drive to work is hell without a Camel Light between my first and middle finger... that warm earthy taste after a cup of coffee at midnight... that smell lingering in your hair after a late night with the girls... I wonder... if I had to, would I really want to stop?
Laurenz {goldenchild3@hotmail.com} Most of my memories now come to me in snapshots, black and white stills with swirls of smoke, lots of grainy blur.
Frame one: Age 7. My grandfather is a heavy smoker, an alcoholic slowly dying of pancreatic cancer. I know this. I hate the smell of the second-hand smoke, the choking effect as I try to breathe deep, try to get some fresh air...yet, I sneak into the guest room, and I find a carton of Salem's. We're at the lake...the boat is sailing on the cool, almost-metallic green box...I like sailing...and I like to chew on the mint leaves that line the shore...this smells minty to me...
And I struck a match. It was the most natural thing in the world. I was hooked in one delicious breath. Of course, I was already orally fixated (forgive the Freudian reference)--I hadn't even stopped sucking my thumb before I was sucking on a cig. I'm shaking my head, but I still feel that thrill of getting away with a bad thing.
Frame 2: Age 18. Things are really grainy and blurry now, as I drink and smoke and get high like there's no tomorrow (and sometimes I really hope there's no tomorrow). My parents don't really care (and don't really know), though they do not condone smoking. My grandfather is 3 years dead. I don't think of him when I smoke, sneaking out of the house and walking, walking around the dark neighborhoods with my walkman turned down low so I don't get mugged, raped. My friend and bad influence, Amy, has weaned me from menthols. I'm a Marlboro Light woman now...but I have to get my tongue around that word every time, and I just can't without slurring...I can't wait for my parents to drop me off at college (out-of-state, natch) so I can smoke smoke smoke to my heart's content!!
Frame 3: Age 23. My life is black and white and grainy and blurry, and I'm enjoying the hell out of myself, getting ready to graduate college. I have learned to stick with Camels. I like the bite, and I don't have to sound stupid asking for them. "I'd like a box of Mahl-rr-uh...Camels, please." I am happy with my habits.
Frame 4: Age 26. Today I am happy to say that I have never thought once of quitting smoking. Not once.
Ali I'd have to agree with a previous poster that there is an unwritten bond between smokers... outside of my dorm here, at Gustavus Adolphus, there are always four or five people talking and having a smoke... for me, i work with my emotions since i'm a painter, and sometimes it gets way too much... so i smoke once in a great while... i can't help it, and wouldn't if i could, but i smoke. Period. I like Djarums best. How 'bout you?
Egg {dekrem@gac.edu} I started smoking for what, when I think about it seems an unusual reason. I enjoy collecting antiques, specifically things known as "women's antiques" like compacts, purses, hats, and cigarette holders, especially holders. I've always enjoyed such things and really admired my grandmother who could and would use them all with such flair. As my collection of holders grew I became more fascinated with their design, beauty, and the way they were used in the past. I did some research which consisted of reading old fashion magazines in libraries and watching 40s-50s movies where all the stars smoked. Over time I became utterly entranced at how elegant the women looked while smoking with holders like the ones I myself had collected. So enthralled was I that I eventually bought a box of cigarettes, Eve 120's,(long and pretty, a friend I knew smoked those and they didn't smell too bad to me.) One evening, I broke out my holder collection, which I had no concious interest in ever using before, and lit up just to see what it would look like and if I'd be as elegant as the other women in the pictures I'd been seeing. I had never smoked a day in my life before and I loved it. I had a few cigarettes that evening and quite surprised at this reaction from myself put the whole collection and cigarettes away for over a month. After that month though I decided to try it again, and it was just as nice. I smoked with my cigarette holders like a natural, even inhaling and never feeling the least bit ill. I guess I didn't realize that I had wanted to do that for while. I was probably influenced subconciously by grandmother who also used holders way back when. Anyway that was over seven years ago, and since then I've come to enjoy smoking much more for smoking's sake not just for it's tie to my antique and holder collection. I like the way the Eve's taste, light and fragrant, I've stayed with them the whole time, and the pleasant relaxing and peaceful feeling I still get with each one. I only smoke maybe two or three cigarettes a week so I think the addiction never took hold although I definitely find smoking pleasureable. I occasionally will smoke more during one of the antique and other conventions I go to during the year, because the holders go so well with the "retro" atmosphere and prove to be a wonderful accessory and conversation piece; The holders and smoking go well with my classic style of dressing and sure enough I do love the way I look doing it; kind of Marlene Deitrichy. The collection has gone over 120 holders of all lengths and styles and I continue to enjoy their use. I see no real reason to quit given the amount I smoke and the way I think the plusses outweigh the risks. I'll probably continue to smoke as long as it remains legal. I hope it does so for a long time.
Abigail Pearle {Xarnia@hotmail.com} Everytime I see a billboard, magazine ad, newspaper as, tv commercial, or pamphlet that's urging me to quit smoking all I can think is how damn bad I want to go have a smoke.
Michelle {Quizeen@hotmail.com} The tobacco industry has the most ridiculous marketing team. I love Camel's ad campaign they had a few years ago for their anniversary, "75 years and still smoking." Not that I'm a fiesta pooper, but I think there might have been a few empty chairs at that big birthday bash.
Steve {Beachfight@rocketmail.com} The government is all upset that the tobacco industry lied during congressional hearings. I guess the government really hates competition.
Steve {Beachfight@rocketmail.com} As I continue to become more addicted day by day, I realize what the benefits are of smoking. There are no benefits. The main reason that I think I smoke is because I am a nervous person, and I probably still have the thougth in my head that I need to be accepted by somebody. The truth is, there are actually more people that don't want to be near me when I smoke. The worst part is, that eventhough I smoke, I can't stand guys who smoke. I'm a total hypocrite.
Alexandra Finkle {afinkle@student.manhattan.edu} i started smoking because it was something to do...it sounds really silly now but at the time it gave purpose to just hanging around. i also hated where i lived...i'm now convinced that's why i kept smoking- (once i got to college the only times i lit up were either when i was drinking, at a party or after a conversation with my mom...) even now, three years after quitting, whenever i go back to fairfax i feem for a smoke.
kristen {cde5kam@titan.vcu.edu} I started smoking when I was a sophmore in high school. I was a shy kid hoping to fit in. I also found the idea of partaking of "forbidden fruit" to be an exciting prospect. I remember the first time I inhaled the smoke; it felt so good I knew I was going to love smoking. It was such a powerful feeling to be able to take the smoke into my lungs. The warm rush I felt in my chest was overwhelming. That was nearly 18 years ago and though Ive stopped several times I always go back. The longest I went was almost 2 years.But I never lost the urge to smoke and there was always some event or crisis to get me started again. I still love it though I curse it at the same time because I know what it has done to me. Every time I climb a bunch of stairs or do some other type of physical exertion I am reminded by my breathlessness. But still I smoke and I cant imagine giving it up forever.
Sarah Why do I smoke? Well, when i was 10, for the thrill of it.... the adrenaline rush i got when i stole packs of Merits from my aunt's cabinet when she was at work after school, and at break and lunch running off with the boys behind school to smoke and swap enormously huge lies we called stories. My parents never suspected a thing. I was the good kid, getting ok grades at a hotsy totsy private school. And the countless times being caught behind Skateland after skate practice or open sessions, again with the boys. I was the tomboy, all the girls tried to get me to wear make up and hang out at the mall. I was happy smoking behind skateland and beating all the boys in speed team races. Then, as i went into high school, i stopped smoking, stopped hanging out with the boys, became a little goth girl....i didnt smoke cigarettes, but i did everyhitng else. Then comes 10th grade. Sofisticated...yeah right. I went to another private school. 20 people from 9-12 grades. They ALL wore tommy hilfigger! They tried to get smoking oked in school because 97% of the school was nicotine addicted. Then, stupidly i smoked just to be one of the gang....to conform...well, now those cool ass kids are begging me to introduce them to my friends and take them places. Smoking doesnt get you anywhere but dead, and i little higher up in the social world.
LiLith Rhys Jester {WritersBlockLili@yahoo.com} I love smoking I love the after dinner ciggie I love ciggies with beer I love them with strong coffee in the morning I love them when you're fucked-up dirty and hung over I love pulling them apart and mixing them with dope I love peeling the plastic from a new packet and I hate parting with the hollow carcass of an old one.
mary Eu realmente gostava de fumar... O gosto do cigarro na boca era inebriante... Mas por que? Porque simplesmente gostava de fumar. Ah! Sem falar naquela morena maravilhosa que babava toda vez que eu acendia um cigarro... Eu não acreditava que aquele mulherão pagasse um sapo nisso. Fetiche esquisito mas ela era tão boa que eu esquecia qualquer merda e fumava um atrás do outro. No final das noites com ela eu tinha que acender mais um... Era daqueles que se fuma pelo mais puro prazer depois de uma noite inteira de prazer proporcionado por aquela tarada por fumaça... Sexo e cigarro... Tudo haver depois de uma boa foda... Problema para longos anos de fodas... Infelizmente é assim: cowboy de cigarro de ficar broxa mais cedo. Isso se conseguir ficar mais de alguns anos no pique total. Eu disse pique total. 4 anos depois de ter parado de fumar eu, ou melhor, elas, elogiam a diferença. Que bom! Idiota eu de ter fumado... Sabe quanto eu gastei de cigarros em 14 anos de tabagismo? Calcule 1 maço por dia... e 1 por noite... Dava pra levar algumas gatas nos melhores motéis de Sampa por vários anos... Cigarro? Pô, que baixo astral... Sai fora!!!
Giovanni Sacco {giovanni@atinet.com.br} Kat and I sat by the lake behind the restaurant and smoked our Camels. Mine menthol, of course.
It was late evening and the nightlife around the lake had mostly died down, only a straggler or two left in the area. We sat there, near the edge, and talked for a few hours. It was amazing, this person I'd just met, we were soul mates and I'd never encountered that feeling before. We'd only met a few days previously, but there was some element of forever lingering already.
I remember laughing till tears poured down my cheeks and crying with the same result.
I was in love.
Not in the sense that I wanted to marry her, but I knew we were friends in a way that I'd only felt once before.
That night, I realized what I love about smoking. The community of it. There's something that links you with that other person standing outside in the rain with you. Something those non-smokers could never understand.
I love the feeling of being out somewhere and being in a crowded room full of smokers and the looks that I get from the non-smokers crammed in there with us.
There's a link there.
nitesite {nitesite@sunletter.com} i moved from california to the land of smoke smoke smoke!! seattle washington, you can still smoke in bars in restraunts, some offices even....the place i buy my instruments and strings and picks and things lets their employees smoke behind the counter. i think this is good and just. i have found smoker eden
and dammit i just quit
but let me say this about smoking experiences: if you have ever been in the mental hospital, you know how important it is to smoke. being a smoker is the only thing they didn't want to change about me. the only thing that was bad about being a smoker were the stupid orderlies doling out cigarettes who wouldn't give you your own brand. you have nothing, really, in the ward- so why can't they make the simple gesture to give you _your_ brand? it was about control, being sure you got the brand cig you liked. it isn't just about the Kool VS Kamel taste, trust me.
after all, some friend or family member made the effort to get your cigarettes to the damned hospital didn't they? you could easily hate your keepers or those who put you there until you were given the cigarette, and realized that everything was going to be ok. on my ward, we all sat around smoking and thinking how nice it was to be like other people in those draw in, exhale, moments.
the only drug i asked for, really.
Violet {pandorasbox5@hotmail.com} It's hard to explain really, I started from growing up around Punk rock and the other bad influeces of being a suburban kid with no friends but a computer. I can't quit either, I have tried but after a while it just creeps back on me. I try to justify it, yet as an Anyi-captilist I tend not to do a very good job of it.
Andy Patton {exis2hotmail.com } Today.
Today was my first smoke...ever. Well, becides weed. And I've had PLENTY of that.
The smoke is so much different. It is a dense fog that seems to mistify me. I don't know what it is about smoke pouring out of someones mouth that looks so beautiful. It seems to belong there, it seems to be natural. Although I know nothing could be further from the truth.
I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed smoking my first cigarette today. Alone. Driving home from Blockbuster Video.
I am 16. A friend told me of this store in our town where they will sell nearly anything to anyone.
I went there today.
I went there today, for no reason. At least none that I can think of now. Perhaps it was just to see if my friend was right. He was.
Today. I bought a pack of Marlboro Reds.
I smoked them.
I love them.
I am addicted mentally. Not so much physically.
Yet.
Today. Today was a good day.
Chad Smith {BuddyLuv00@aol.com} when i was growing up my entire family smoked. i remember telling myself that i would never start. and when i eventually did start it was like every cell in my body had been waiting for it to happen.
trent {beheadd@mailexcite.com/} I started soon after my grandmother died of lung cancer. Slowly, painfully, chained to an oxygen tank for the last years of her life. Wasted away, lungs useless. I had been in school, out of the house, for maybe two months. And when i got back after her funeral, i started bumming smokes. And then i started buying cigarettes. marlboro reds. Love of cigarettes, love of her. And then a different her. And another her. But the cigarettes stayed. The life-highs sparkled with a cigarette, the life-lows laden with the weight of smoke. Habit. Concerning the first cup of coffee. Concerning the warming up of a motorcycle. Concerning the mid-morning. Concerning lunch. Concerning coffee, generally. Concerning red wine, scotch, alcohol generally. Habit. Concerning certain songs, Pavlovian response. Concerning certain moods. Concerning down time, dead time, waiting time, lurking, lounging, longing. Punctuation. Horizontal hourglass. An addiction, yes, but still somehow an affectation. A private delight, but a public act. God i need to move out of California.
Matt Obelinksy When I first started smoking I was working at a job I hated and my girlfriend just broke up with me. I was a suicidal failure, not so much because I thought it would hurt to end it all but because I didn't know what would happen to me if I succeeded. Fear of the unknown? I was doing some monkey work and was thinking about going next door to the smoker's shop to buy my first pack all day. When I went on break and bought my first pack I sat in the back of my truck and laid back and stared up at the sky. I remember it being cloudless and baby blue. As I smoked I imagined my life passing before my eyes. Who wants to live forever anyway, I thought.
After that it became a ritual. As I went from job to job I would take frequent breaks, sit outside and watch people, the sky, cars, insects, a wall, anything. I loved my breaks and loved to watch things and empty my head out completely. After a while I started to work more hours. My boss started to love me because I would work 18 hours a day. He gave me keys to the building and as long as I could go outside and have a smoke anytime I wanted I would work as long as they'd let me. Every time I'd go and light up I'd clear my head and when I'd walk into my job it would feel like I'd just gotten there.
I started to realize that smoking was a great time to write poems, solve work-related problems or anything. It can even be a great way to meet people. Sometimes it's a way to meet people I wished I hadn't met, like the homeless man in Detroit who bummed a cigarette and stole my favorite zippo lighter from me or the occasional psychic vampire who lets his cigarette burn to ash because he won't stop talking to me (or let me get a word in edgewise.) But most of the time I meet good people and though the goal has changed, I still don't want to live forever and the bed of my truck will always be my home away from home.
Ronald Rand {rrand@cocainekiss.com} I find it hard to draw boundaries for myself, even though I need space at times.
Smoking says, "Back off." In my haze, I finally become an observer, slowly exhaling.
Christine {cristine@networkgen.com} i was against smoking from the beginning. my grandfather had died of complications from lung cancer, and that always reminded me how much i didn't want to smoke. i had a girlfriend in highschool that smoked cloves every once in a while, and i hated it. i actually got angry at her for it. i didn't want to, but i did. then last summer, my i was hanging around with my friends and one offered me a clove. i figured what the hell, and tried it. that was last summer. i smoked cloves (never cigarettes, i could never stand the taste, they still make me gag, to this day.) off and on most of the fall, adn didn't really start somking them until wintersession. over wintersession, i was alone alot, and i spent alot of time sitting outside in the snow, smoking. i guess i was hooked by then. now, almost everyone i know smokes. something. my present girlfriend smokes 2-3 packs of Marlboro Mediums a week, and i'm right behind her with a pack of cloves a week, most being smoked between friday afternoon and sunday evening. most if not all of my friends smoke cloves. it seems popular amongst my friends. i figure that it's probably killing us, but it passes time, tastes sweet, and in some small way it's rebellious. oh well. time to go light another one.
Pious Hear {phear@yourMOM.net}
I have been smoked for more than nine years. I did try to quit smoke at the very beginning. At my very beginning, I will like to light a cigarette when I heard a good song. I used to mix the mood of songs with the smoke that burning out from a cigarette. I enjoyed that feeling....
Right now, smoking becomes my habbit. It doesn't need specific reasons to light a cigarette. i will light a cigarette whenever my surroundings permit me to do so. (ie. I will not do so if there is a baby beside me... )
One thing still keep the same. I used to hold a drink on my hand while I start to light a cigarette.I do not mean alcohol but only drink such as juice or simply water. I still hate to smoke at a closed environment such as dining room. I like to smoke at a open area. To be honest, I will be sick if I was trapped in a smoking room for more than two hours....
Well, I may not be qualified as a smoker.....
Mo Mo {smoker@momowebzone.com} I have smoked since I was 15. My parent's didn't know, or maybe they didn't want to know. I don't really care. I like to smoke. I used to smoke because it was cool. They I smoked because my friends smoked. Now I smoke alone, my friends telling me to stop. I have tried to stop, I have succeeded for a few weeks months sometimes years. But I can't stay away from that delicous feeling. The sigarettes welcome me back with that delicous buzz. Only the first few, but they allways lead to more. Don't get me wrong, I want to quit sometimes. But how can I stop doing something that feels so good? How can I stop the thing that consoles me when I am down. How can something feel so good and so bad at the same time? I have since started to do pot, and other 'illicit substances', I still smoke. I still love it. I still hate it. I just don't understand. My parent's found my weed. I wonder if they know I smoke siggarettes, I wonder if they know I take shrooms, I wonder if I really care.
sad/happy I'm not even sure if I explain what smoking is like to me. I almost never "crave" cigarettes, I just find their presence comforting when I'm alone. My boyfriend doesn't smoke, my parents don't smoke, most of my friends are disgusted by the smell...so, it stands to reason that most of my smoking happens during those solitary manic moments while sitting at my computer or writing furiously at that small corner table at a coffee shop.
Sometimes, I just sit with an unlit cigarette lightly held between my fingers...the weight and feel is somehow reassuring to me.
smoking makes me feel good about myself, it brings me and my friends together, i have been smoking for 4 years. smoking is an easy way out, i can't exactly explain why i started, i just did. for fun, peer pressure, whatever... i'm a bit worried, my friend's friend just died of lung cancer, he's only 18. he smokes. i want to quit, but it's always easy to reach out for a cigg. i'm having throat problems now. i wonder when i'll die. i'm worried.
trish {trish47@pacific.net.sg} what can i say? i'm just an old-fashioned kind of girl.
cecilia I know all too well the drink-in-one-hand-cig-in-the-other syndrome, but for me it started and ended with the drink-in-one-hand-dick-in-the-other syndrome. Not many people couple orgasm with nicotine the way I did, though I have known a few. I used to combine drugs & hormones to alter and enhance the high: beer, pot, food bingeing, sleep deprivation, occasionally nitrous oxide, coke or lsd, but always, always, always there was nicotine with the orgasm.
I was a closet smoker for obvious reasons, so I usually smoked in the car or at home after meals. A cigarette after dinner was always such a nice combination.
I started on Kools (stolen from my uncle) then eventually settled on Marlboros (for taste, not trendiness) In college I came out of the smoker's closet for a while and a friend introduced me to Drums. I rolled my own for a few years, then took to blending pot and tobacco now and then.
I lost the taste for that mixture, and when I tired of rolling my own, I moved to camel shorts, unfiltered. I think I might have enjoyed those the most, but for pure taste, my all time favorites were either Export "A" or Drums.
For the last six or seven years, I only smoked Marlboros, with an occasional pack of Export A's, but I wasn't enjoying them anymore. It was addiction, pure and simple.
The combination of smoking with masturbation made it difficult to have an orgasm without nicotine. When it got so bad that I started to have difficulty coming when I was with a girlfriend, I knew I had to quit. Eventually I did, but only with the help of Wellbutrin (a.k.a. Zyban and Bupropion HCl). It has been my salvation.
Now my health and my sex life are very good without the cigarettes.
mark I have crushed out those damn life-stealers more times that I can count. I crushed a still full pack in my determined fist more often than I have had birthdays. I would set goals that were unattainable. I would promise myself that if my flicked cigarette lands on (not just hits, but lands on) that one sidewalk brick from my forth floor apartment window, I will quit. (I actually did it after four months of trying...I was so excited to have finally accomplished this absurd goal that I had to celebrate with another smoke...which missed the brick forcing me to start all over.) And damn it, despite the new wave of anti-smoking commercials which yank at my easy to yank heart strings, my resolution to quit lasts for the duration of time it takes me to find that damn pack of matches that I saw just one day before.
But there is hope.
I hope for a ravenous species of locust to devour all of the tobacco plants in one winged fell swoop...I hope that the y2k bug destroys the Tobacco companies databases rendering their plants useless for years...I hope for the news break that cigarette smoking will cause men to grow glorious locks of curly hair in their broncheal tubes...I hope that I find the most rewarding lover who will not be able to perform sexually for a man that smokes...I hope for the return of my broken and winded will power.
Robert Hodgin {roberth@ids.net} i'm 16. my first cigarette was at a concert this year with my 4 friends. i remember the loud music, the trippy lights and the heat in the concert hall. my friend asked me if i wanted one, but i said no because ever since the first day at my new school everyone was smoking that i knew- and i didnt. i kept the aliby that i used to smoke die-hartedly but i quit and dont want to anymore. [ha ha]. but i figured, theyll quit asking me after a while. we took perodic breaks and went to a nice spot on the stairs. i still didnt smoke then when they all were. i felt out of place. i finally said to myself "what the hell, ill try it." so she gave me one and congratulated me on starting again. i was scared because i didn't know how to smoke. ive seen people smoke yeah, but its not like i automatically know how to. so i just winged it, i dont remember how i did it, but it was like i felt accepted, afterall , it was my first concert and new friends. they didnt seem to notice. i tried to avoid them watching me puff , idont remember if they saw me but htey were all drunk and high anyway. i dont remember how it tasted, it wasnt that vivid an experience, but i remember smoking alot more after that 1 at the concert. they all smoked weed with millions of other strangers and i standed back and didnt try the weed, after all the cigarettes were too much of a trip to go on and try more smokeable shit. i should have tried it, i regret it but it was the first time- you cant do everything on the first try :).. and after that night i gradually continued to smoke at school with teh same freinds, i geuss it was peer pressure. but cigarettes had a nasty taste, tehy were good while you smoked but after, yuck. yadda yadda yadda, came the night i had my first taste of clove. yea, clove cigarettes are the nicest thing ive ever had- weed is nasty, ciggs are nasty but cloves, yummy. the first drag, i couldnt belive how wonderful it tasted! i almost had an orgasm in my pants, it was THAT good. [im overreacitng but it was good] my lips tasted so yummy. ever since that night at the coffe shop, ive been hooked on cloves. im not ADDICTED, but hooked in the sense that i love smoking them. i know all the health risks, yadda yadda yadda but i love smoking them. i enjoy it. i dont do it becuase i have to, its because i want to. if i had to, id be going crazy right about now and id be chain smoking them, but i have 2 packs i havent even dug into yet, and i dont feel like i want any now, or anyitme soon. when i run out of those, ill buy a carton. [my first yay!]i smoke when i want that taste and flavor, im not dependant on them. smoking cloves brings back memories. and besides i can buy them whenever i want. theres a local smoke store that i walk to that sells them to me. the guy is real nice, and i know its illegal . but who cares, i love my cloves. when ever i go in, hes like "hey my friend! youve come for your cloves" and throws down a pack of 20, hte biggest pack of the avaliable 10 packs and 12packs. Djarum specials are my current favorite, when i get a chance ill try other brands. my first experiences were nice and ill never foreget them. and another thing, i will always smoke. not everyday or every hour,just whenever i want that taste and the feeling of calmness and the best part-- the smoke, i love watching it. but for me , smoking is a passion not an addiction. my parents dont know, but i dont really have a prob with them finding out.its none of their business. after all, its my life. i dont use their money, i have a job and buy my own stuff. hmm. i cannot wait till im 18 so i can buy neat accessories like holders ect. smoking is bad but if you love doing it,do it. besides mom, its just incense you smell in my room!smoking can kill you but so can everything else. happy new year.
not important .1-1-99 8pm I started when i was eight. My first thing to smoke was a pipe with cherry flavored tobacco. I enjoyed smoking and really liked the taste of whatever I smoked. I smoked everything from pipes, cigars and cigarettes such as camel, marlboro and newports. I didnt realize that I was addicted until I was 12. Before then, I thougt I could quit any time, now I realize that if I do quit, I'll need help. First I started stealing them. Then I had other people buy them. Once I turned 14 I just walked in stores and bought them. Not much to it, but that is my story.
Joshua {smokin64@n-link.com} what do you mean what is it like? It feels so fucking good to light up a clove at the end of the day, and that is what scares me...sure i say i can quit anytime, but the feeling of knowing it is wrong makes it so much better. It is soothing to watch the smoke float into oblivion like sometimes we wish we could, with it taking our troubles for a small instance, relaxing my body and making me depressed about my life all at the sametime. It is the essence of what my parents don't want me to do, a rebel in my own eyes breaking chains, and i am young so i feel no pain, social smoker, one cig a day, 19 years old.
ryan rhodes {ryanrhodes@yahoo.com} well i wanted to try it cuz my friend said it was reely good.at first i didnt like it and i didnt in hale.now i have a very occasional(veeeeeeeeeeeeery occasional ciggie)with my friend. i like the buzz i get.however i dont wanna get hooked cuz then i would slow down in hockey!!!
ananymous : ) I had always been against smoking. I was against smoiking all the way through high school and for the first couple years of college. I had always been into working out and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I actually was in pretty good shape and had a relatively muscular body. Then I met a girl and started going out with her. This was when I was 20. She smoked. After a few weeks going out with her, I began a bum an occasional cigarrette once a week or so. Then I started buying a pack once in a while. I started with only 1 or 2 cigarettes a day. That gradually increaased to about a pack a day over the next few months. I also noticed that as I smoked more I worried less about working out. Now I am 24 years old and still smoke about s pack per day. I haven't worked out in over a year and you can tell. I sometimes want to quit, but sometimes they taste so good. The whole ritual of buying a pack, unwrapping it, and then lighting up. The smoike entering my lungs feels so good and relaxing. Actually. right now I can't foresee myself quitting in the near future. I like it so much even though I can tell it has effected my healt - sometimes I get slightly out of breath just climbing a few flights of stairs. I just love the taste and the feel.
John When I smoke,i'm happy.As simple as that.If anyone tells me it's bad for my health,I just say to live life to the fullest.Yes,smoking is a bitch when your'e sick,and you need to smoke even when your'e chest is congested with tar,and the deep sharp pain is unbearable.But smoking has always been there for me.When i'm lonely.When i'm happy.When i'm sad.My trusty cigarette has stood by me and given me my nicotine fix.I love smoking,taking a nice,long pull off my Newport,watching the sun set,feeling the menthol travel down my throat,only to be forced out in a sudden exhale.Nicotine is my best companion,and if the health risks haven't stopped me yet,then a fifty cent tax raise won't either.
KRAZED i am a devout, ravenously gluttonous cigarette smoker and though i wish to break the highly -and perpetually- addictive, respiratorily destructive habit of store-bought, noxious carbon monoxide inhalation to persue a diaphragmatically strenuous, screaming-my-ass-off, punk rock career, something about the pure, wholesome goodness of poinsonous fumes is just so darned hard to give up. i can't seem to part with it. For a while i had actually managed to cut down my cigarette intake to one every three hours, which in turn added -or subtracted, however you choose to look at it- up(down) to somewhere in the neighborhood of half a pack a day; surprisingly good, considering the fact that ever since the day i began smoking seven years ago, i have been a horrible chain smoker... Cutting down, as you can imagine, wasn't a very realistic prospect. i just couldn't be moving around all day without a smoke in my mouth. So now, every morning upon waking crawling wearily out of slumber and attempting to crawl gracefully out of bed -ha- i am overcome with the sensation of a great weight, beating down fiercely upon my weakening chest; my lungs feel languished, as if they're about to collapse, and upon attempting to expel the large amount of phlegm lodged in my bronchial tubes, the strain is so great that it feels as if my entire chest is about to implode. But nonetheless, as soon as i have cleared out my respiratory's vascular system, i am at it again, filling it back up with that wonderfully horrible(deliberate oxymoronic expression there:) composition of fabulously destructive pollutants, fumigating it, and breaking down its structural integrity, fully aware that i am paying some large, faceless corporation to help kill me. Perhaps you guys should say a prayer for me.
ÐÆMÖÑŠÍÄX {m0lten_m0llusk@hotmail.com} Nobody would have ever guessed that I would be the type of person to smoke. In high school, I was always studious, got very good grades. I eventually got a large scholarship at a good university. Not the brand of a smoker, at least for a high school kid. But there was always this evil little voice in my head urging me to try new things - even if they were dangerous. One day, in my senior year of high school, my best friend was smoking a cigar while we were driving. He offered one to me, out of politeness. I refused but was intrigued. Well, later that day I smoked one. And most people who smoke know that that is the end. Cigarettes were next. That little voice in my head had taken control. After that, he and I would sit on the stairs in the back of my house with an iced tea or an alcoholic drink in our hands and smoke and talk about things - important or unimportant. Smoking is our ritual. We go to different universities now, but when I show up at his dorm, the first thing that rolls off of his tongue is, "Hey Kevo, got a smoke?" I smile and reply, "Of course." I'm sitting in my room right now, smoking a cigarette and listening to Mozart. His music is reflective and pensive, just like this cigarette.
Kevin Ostanek {kgo@po.cwru.edu} Smoking is like a really good freind who comes around right when you need them.I started when i was drinking beer because smoking and drinking isa like hamburger and french fries.I love smoking but i wish i didnt stink.I dont care about my health but i cant have my home.car and cloths stinking.So i had to quit.
matthew the third time, i didn't inhale and i liked it. my roommate and i would smoke one pack together the first day of exams every semester. just sit and chain smoke. it was our ritual. it revolved around wanting some rebellion from the stress that was coming. the fourth time, it was social. i was always in the fraternity house and i almost never drank, but i would smoke a little. i always inhaled cause it wasn't the secure environment of being locked in my little room with my roommate knowing that neither of us really smoked... standing in front of the window with a fan blowing out just doing it to do it... and i can't say i liked it. after that i smoked at camp (i'm a counselor). i loved it. going down to the "smoker's pen" (a small area against the office building with a privacy fence around it) and not being around children for ten minutes... it was great... talking to people, reading, whatever, just that bit of privacy... and at nights, we would smoke after the kids went to bed... just sit on the front porch of the dining hall and smoke and talk and smoke some more. someone would have the "butt cup" so the kids wouldn't see them in the morning at breakfast. we called them ditties so the kids wouldn't know what was going on. it was this wonderful secret that the staff all shared and we all also shared in the desire to have that bit of privacy... no one ever denied anyone a smoke... after that summer, when i smoked every oppurtunity i had (two or three times a day), i took to just smoking whenever i could... but still, i associate smoking with relaxing and good conversation. now i only smoke when i am driving or talking with someone. i love to smoke and talk...
mary ann I loved smoking. Cigarettes and coffee, cigarettes and beer, cigarettes and weed... I used to smoke every waking moment. The best thing was when I was walking to the bus stop in high school early in the morning and it was all misty out and quiet, and the sound of that match as it lit the tip of my cigarette sounded so nice in the silence. It was even better when I got my car. Now it's so hard to be driving in that same car without a smoke in my hand. Or to sit at Bickford's with a cup of coffee and some really good conversation without my lucky Camels sitting next to me. God I wish I had never started though. I love those damn things.
Allison {aoskar@zoo.uvm.edu} I started smoking when I was ten. One of the guys who rides my bus was selling cigars and I figured what the fuck. You know how it is you see something and you just wonder I wonder what thats like. I'm currently 16 and am still smoking. I'm not a hardcore smoker like a lot of the people I now are. I usually only have at most one cig a day. I suppose one day i'll get bored and quit but for now I don't really care.
The Wizard Krezack {wizardkrezack@hotmail.com} I am as free as smoke. Free from Should and Shouldn't. Shouldn't smoke. It's bad for you. Nice girls don't smoke.... or fuck or cuss or drink. Smoking is the insignia of the maenads. Smoking, in any outfit, in any environment said wordlessly exactly who I was. I was a wild woman who didn't care what was healthy or moral or normal or good or correct. I was into pleasure. Sucking it deep into my lungs. I was the sort who didn't care about consequences. Said what others wouldn't dare, did others wouldn't do. Self-preservation was for sissys. I'll drink and do lines all night, take you home, fuck you blind, tell you off and head on down the road. I'm thin, I'm pretty, I'm young and sexy and a rebel and I don't give a damn. I smoke.
Skyler {skyler2@inetport.com} it first started when my aunt came to live with my family for a whil. When she was done smoking her ciggie she would fling it in the back yard, and i would go and pick it up and pretend that i was really smoking (i actually stuck the ciggie in my mouth and puffed) after she moved out i used to take my dads ciggie buts and finish them all the way down, then after a while i would steel ciggies from my dad and smoke them when he went to work. then when my dad quit, i had to also! It has been at least one year since i had a ciggie, and i never indend to start up again!
thats my business {buddiesfever@hotmail.com} I started smoking when I was 13. As long as I have had the faintest concept of myself as an adult, I've been a smoker.
When I was thirteen. . .before I ever had sex or smoked pot or even really had a drink. Before I ever drove a car. Or took a Greyhound bus. Before I attended my first funeral. Before I drank coffee, god forbid.
I've never done any of these things without a cigarette in hand, or in waiting.
I saw a 3 hour ballet, 'Sleeping Beauty,' at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. I couldn't wait for it to end.
Since I became a smoker, I have finished high school, graduated college, toured with the Grateful Dead, entered grad school and become a teacher. I have taken up and discarded a number of drugs. I have grown 3 inches and 25 pounds. I have dyed my hair black and blue and red and shaved it many times.
95 percent of all my memories involve a smoke-break in some manner or another. It defines me, because I require a 'smoking' hotel room or a 'smoking' seat on a plane. In a restaurant, we may have to wait to get a 'smoking' table.
I cannot imagine a 16 hour road trip, or paying my bills, or writing a paper without smoking a cigarette.
liZa {anotherliZa@yahoo.com} I smoked steadily since I was late 17....its an odd but not altogether unique story.
When I first started driving I wouldn't even allow anyone to smoke in my car. It was the constant stopping of the vehicle on long trips and watching how much they enjoyed a smoke that made me start....and start I did, with a voracious appetite. I hid it from my parents for 2 years....
I can remember quitting and starting again, cheating on the quitting, making rules for myself like "I'll only smoke if im really drunk at a bar", "I wont buy cigarettes, I'll just grub when im jonsing".....
Hell, I quit for 2 years solid (1989-1991) and I started on the goddamn airplane to Vienna because it was ok to smoke and the KIM cigarettes I bought were 70 cents a pack in international airspace. I also remember taking the same trip again in 1996, and NOT being allowed to smoke....I have vivid memories of everyone lighting up immediately and smoking as soon as we departed for our connecting flight in Amsterdam.
I landed on the tarmac in Jamaica and immediately lit up walking to the arrivals area, and was yelled at by a local saying I couldnt smoke there because of jet fuel vapors...I shrugged.
And now, I try to quit again.....sneaking one here and there after the beers in my system outnumber the women in the bar by 10 to 1....
I finally decided to quit when I turned 30. The bartender at my favoriate local bar said..."do it. it'll be the best gift you ever give to yourself...."
I chew on toothpicks now, and I feel silly sitting in bars when doing this....
....but at least I can run up the stairs in my building without suckin wind, and my teeth are much whiter... :D
Enjoy it while you are young.....old smokers are ugly.
zenbeer
What do I like about smoking? My God, where do I start? Sitting at coffee with a group of friends, talking for hours. Coffee and cigarettes are good. Very good. Just sitting at coffee with some friends, discussing politics, philosophy, sociology, music, drama ... even just gossiping about the girl at the next table -- not complete without the cigarette in hand. Taking a much needed study break during finals. I need something more than walking to the soda machine or going to check my mail ... something that will allow me not only to stop, but to converse, to live and speak and think outside of silly university material guidelines. I need a smoke. Feeling out of place at a party, gathering, school function, family event ... I want something to do that will allow me to slip away and, at the same time, look like I have a reason. I want to smoke. I like the way the smoke curls up from my mouth when I exhale. I like the peace that I feel when I'm smoking a clove in my parents' backyard at 2 a.m. I like the community of smokers that makes it easier to strike up a conversation witha complete stranger. I like the sound of the packing of a brand-new 20 pack. I love to smoke. But I need to quit. Haven't done it yet (not for good), but at least I'm only a sometimes-smoker (less than a pack a month). I need to quit, but ... I still don't want to. I still love to smoke the damn things.
Krista {pro_widow@hotmail.com} I can barely remember the first time I started smoking. It was in 6th grade, while walking home from the school bus stop 2 friends and I found a full pack of Marlbro cigarettes in the street. We ran behind my parents house to a trail in the woods and lit up. At first it didn't do much for me but after the second and third one I was hooked. I liked the way the smoke felt when it hit your lungs before you went to exhale. I loved and still do to this day the way the smoke twirls and dances around in the air after it passes your lips or nostrols. I really should quit but have such a hard time of letting go of that relaxed feeling, that feeling of full enjoyment after a meal. The companion when your all alone. The one thing that is always there in your time of need, may it be hunger, stress, disappointment or just plain bordom. One day, it will happen when I will extinguish the smoking stick forever.... but until then, to all my fellow smokers.. Light up and have one on me..
Greg {UwantToKnow@htomail.com} Why did I do it? Actually, I never did. My (well she once was my) babysitter smoked. Most of her friends smoked. A few times her friends even offered me cigarettes. I declined and they simply said something that sounded like they completely agreed with a theory I had just given. A few would even tell me that I made a good choice. I never really gave it thought. The few times I did, I asked myself why the people who used cigarettes were so against them. And while I still don't understand with full comprehension how smokers can't just not smoke if they want to quit, I do understand that on some level it's bad. Not bad like lieing. Not bad like looking at pornography or gambling when underage (or at all depending on religion and where you live). Out of my (arrogantly stated) large vocabulary or intelligence for my age (stated by almost everyone I've come across), I still can't find the words.
In a vague summary: I've known since I was about 10 (if not earlier) that I would never smoke. After all the pictures of lungs and a death (at least) in the family (partially) resulting from smoking, somehow the testimonials from smokers only a few years older than myself even though the only response from my refusing a cigarette was, "OK" Yea, it's kind of lame, but, at least, I know where I stand.
14 years of life past - many more to come I was not a big time smoker two years ago but as soon as I was introdused to the new world of college life, I became one with the biggest appetite for cigarettes. I smoke as soon as I wake up in the morning, I smoke before going to bed and all through the day almost at every interval I get.
It was like a last refuge for me. And I really do find it pleasurable. I know many smoker friends who say that they want to quit but I am only one of them who literally do not want to quit. I tell them that I won't have any regrets if I die of it but I never gave a seriouse thought about it and nor do I want to.
But if there are more people out there who really thinks that they should quit, I have a small advice. Get something new to indulge yourself in. Afriend of mine wanted to quit and so on the day he actually quit, he decided to collect old watches and it did help him. He no longer smokes and he has a large collection of old watches. This sounds a little weird but it really works.
Good luck with yours.
Tenzin Tsetan {ttsetan@yahoo.com} I can't say that I smoke alot. I'm not a fiend, I never take smoke breaks, but every now and again I buy myself a pack of cloves. (hey, if you're going to kill yourself, do it the tasty way I guess) I had my first puff of a cigarette when I was in 7th grade. My best friend offered it to me, and even though everything in my brain told me not to, I could let go of the mystery behind them. What was so great about the things? Why was it that everyone I knew who smoked was so enchanted with it? Was it some kind of magical buzz? So I took a puff. I thought it was absolutely disgusting. It was a Marlboro, so it was a full strength cig. Not the pansy stuff my mom smokes, but the real deal. After that I didn't even want to think about them ever again. And I pretty much didn't. My friend quit after he couldn't get another pack and life went on as normal. Until about a year and a half ago. I was hanging out with some people that I hadn't seen for awhile, and they had all taken up smoking, which didn't bother me as long as they didn't pester me about it, and they had these cigs that they seemed to be very interested in. They were Samporenas and they were heavenly, I have to admit. After that, I have smoked on and off, whenever I could get my hands on a pack. Usually it's never more than one or two a week. I know that usually disqualifies me from the Smoker Crowd, but I just never feel the urge to smoke more than that. I really feel that I might be addicted to second hand smoke more than I am to the death sticks themselves, but I still can't seem to give up the occasional pleasure of one sweet Samporena Exclusive every once and awhile. I don't think I'll ever give it up, but I figure, with everything else people encounter everyday, from polution, to the sun, to global warming, you name it, a couple of cigs a month aren't going to do me too much worse for the wear.
DisEnChanted {superjaded@hotmail.com} I've been smoking for fourteen years. I don't remember my first cigarette, it entered my life quietly I guess, I know I was in high school when I started smoking hard. When I stop to think about it, I always knew I would be a smoker one day. Visions of my old babysitter with a pack of Marlboro Reds curled up in her sleeve, of the little china ashtrays we kept out for guests even though no one in my house smoked, the constant reminder that both my grandfathers died too young from Emphesyma (sp?)... maybe that was always the biggest connection in those early smoking years, my grandfathers became these strange magic mystery men of my past who I knew loved me as a baby but vanished before I could speak. Smoking was strangely familiar from the beginning. It was always like sex to me, romantic and the opposite of romantic rolled into one spiralling band that would always disappear.
I think about stopping now. I think about it a lot. I know it is going to kill me one day, and finally, after a youth of way too much excess, I really do want to live a long and healthy life. I am constantly disturbed by how foreign that desire for life feels to me.
Not too long ago I read an article that my particular brand of cigarette, which I have been smoking for over a decade, has more chemical additives than any other. It scared the crap out of me. I decided to switch brands, to move on to that all natural kind in the yellow box with the picture of an indian smoking a peace pipe on the front. Switching has been harder than I ever imagined. For four days I have been craving a Camel Light like there is no tomorrow. I am addicted to things that I don't even know the name of. Me. An educated, intelligent, creative, conscious individual. A person who has wicked cravings for beets and can taste the difference between organic carrots and the kind you buy in big bags at the grocery store. A person who has always thought she was in touch with her body and mind, aware of her limits and conscious of her vices. I am addicted to more than nicotine, more than the calming feeling of a cigarette between my fingers. And for fourteen years I never even knew.
I don't know what it is about us human things, that we would invent a cigarette, or for that matter figure out how to stick a needle in our arm to forget about the world, but here I am at this point in my own small history, trying to figure out why.
And at times like this, when I try to talk about it, I don't think the why matters much at all. The why is the place you wonder in until you are ready for action. It is the how that has all the juice. It all started in JAN 99, all my friends were smoking ever since i met them for over a year, and i never did it, never smoked, drank, or anything. But, they got me started on cigarettes. First it was a newport, i bummed off people, untill a few months later, i switched, to marlboro lights, still bummed. But it came to i bummed too much, so i started buying my own packs. I can get them from the corner gas station, or my friends. I smoke about maybe 1-2 packs a week, i dont think im hooked either. Currently, i have tried a Djarum, and i grab at a chance of getting a pack. I would also like to try Bini's, even though the health risks are too high i hear. And, last but not least, a Clove sounds so good from everyone, i know i will try it, because i love flavored and exotic smokes. But regularly, i will stick to my marlboro's.
byebye I smoke for the buzz, that incredible feeling where my mind's hotwired and my body's numbed. I can see why a lot orf art-types (including myself) smoke. I only smoke one or two cigarettes a day, but I'm a ferocious smoker. One deep drag after another, right down to the filter, and then I lean back and close my eyes. Wow.
Because of the way I smoke, I stick to low-tar brands. When I started smoking again back in November '98, I smoked Trues like I did back in High School. I then switched to Marlboro Ultra Lights, a smoother taste and easier to drag on.
Nobody knows that I smoke, and that adds to the thrill for me. I wander off into the woods near my home, find a quiet place by a stream, and light up. I hate myself for picking up the habit, but moments like that make me feel like I could stay a smoker forever.....
Maidrin Rua {maidrin_rua@yahoo.com} I started smoking when I was 14 - I did it to look cool, and, yes, I really did enjoy it. It pissed off my parents to no end, I thought it made you look tough and I genuinely enjoyed it for the next 18 years - went well with conversation and social outings.
Eric Vysther {nightwing85@usa.net} Where to begin? I love cigarettes. I know they're really bad, but do i care? No, all i want is my Nicotine, that lovely rush of energy, and feeling of satisfaction as it rushes straight to my brain. Do my parents know i smoke? No, Do my friends parents know i smoke? Yes. I am having a NIC fit now, but i haven't smoked in 3 weeks. Help....
p.s. Anyone got an extra smoke?
james {notimportant} I started at 17 because in my dreams I was always smoking. Just an incidental; I wasn't dreaming about smoking, but if I was in the dream, despite whatever else was going on, I had a cigarette.
I loved bumming cigarettes in high school. It was the first time I had a sense of belonging. The slight-of-hand of passing a cigarette without an authority figure seeing... it was more thrilling than the smoke itself.
The act of smoking has remained a source of comfort for me. It's best late at night, out of doors, listening to the street sounds and the tiny crackle of burning leaves and paper, looking at the stars and the smoke dissolving into them. Smoking and solitude go hand in hand, and I find most of my truly happy and satisfied moments with a cigarette and a corner to myself.
msfortune {yossarian22@mailexcite.com} I'm not a smoker and proud of it!!! I feel great, healthy , cool and good about myself and i certanly don't need smokes to make me feel better when i'm down. Couse they won't!! to all you smokers out there: Cut it out! you smell horrible, your lungs are blackend with every puff you take and your teeeth a disgusting yellow!
You do not look cool at all !!
Cassey Four {cassey-4@excite.com} I started smoking as I found a full pack unopened on the side of the road before getting home, i was walking ahead of a group of friends, so I picked up the pack Escort 50 (8's) pretending to do up my shoe lace then continued to walk off, placing the pack in my pocket. Later that day i had a smoke, the only reasons why i picked up the pack was it was my only chance to try it and it was a waste to leave it there. Originally i was going to leave it there for my friends to take, but said I'll give it a go. That day, i had two and then the next day another, and was soon addicted, it felt good and the smell was different to the usuall stuff. My friends some and my girlfriend somed too, (she has now quit and never has had one since) I ended up smoking the rest of the pack over a month, before getting sick, I lied to my parents and said it was a natural sickness. Since then i recovered never touching one since. 5 years now i never touched one still. I'm healthier, cleaner, saved my money instead of buying them, more time to spend with my girlfriend etc. Anyway I can't see why people start, it's just a waste of time, money, good health etc.
Sam {sam@vellnet.com} I love smoking. I'm glad to see that there are other people out there that feel the same way. It sometimes seems like everyone smokes just because they are addicted, but they actually hate it.
I love the feeling of taking a big drag and inhaling the smoke into my lungs. I love watching the big cloud of smoke escaping from my mouth as I exhale. I love the way that I'm so relaxed after smoking a cigarette. Life stops feeling so rushed during the 5 minutes of a cigarette.
When I'm smoking, I feel as if I'm really living and experiencing life and not just enduring it. I never smoke a cigarette from habit. I only smoke a couple a day so I make sure that each cigarette counts.
I feel as if I were born to smoke. I loved my very first cigarette, even though it made me cough and choke. Smoking was never an acquired taste for me, I loved it from day one.
Jason For the next seven years I smoked. I smoked less at the beginning and more and more towards the end. I never went over two packs a day, though, and for that I should be happy. I made friends smoking, and all my social interactions were performed with the aid of nicotine (and usually, coffee, or beer). My nickname became 'Smokey', or with coffee, 'Slurpy'. I got two people hooked, and started one other smoking again. My fate was sealed when I found my calling, my profession: History. I read incessantly, for six to eight hours at a time. It was just after a bad break-up, and I wanted nothing more than to retreat into my ratty little apartment, day after day, and read and smoke and read and drink coffee. The act of reading and writing and working on languages became interminably intermingled with coffee and cigarettes. Always cigarettes. My nickname became 'Hermit'. I began to notice an appreciable loss in my lung capacity. I began to notice a funky smell in my car (not cigarette smoke, but fetid, rotten, cigarette-smoke-that's-been-mixed-with-god-knows-what-in-my-car). And then in my apartment. And then in my clothes. The comment "Wow! You must smoke a lot! I can smell it on you, even now!" became more frequent. Friends (even the ones who smoked) began to worry for my health. But I was so wrapped up in my studies, and in myself, that I didn't care. It was part of me; part of my life, part of the construct that I had created, part of my aura, part of my personality. It became hard for me to think (really think) without a cigarette burning. I had to do research, so I found hidey-holes and secluded spots in the library that I could smoke without getting caught, even though I bewailed the loss of documents in library fires. I began to get respiratory illnesses more often. I started to think about quitting. Finally, one exceptionally beautiful day in the middle of spring, after a mid-term in some class or another, I walked outside, walked to the campus cafe and ordered a cup of coffee, and walked outside. I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass door, a glimpse of myself with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth, even before I had exited the building. I studied it closely - I had wrinkles. I was twenty-three. Years of living on coffee and cigarettes were beginning to take their toll. I put my cigarettes back in my pocket, and went straightaway to the library. I quit. I made it about six hours, and then I smoked one; but not until I had vomited at about the fifth hour. Withdrawl can be a bitch. I was frightened now. I'm addicted, I thought, I'm a nicotine junky!. I had seen, like Neil Young, the needle and the damage done, and I swore I'd never let a substance take control of my life like that. And yet, I had. But I couldn't quit. I started smoking because i thought it was cool. Now i'm addicted if you can get me help i'd love it i even eat them and role them when i dont have the money.
Love, dave and jess Wow. It was great. I was cool. I do not really think you can say cool I think it was more like a certain hardness. I was one of the "tough girls". I was the sleep with guys, swallows, can party, not too good for anything, girls. It sounds like an awful thing to aspire to, but it really wasn't. I sometimes would be out and would see myself smoking in the mirror at a bar and I would think, "Wow that looks sexy". I was an all the time smoker too. I smoked when there were crises, when things were calm, when I was happy, when I was sad, when I was nervous, relaxed etc. Smoking does give you a respect eventhough people may not think so. I just loved my smoking. This is why it si sooo hard to give up. I really think my life is unimagineable without it. That mental image I have of myself is that "happy grab a cig light up and go party" or that "stand outside in the cold and bitch with the other smokers" or even the "wake up roll out of bed light a cig smoke three then wake up".
It is only recently I have really begun to worry about the consequences that i have really wanted to quit. I am just so afraid that quitting will mean the end of the party girl and thus the end of my youth. Am I really ready to go so "straight"???
Rebecka {rebecka@stockholmmail.zzn.com} I was never the "smoking type" No one I knew smoked... except for one. She stopped by my house one day after school and while we talked outside about typical gossip, she reached into her purse and pulled out a ciggerete. I watched her light it up and inhale, and in that instant I knew I had to have one. I didn't know why I just had to have one. I asked, and she gave me one. I coughed at first but Once I smoked my second one it was easier, and I LOVED IT! It was so wonderful! And I was hooked. I smoked at the bus stop, in my back yard alone, and I got to the point when I would sneak out of lunch and smoke. I really loved it. None of my friends seemed to care. THey didn't smoke, and they said it wasn't their concern. THe only thing they didn't approve of was that I was 12. Now 22 I still love to escape and smoke my favorite little friend, the ciggerete.
Carolina I started smoking in 5th grade, and I quit at 6th grade. Then when i was in 7th grade i picked up the habit again. Now i am in 11th grade, and i smoke worse than a freight train. I have tried to quit smoking several times, and they haved failed. When i quit i start getting jittery, and shaking until I have one. My mom smokes, and just as soon as i smell that sweet smell of nicotine, i have to have one. All of my friends other than my girlfriend smoke. My girlfriend and I have had many arguments about me smoking. But she just dosen't realize how hard it is to quit smoking. I wish that if i could go back to the day that i started smoking, and kick my self in the a** i would. I hate it, and i have tried but they have all failed. Hopefully I can finally quit one of these days.
S B {virus2000@collegeclub.com} mmmm smoking. i had my first cigarette when i was about 12... my dad had gone into a convenience store and left a brand new lit cigarette burning in the ashtray of the car... i couldn't resist. i picked it up and smoked it all in about 3 minutes, then threw the butt out the window. my dad didn't even notice. little did i know i wasn't even inhaling. so when i was 13 i started going to parties and people would be smoking and drinking all around me. i picked it up as a weekend habit. it didn't take me long to figure out i wasn't inhaling. so one day i got a friend to buy me a brand new pack of cigarettes and i went and sat at the park by myself for hours and taught myself to inhale. sounds sick, huh? so ever since then i have smoked. at first only about 6 cigarettes a day and now about a pack and a half a day. it only took a few weeks for my parents to figure it out, and although they strongly discouraged it, they didn't really try to stop me. they did make me smoke outside. on my 16th birthday i was officially allowed to smoke in my room, and on my 17th, i was allowed to smoke anywhere in the house. oh, and i've tried to quit. i'll spend about a week in hell and then give it up and start again. i'm about to turn 18 now and smoking is about the only thing that has remained constant in the last 4 years of my life. so now i've finally accepted that i don't want to quit. i do hate the smell and stuff though. i am one of the most avid air freshener and febreeze users you will ever come across. i brush my teeth about 5 times a day to keep the smell and yellow teeth away. i run about a mile a day to keep my wind up. one day i'll quit.
.sarah. I love my Benson & Hedges gold 100's and I will never quit. I love the feeling from my first cig of the day to the last, when I'm jerking off while smoking.
Smoking is more sexually addicting to me than physically. I have to smoke while having sex, whether alone or with another guy. It's a part of who I am, and I love to smoke!
bh100man {bh100man@excite.com} When i started smoking was in the fifth grade, i was 11 or 12 years old.
I grew up in smokers house, my mother smoked all the time, my father smoked even more, my brother didnt smoke that much(he was 16 when he started) he wasnt allowed o smoke in the house before he was 18.
I felt that it was natural for me too to start smoking, but my parents freaked out and i quit for a year or so, the i started over again. Now im eighteen years old and have loungcancer.
My mother warned me that i had bad loungs, but i didnt listen.(silly me!)
I dont smoke anymore, i quit for 2 months ago, when i realized that i was going to die in a couple of years if i didnt quit. My loungs are not any better yet, i have to use a oxygenbag on my back all the time, i cant walk 100 meters before im almost choking of that reason that i almost cant breathe.
SMOKING SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!
My grandfather died of loung cancer. My mom tells me that i have the same loung capacity as my granfather had when he was dying...
Im 18 years old, i havent even got the taste of life yet!
So to you all smokers out there who reads this:STOP SMOKING NOW!!!!!!!!!!
Andreas When my parents found out they were not impressed. We'd had the talks about how it kills and how my grandma died of emphysema. But they knew they couldn't stop me and it was my life. It was even worse for my dad watching his only son smoke because he's a reformed smoker and quit 12 years ago after smoking for 10 years of his life. I started when I was 16 and smoked steadily until I was almost 19. I liked smoking, it felt good. It was great to smoke inbetween classes with all the other smokers in high school. You were part of a group and we all liked it. Something of a secret society, but right our in the open. You could always find someone to keep you company when smoking too; just offer them a smoke and you had instant company. I dont care what anybody says it is the greatest reliever of stress. Some of my favourite smoking experiences are being up until three in the morning with a pot of coffee and a pack of smokes studying. And theres always the beer in one hand, smoke in the other pose. Thats the classic bar pose. Smoking is also the best killer of time. Got nothing to do light up a smoke. Maybe even two. Chainsmoking is fun every once in a while too. But one of the things I loved the most was smoking inside. Whether it be a house, a car, whatever. Seeing the smoke curl around your head and then float up into the hazy blanket up above. Smoking in the car was also a fun. I always tried to make up a new way of lighting a cigarette without taking my eyes off the road. It was like an art. I had it down pat. I have so many good memories smoking; I loved smoking it's a shame I had to give it up.
Nicholas {nciccone@intlspfx.com} is smoking cool? of course it is, don't try to deny it. it's not a proper reason to start, but if you already are... you are officially cool.
i started around 11 years old; just at parties. i would take a long drag and not really think about it. i loved the buzz... the relaxing feeling. it was a special treat that didn't have too much of an effect on me. like weed. high on weed, i'm an idiot (a happy one, but i'm still an idiot). a nicotine buzz makes me elite for just a few moments. oh how wonderful it is.
i am now 15 and addicted. i guess you could say that.
the other day i was cutting class in the bathroom while a group of girls went into the handicap stall for a smoke. i didn't know them, so i didn't even attempt to ask for a cigg. i could hear the click-click of the lighter and the coughs as they inhaled. i stood there for one hour saying to myself, "i should have walked out when i smelled it... what did i get myself into..." too shy to ask, too stupid to leave. i wanted to bang my head against the wall. a teacher came in. "there has been smoking! leave N0W. i'm locking the door." i felt relieved and mad at the same time. i still wanted a smoke. i don't have very much access to ciggs. if i am lucky enough to get some, i'm on cloud nine. but otherwise, it's all i'm thinking about. like right now. I WANT A MARLB0R0 RED! sigh.
ree. I smoke every where my parents arent. I am 18 now and they cant really do anything about it but I still live with them. I carry ciggs in my purse. I love taking a bathroom break at school and smoking. I love smoking with other girls and knowing that guys are watching. I love smoking in my car and being watched. I love every thing about smoking. I dont care if I die when I am 55, this is too much fun. I have been smoking since I was 16. I dont really think I am addicted, I just love it so much. Oh my parents just left of go eat, time for a cigerette. Also smoking makes me really horney, I like to fuck then smoke, that is really the best ciggerett is after a fuck.
Judy i cant stop because im to cool
garrett setterholm {gsetterholm@hotmail.com} "Grits," as a South African mate called them, became my central social activity for ten years. All my friends smoked; we all loved smoking together. Living rooms all across New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles filled with smoke and camaraderie. I’ve smoked my way across the US.
Rarely more than a half a pack a day, until I started working in a bar. Then smoking became my excuse to take a lot of breaks. Then it just became my excuse. Then there was no excuse.
Trai god i love to smoke. I'm down to only a pack a day (unless i'm off work, then i smoke closer to a pack and a half). I suppose i'm one of those weird smokers, i change brands almost every other pack, (even after smoking for almost 4 years). Camels and Kamel Reds are my favorites, though we all know that Kamel Red Lights have the kewlest boxes :)
now my mouth is watering....
i'm almost outa smokes....
help....
XianZombie {xianzombie@home.com} I started smoking last summer.It was really cool to me and my friends! we thought smoking 6 a day was cool! Now where up to a pack a day! I havent stoped and i dont see myself stopping anytime soon.Its not a very good thing to do,and we all know this but we dont stop! My mom hated the idea of me doin it.I new i should of stopped but it was really to look cool!Now i dont care what i look like but i still do it and i cant stop and neither can my friends! OPPS OUR BAD
kira At first I never smoked all the time. Just at parties. There is something so balanced and familiar to me about being gathered outside in the dark, fighting through the crowd for a spot in line for the keg, a chilly fall breeze in the air, the smell of the bonfire in my hair and clothes, a cheap beer in my hand and lighting up a Marlboro light. It's magical. I belong all of a sudden. And if my greatest paranoia comes true, if somehow I am left for a second or two at this party by myself, I don't have to panic and search for my friends I came with. No, I can just light up a cigarette and all of a sudden I belong right where I am. I'm smoking, so don't mess with me are the vibes I send off.
Shyness. Can shyness perpetuate smoking? I think it can. All of a sudden when people started putting me in the category of a smoker, I had lots of new smoker friends. At crowded, sweaty bars in a group of people I was never the odd man out, nope not when you were a smoker. We had that Us-Against-Them mentality. My smoker friends vs. all the snotty, healthy people that turned their noses up at us. As a smoker I never had anymore awkward moments. Just light up a cigarette and you were no longer awkward, you because cooly indifferent.
Why? Smoking totally contradicts me. I wear spf 15 on my face everyday because I am afraid of wrinkles. I am only 24. Smoking causes wrinkles. I love perfumes, and sprays and lotions to make me smell pretty. Smoking makes me smelly. I use those special whitener toothpastes to make my teeth all pretty. Smoking makes teeth yellow. And beyond more superficial things like appearance, I know exactly what terrible things each cigarette is doing to my insides. I am smart enough to know better. But I kept smoking.
I tried to always blame smoking on it being just a "college thing". During college I told myself i would quit when I graduated. After I graduated I told myself smoking was just an old habit from college I hadn't quit yet.
What will it be like for me to go to a bar or a party now if I ever become a non-smoker?
I feel like it will be like returning home and finding the roof ripped off my house.
saralovering {me@saralovering.com} I hate cigarettes with a passion. The reason? My friends got me started on cigars. Big, fat, quality cigars, hand-made by craftsmen in central america and Cuba. Screw Marlboro, I want my Montesino Gran Corona. One Arturo Fuente, Macanudo or Cohiba does for me than a whole pack of those anemic, tasteless, paper-wrapped white things. Of course, at heart, it's still tobacco, and I'm still a smoker, and I'll never forgive my friends for getting me started. It'll kill me one day, but at least I'll have enjoyed the taste.
Jon {NovaLyte@hotmail.com} I started smoking when I was 3. That's right, 3 years old. Do you know why? Because my mother was crazy. She introduced smoking to me at 3 and ever since then I smoked. I was addicted at 3, and as my mother has told me, I smoked about 12 cigs a day and would cry when I didn't have one. I asked her why she started me, and she said because the feeling is great, all girls look sexier when they smoke, and she loved me so she wanted to help me. Now I am 14, and, although it is unusual for my age, I smoke 3 packs a day. My mother pays for my habit, and I have to say, I thank her for starting me. The felling of nicotine when you want it, the smoke in your lungs, and number 1, guys thin you look sexier and ask you out more when you smoke. All my teachers know I smoke, and so do my friends. Whats funny though, is that my teachers are smokers, and let me smoke in school. I even smoke in class! 21 out of 29 people in my class smoke. They say they started because they knew me when I was little. I LOVE smoking Marlboro Reds. SMOKING IS GREAT. Nothing against it. I will only date guys who smoke, and when I become a mother, I will do what my mother did to me to my son/daughter. I know it is bad for me, especially 3 packs a day. But think how you love smoking, would you give it up? To end this, I would like to give great thanks to my mother, and more to everyone who loves me because I smoke. Smoking is the best!
Misty {lilstinka5_99@yahoo.com} I started smoking when I was 13; I remember it like it was yesterday. Me and my (then) best friend Shirley were riding around in a car with BOYS. Imagine that! (We had strict parents and went to private school.) And she bummed some GPC kings off one of them--shocked the hell out of me cause I didn't know she'd ever smoked. Then we tried to light up before we got out of the car, I say tried because neither of us had ever really lit a cigarette (I had always been a rabid anti-smoker, but feeling rebellious really opens your mind about that kind of thing). Well needless to say we finally lit the damn thing, and it was love @ first drag for me. I said, "tastes like coffee..." and now, I'm going on 20 this November. I smoked my guts out all through high school, and if I had a pack, I would chain. UGH. I've tried most brands available (I really love just about anything from Moonlight Tobacco Co.) but my favorites were Dave's. However, I can't find them anymore--if anyone knows where to get the smokes I'm talking about, feel free to email me.
Anyway, I'm still in love with cigarettes--saddest thing is, I think it's genetic. Everyone in my immediate family (except for my aunt and uncle who grew up with my chainsmoking grandma) has smoked or still smokes. It's like a curse, but a sweeter curse I could not find. I don't care if it is addictive--I'm quitting when I have kids but I'll always love smoking.
Jade {celandine@austin.rr.com} The amazing part of the experience for me is the craving - like the deepest sort of hunger. And then the fantastic feeling when you inhale the smoke.
It makes me think that I'll never be able to give up, and that worries me.
Daniel I am the definition of "closet smoker". Started at 15 because damn it, no one's perfect and all that athletic discipline built up a mean backlash. I also enjoyed the idea of addiction - strange but true - I guess it's some weird spin on masochism.
Smoking doesn't suit me - this I've been told, and accept. It contradicts many of the other choices I have made for myself. And yet it fits at a very deep, atavistic level. It's almost sexual; certainly sensual, simultaneously rebellious and submissive, contemplative, at once natural and unnatural - an almost poetic, mostly private, pleasure.
Now I'm thirty-three, an addict for over half my life on Earth. And still I hide it from (almost) everybody. I'm pretty sure it's cost me one relationship, possibly gained me another, and I think there's much more to this whole "smoking" thing than most people realise.
Aesthetically, sexually, in defiance of all that is correct and sensible, I will continue to smoke and accept the consequences with as much grace as I can muster.
Tony {lone_wolf_9@hotmail.com} I was 10, and used to hang around with my elder friends, Sarah and Charlotte (both 12 at the time) who lived in my street. One day Sarah smuggled out a box of cigarettes and lighted up. "Go ahead, try it!" she laughed. Nervesly, I puffed. It felt as though I would hack up my lungs. But I liked it. By the time I was 12, I was on to 60+ a day. When I was 13 my mother came into the garden and caught me smoking. That was the end of my major smoking, but I managed to steal some from my dad every day and buy some at lunch- sneaking out school. I was still on 6-10 cigarettes a day. Now I'm 15, and I'm still a heavy smoker, but who cares? It's my life!
Katy I smoke ever now and then, matter of fact i just bought a new pack of lighters today. I am 15 and when driving there is nothing like dropping the hammer down and lighting up with my buds. I only smoke here and there depending upon how much time i spend with buds. Most of the time light up a cig before puffin on a blunt.
I.P. Freely I pretty much started smoking when i was 10 yrs. old. i found a leftovercigarette in an ashtray outside a building i just picked it up and i guess i had a box of matches in my pocket, and i just lit up and i never had a problem coughing or wheezing it was smooth the first time and it was a marlboro red. i just don't know how that's even possible but it happened and i've been smoking straight from 10 to 21, and at 14 that was when i smoked really heavy cause there was a lot of stress going on there. i am an hard of hearing person and i got into a lot of trouble i got kicked out of my jr high school and high school, and got sent to a fucking deaf institution, so i really needed that 2-pack a day but when it was really bad, and i got pissed off i just smoked 5 packs straight for 1 damn week and man! my lungs must be pretty strong to even withstand that! i don't think i'm even going to quit cause i love it too much, it's like my friend.
Night_Stalker2_1999 {Mercenary_2254@yahoo.com} I can freely admit that I am "ADDICTED TO SMOKING" and I hate it. I have tried to quit so many times that I lost count! The longest was for 6 months and one night of drinking ruined that! Each time I quit and try to keep the rest of my life the same, which is impossible for me!
I am now smoke free for 8 days and still counting. I have never felt so terrible in my life. Everyone says it will go away but I am at the point where the withdrawl needs to stop or I feel I might explode!
The cravings come about every hour for me! I was a heavy smoke for years! I am 30 years old and have smoked for 15 years. I regret the day I ever picked one up. My addiction is so bad that my doctor has also perscribed an antidepressant to help me through the rough time.
For the past 8 days I say "If there is a hell on earth, I am definately in it". I have never been so mean in my life and I can't stand it. Infact I think I am the devil himself in a woman's body!
I have decided now is the time to quit! I have smoked for half my life and if I continue to smoke than I may not live another 30 years. I watched my father die of lung cancer at 62 and the weird thing is I smoked more after he died!! I just don't get it! I think it is more of a control issue! I sometimes feel this is the only thing that I ALONE control. Everyone seems to try to run my life sometimes and it drives me crazy, but that is a whole other story.
I would love to have someone e-mail me that is going through this torture with me. Make be buddies!
thanks for listening! Well,I had smoked to be cool since I was about 12.I would chill with my friends and smoke one from time to time.I just started smoking quite regulary the begginning of the school year.I would go into the bathroom and it'd be a whole bunch of brothers smoking on some Newports so i'd say let me hit that.Just to be cool.But I started to get little buzzes.That was the great part then I started noticing I was stealing discarded butts out the ashtray to smoke.Then,I knew I was a 'fiend'.So,everyday without fail I am headed to the parking lot of my school to smoke whatever.My favorites now are Kools,Basic unfiltered,and all Marlboros except Reds.I'm going to quit......one day
Michael A. I am burdened and pleasured by my complex, layered attraction to cigarettes. I have smoked, with greater and lesser degrees of guilt, secrecy and sangfroid, for around twenty years. I think my relationship with cigarettes has many facets but some of the main ones are these: (1) physical dependence - yes right now I do get ratty and discomfited if I go for too long without a cig. I will endure a good deal of inconvenience, hassle, even risk to have one (two, three or four). But on the other hand I can and do go without for a day, or even a week if I 'have' to. In fact as will be clear below, I put myself through withdrawal regularly. (2) like other contributers I have grown to really love the physical act of smoking. The deep draw into your my lungs, the buzz of the nicotine reaching my brain; the rituals of packet, lighter, ash tapping and even stubbing. I don't seem to tire of this, ever. (3) cigarettes are for me deeply sexual, over and above (but presently inextricable) from my personal use. To this extent I am a fetishist, with all the agony, ecstasy and sense of total incomprehension that goes with this. I masturbate about women smoking. I love watching women smoking. I love all their accompanying gestures and tics, the exhales, the ashtrays, the lighting and stubbing, everything! Sometimes even the sight of a packet is a turn-on, especially when I see it poking out of a woman's bag or nestling deep in her pocket. When I make love to my current partner (a non-smoker, with whom I have never discussed this subject honestly)I am invariably fantasising about smoking women. (4) and yet and yet. Guilt, of course. Also I know the things aren't good for me and are affecting my health. My father was a smoker, and he died at 46, just 7 years older than I am now. But that's not all of it. I am at present incredibly furtive about my smoking. My partner believes I've given up. My family and some friends don't have a clue I smoke. I smoke as much as possible at work, to and from, and on solitary trips across my city. Sorry I have gone on so long, and haven't even mentioned how I started, how that felt like. Perhaps another contribution soon. Meanwhile, please feel free to e.mail me, or make public responses to my comments here, I really would appreciate genuine comments, however critical.
paul {aecha55@hotmail.com} well.....I have been smoking for about 6 years, and I just turned 21. I have bronchitis 6 or 7 times a year, and I feel like I have a constant cold. The feeling of just holding the cigarette, though......It is almost like an old friend. A friend that I am going to have to say goodbye to shortly, since I am on my 4th day of zyban, and I am really ready to quit. I am so sick of being sick. sorry if this insight is depressing, but it is the reality of my relationship with cigarettes. A friend that is robbing me of my health in my prime years. I could go on and on about how it is not the tobacco company's faults' (supply and demand, you know) but I am a terrible bore when I get going, so.................bye for now.
megalomaniac {megalomaniac12@hotmail.com} It's probably the most relaxing experience I've ever enjoyed. I like to smoke. Holding the cigarette. Lighting the lighter. Taking that first drag deep into my lungs. Releasing the smoke out in two or three exhales. The feeling of calm the comes over my body is incredible.
I started smoking because both my parents smoked and so did all their friends. Some girls in Jr. High got caught smoking and they were very popular. I wanted to be like them so I tried it, but didn't like it. Them I found out my best friend smoked, so I tried it again. We smoked at her house during the day the summer on 1980. By the time school started in the fall I was addicted.
I don't regret starting, but have contemplated quitting many times. However when ever I get stressed I can always count on my cigarettes to help me relax.
Tracey W I smoked because I suffered a moment of curiosity I had to know what it was all about, I smoked many times after my first time, and eventually I became dependant and was smoking 5 a day, I loved the way I felt smoking my friends smoked and I could join in and things like that, I did it because I had to know what it was like I dont regret smoking that first cigarette but I do regret allowing myself to get addicted I should have said once and once only. I quit after one year but went back this time It was more, 20 a day I was a normal smoker I didnt like smoking 20 a day but I had too or else I became moody and unpleasant, quiting after 5 a day for a year was relativly easy which is why I went back because I thought I could give up just as easuly, but 20 a day was harder way harder.
Michelle Well let's see...much of my father's side of the family burned away on those cancer sticks and still do. For a spell, my parents smoked Camels but a memory of my mother smoking doesn't appear in this old picture show of the past...I was quite young and I, like many others here, felt a distinct comfort in the nicotine haze and I still do. Every couple of weeks I buy a pack of Djarum Kreteks. For the past few years I've smoked off and on like a switch, probably due to the fact that my few friends were virtual human ashtrays, always with a pack in the coat and 5 dollars at least in the front pants pocket in case there was a shortage, and of course there would be a shortage as all smokers know that there will be one, inevitably. My first lover smoked. She was like me, off and on, it was just there to be consumed. Like chocolate. It was the only drug I could really afford. Not really pleasant if you think about it, being piss-poor and lacking a decent wardrobe and being an undiagnosed depressive/schizoid type, and yet the only real comfort is that rich aroma, that poisonous vegetable smell. I think about this now that I am having this odd pain in my chest, I suspect those fucking kreteks are the cause. anyone want them? I started smoking when I was 6. My dad was a heavy smoker and I lived with him. He was the one that got me smoking. I always loved to watch him and he would say "Someday, son." So I waited and waited, and he finally one day said "It's time I taught you to smoke." So we sat at the kitchen table and he popped one in my mouth and told me to inhale. I did and he put the lighter to it. He wasn't for the puff the first time crap, he told me to inhale as deeply as possible. So I did, and loved it. Not one cough, and the taste was better than spending hours at the candy store! So I was at a pack a day at about a week later. We smoked in restaraunts, the car, and then I was hooked. At 6. I one day woke up at four in the morning and lit one up myself, and killed 5 before my dad woke up! He was so proud. By age 10, I was smoking two packs a day. I loved it and we smoked together all the time. Ashtrays in every room, and he bought our cigs. Four packs of Marlboro Reds a day for us to split. I still smoke two packs a day and love it. I will never quit! Yeah there are risks, but there is one for everything! Excercise too much, getting cuts, too much tv, too much sitting, everythings risky. But this is the best risk to take. Keep lighting up kids, you are cool no matter what anyone tells you!!
Bob I loved smoking in the same way I loved the aesthetic of old movies, old sepia toned photographs. They all went together. The taste was great. The reliance on the prop, waving a cigarette to make a point. They also measure time very well. They also waste time. Also,smoking guaranteed privacy in a crowd. You can always walk away from people and light up if you want to be alone and no one questions it. After 8 straight years of being a smoker I started noticing that my face looked different. My skin was rougher, and I was already getting crows feet and laugh lines earlier than my non smoking friends. Occasionally I would get a sore spot in my throat or think I felt a sensation in my lung and be mortified that I had finally gotten cancer. I'd then quit for a while, feel great, and then start smoking again. I still have not gone longer than a month without smoking in eight years. I'd like to quit.
Kevin {kevinclaussen@yahoo.com} Of cigarettes, coffee, sex & natural function
Forget the physical aspects of nicotine; it's the context in which this act takes place. For me, the biggest satisfaction is lighting up the first cigarette of the day in my usual sacred ritual, only other fellow smokers can identify with (catch my drift?). That special relationship you have with it grows as you cultivate that weird habit of coffee + smokes + sitting on the toilet. It's all about getting it right in the morning. Makes your day complete thereafter. Mornings are never the same again with cigarettes. And coffee! Coffee and cigarettes! Cigarettes and cofee! I could eat just that all day. Or smoking after sex. I don't know if it's a physical craving, but I smoke more depending on context. Sex, coffee and alcohol and cigarette's best friends. Ever wonder, they all give inexplicable pleasure??
Misty {lushferns@yahoo.com} What was it like for me? What IS it like for me? Well, I don't think that my experience of smoking is at all 'run of the mill'. Let me explain. From early adolescence I have had a sexual desire for women who smoke. I believe this is referred to a the 'smoking fetish'. After doing some rough mental maths, it seems to me that this affects at least 0.1% of the population. Basically, I just love the idea of women smoking - the risk of it, the addictiveness of it, the smell and taste of it; they all seem to turn me on. As far as actual smoking goes, I am what some people call a 'closet smoker'. This seems to be a phenomenon closely related to the smoking fetish. Basically, the idea of being seen smoking or thought of as a smoker is extremely worrying for me. The way I feel about smoking in public is about the same as the way you 'normal' people might feel about going around naked. Hence my smoking habit is limited by my ability to find places and times where there aren't many people around, and where I am unlikely to meet anyone I know. Nevertheless, I am severely addicted. I smoke about 8 a day (Marlboro Reds), usually in the space of about 1 hour when everyone else is asleep. The way it makes me feel is wonderful - I know it sounds inane, but I can't think of a better way of describing it. One would rather think so fine a thing a creation of light itself than of simple man. Giving up is easy, on the occasions when I have tried it. I managed recently to get myself in a situation where I was able to smoke about 30 a day for two weeks. Then, immediately afterwards, I quit for three weeks. No problems. After that time, I wasn't having cravings or anything. But for me, and this is something I do worry about, I don't really think I will ever be able to quit. The reason is, even after the physical and mental cravings are long gone, there is this bastardly sexual desire to start again. And it stays. The longer I stay quit, the harder it gets to fend off the desire, and so I descend into my usual routine once more. This may seem a little wacky, so let me explain some more. Genetics tells us that the desire to have sex (and to have children, a family and to find true love etc...) is the motivating factor in our lives. This is expressed differently in people of different sexes and different habits, but basically the *purpose* of our lives is to reproduce. In me, something got broken. Instead of the natural desire to have sex, reproduce, raise a family etc... I find that I have a desire to have sex with a smoker, to love a smoker and to smoke and so on. So for me, as you might imagine, quitting smoking is rather difficult. Its like trying to stop eating for ever. At first its easy, but it gets harder and harder, until you just go straight back to it. Nevertheless, while I wish it wasn't so, I absolutely love smoking. The way it makes you feel, the way that you crave a cigarette like nothing else on earth, the wonder of inhaling and exhaling smoke. Oh well. I'm just scared of dying though. I don't want to die, even if the idea turns me on. God I'm f***ed up!
Theodore heh...
i was straight edge up until the thanksgiving after my 18th birthday. i would feel quite free to make everyone i found smoking aware of the consequences. of course, i didn't know why they smoked, and i didn't care. i was right. they were wrong. nothing else made any difference.
then i lost my edge. (i know, iknow, if you're not straight edge now, you never were. blow me.) i won't go into the particulars of that litte event, but needless to say, i figured if one of my X's was gone, why not the other two? (oh, a common symbol for straight adge is three X's. XXX. no drinking, no smoking and no sex. yup, the new regime.) anyway, i was a bit curious about it, and so figured i'd see what i was missing. i was also sick of being the only punk that didn't smoke. (really. i was the only one. you try and blend in then...)
so i smoked. well, i drank first. then i tried cigarettes a couple of weeks later. now see, i don't know what people talk about when they say their first cigarette hurt. and that they still hurt. i never had a problem with it. maybe i had good teachers? any way, my first cigarette was a marlboro light. oddly enough, it was too strong for me, so i went to parliments. (yeah, i know, i had no taste, but didn't know any better then, okay?) i remember being a bit overzealous in flicking the ashes off of a cigarette and breaking it in half. i also remember how cold it was standing outside on my roof so that my mom wouldn't catch me.
i remember hating the smell on my fingers and clothes, but needing that head rush, however short-lived.
so time goes on. i've since moved on to an esoteric brand of cigarettes that i am outraged to have trouble finding at the local wawa. (most wawa's will have them, but every once in a while...)oh, wawa is the name of a chain of convenience stores. i think they're national, but i could be wrong. maybe it's an east coast thing? hell, maybe even just a northeast thing? wow, another non sequiter (spelling?) aren't i full of 'em?
okay back to the topic at hand.
as much as i know that they're going to kill me, i can't help myself. there's nothing better than telling you're boss that you need a few minutes, and that the last customer just really got on your nerves. the oft-misused: "i'm gonna kill someone if i don't get a cigarette." is a personal favorite.
i like smoking. it's a social thing. it's calming, and sometimes, i don't even mind the smell.
i love it when people tell me that it causes cancer. as if i don't know! the best is when people tell me not to chew gum and smoke at the same time. apparently, that causes cancer,too. and i care? if i gave a damn would i be smoking? would i eat pesticide-treated produce? would i barbeque? would i do anything in this world?
here's a newsflash:
EVERYTHING CAUSES CANCER!!!!
i don't care. i'll get it. i'll either beat or i'll die. c'est la vie. que cerra cerra.
well, i'm gonna go grab a kamel red light now. all of this talk about smoking... I smoked from the time I was twelve until I was twenty four years old. I enjoyed smoking for the most part. The sensation of smoke entering and exiting my lungs, the calming effect of nicotine, the motions of smoking, they are all quite plesant actually. Don't get me wrong, there was a downside too. The index finger of my right hand became quite yellowish-brown near the tip and exuded an awful smell, I hated that. I used to use a nail file to file down my skin in an attempt to remove the stain. I never really worked.
Looking back (I quit 7 years ago) now, I chuckle at how I used to time my activities to coinside with my smoking. I would take out of the way routes when driving because they would allow me time to have an extra cigarette before arriving at my destination. During my early twenties I was smoking 2+ packs a day. It started to get of the nerves of those in my social group. "You just put one out!" they'd say as I was firing another cigarette up. I had to carefully plan my smoking, one on the way to the store and one on the way home, so long as I was alone, they'd never know I had 5, 6, 7 cigarettes in the last hour. In the end, it was social pressure that got me to quit. After exiting the drug underworld of Hayward, California and becoming a college student, I found smoking buddies more and more scarce. I felt like my smoking was bothering other people. I always felt bad when people would go out of their way to avoid me while I was smoking. Quitting came naturally and without suffering. No I avoid smokers.
Allison Since this story is unlike others, I would encourage reading it all the way. It explains what got me started on smoking for different reasons. ok, here goes... "Ever Since I was a young little boy, I grew up around many smokers. My Father, uncles, cousins, neighbors, etc. I still remember my child memories when me and my family used to gather around in our house with friends. My Father would always be with his male buddy's playing cards, talking. My mother however was always against smoking in general, she always told me it was a bad thing and I promised to her I would never smoke. Being a kid, Like most kids, I grew up with a television, and watched all those warning messages not to smoke, and I was very much confident with my self not to ever even try it. At that time I knew that I would die sooner because smoking gives you cancer. I was so into not smoking that I didn't like people that do it, it was like us and them. My sister started smoking when she was 17, however I never knew it till she turned 25. I was 12 at that time, and it I eventually slipped out from her 5 year old daughters mouth when my mother called in to ask where my sister was. The image of my sister changed immediately in my mind, I feaked! I just couldn't put the two together. Anyway, I was so against smoking as I went through my Junior High School years, when the day came to transferring to High School, I saw many teens standing outside the school smoking, I though of them as being foolish, I even encouraged my fellow friends not to smoke. I kept telling them it's bad for your health, etc. During highschool years, I was given a health class that I was required to take. I learned many facts about drugs and their effects in general. I read an interesting chapter in the book about tobacco and saw those nasty lung pictures, At 16, knowing that one cigarette would not get you hooked, I had to try it. few days later, while no one was home, I took my first cigarette which I nabbed from my father, (it was Marlboro Lights 100's). At that time, I just wanted to see what would happen, I was curious of what I would feel like. I remember that day clear as a daylight, I was in the bathroom with ventilation system fully on, I was ready!!! So I Lit. Next thing I knew, I coughed, and I spit, I remember the nasty smoke that I would not smell from second hand. "This crap tastes terrible", I thought. So after 2 to 3 blows I put it out and flushed the evidence. After graduation, I went through major life changes, emotional traumas, I lost the fear of dying, I guess I matured or something. I thought about life and the existence of it in general. I stopped believing in god, and became a totally different person, I began to think differently, and started to look at life in the other direction. Not as I was taught by my mother, or anyone else, but from my own experience, research, etc. My life was still filled with depression, I hated the very existence of self and became lazy, at 19, I had no job, car, girlfriend, I was losing friends from lack of interests, and I halted my education. When the day came to wanting to come back to who I was, I looked around my self and others. I began studying the social life with the knowledge I had,I wanted to come back, meet plenty people, drive nice car and be as any other person at my age. So I started thinking, what drives people to do what they do. Whenever I saw people standing in a group talking, they were all smoking. My high school friends which are smokers, drove nice cars, had plenty of reputation in the neighborhood amongst other young people. I was not like them, I pretty much haven't gone out of my house, I spent most of my time sitting home with no hope for future and killing my time with my computer. So I thought, what would make me get out of the house, get me together with other people, get a decent job. Suddenly a solution popped up in my mind. An Idea that was a solution to my every need. Soon, I tried to get hooked on cigarettes, the second hit was not at all nasty as the first one, same brand and everything, I gradually began smoking, I forced my-self to smoke two cigarettes a daily. After the first pack, it went in my lungs like butter, I could ihale from one full intake without any irritation or couging and I began to crave it a bit whenever I wasn't smoking. That smell hints my mind whenever my body craves for more. I'm glad I got addicted, I noticed my depression going away. I began meeting many people. I have less social anxiety and got a job as a non-linear video editor to support me and my Parliaments. I found my way out, I broke free from stress and I'm glad I am a smoker..! I do not in any way encourage smoking. I still know it does gradual harm to me and my body. However there is a saying that goes like this.. "Time is a waste of life, and life is a waste of time. so Why not get wasted and have the time of your life!!" -Thanks for reading, any comments would be highly appreciated. I began at just 4. The cigarette completely changed my brain. I was in love with smoking before I knew where they even came from. I would go right up to an adult smoking just to smell that beautiful aroma, not knowing how to spell my own name, I just loved that smell. The smoke pouring out these adults mounths seems to be the coolest thing my eyes had seen. The grumpy looking old man at dunkin donuts with his coffee seemed to be in bliss with his smoke. And I knew when I was old enough to buy cigarettes I was sold. I guess I became the guy that made weaker unsure kids smoke themselves. I certainly was not sold by peer pressure. Cigarettes are just great, some don't realize that however. Anyway, they are dangerous and now at 23, I am going to quit for my 3rd time. I know just how to do it. You never say it is over for good. AHHH! That is pure horror. Just let your lungs recover every so often, like every 2 years on, one off, or a few months, but something. My second time quitting lasted the full year I intended it to. I was the most fit I ever was, buff and very muscular. However, after smoking 2 years since the, my muscles and weight melted away. I look okay, but clearly not muscular. This is why I will quit now for another long while... ...Of course I will reward myself after that:)
pauly poundapoon {ppp@aol.com} I am 71 years old and smoked for 50 years kids. I can say that smoking is bad for you yes, I never was athletic and couldn't run and never did actually. But If you are normal everywhere else, body weight, health etc, you will be only more at risk to health problems than non smokers. The liberal agenda of controling every other person and banning things is wrong, and it is silly. I still feel fine and have 80% lung capacity. Pretty nice for a 71 yr old that smoked 2-5 packs a day for 56 years. Maybe that was the only gene of my body that was blessed, I sure had an ugly face, but I'll take the pleasure of smoking over anything in this world. And I still smoke!
Mick O'brian {mk.obd@aol.com} It was cool. To me and my best friend it was like having sex. And sucking on a jolly rancher
jenni {jjjj@hotmail.com} I had my first cigarette this morning at the age of 13. It was rubbish. I feel real sick now but for some reason I have a huge urge to go have one again.
Anonomys I had always been fascinated with smoking for as long as I could remember. Both my parents are non-smokers, so the opportunity to try a cigarette never arose for quite a while. After years of wanting to know what it was like to smoke, i developed a fetish around the habit and grew enamoured with women who smoked. The first time I inhaled a cigarette, I was 17 and it turned out to only be ten times better than I could have imagined! The dizziness was euphoric, the taste and feel of the smoke in my lungs was indescribable. I have a mortal fear of getting caught by my parents, even though I am nearly 21. I allow myself to smoke no more than two or three a day in hopes of not getting detected by my anti-smoking girlfriend, I love her, but God I wish she smoked! I sometimes like to go a week or two without a smoke, just so the next one I have will be glorious and I can have a nicotine rush go through my body. Craven Menthols here in Canada are wonderful and their taste is sinfully good. I may only smoke two or three a day, but I am sooo addicted to this habit, it controls my dreams and my fantasies, ans I don't know if I do ever want to quit.
Jason I like nicotene. Hell, I LOVE nicotene. I've been "on the fags" for years (as we would say back in my homeland of Australia). I smoke so much, the stuff is oozing from every one of my orifices. I just quit today. And with the help of a few good Texans I'm gonna beat this horrible affliction. I'll keep you posted on my prog. Cheers mates.
Nick {nicko@monolith-mis.com} I began smoking cigarettes at the age of thirten when cigarettes in the United States cost eighteen cents a pack. I am now seventy-five, and the only thing I have come to dislike about smoking is the ever-rising prices. Nor am I certain that the cigarettes are as strong and satisfying as they were in the early days. What annoys me today is the corps of neurotice who are forever fanning the air fretfully in order to avoid "secondary smoke". Since an insane Surgeon General decided that cigarettes were the instrument of the devil, the pan-allergic screwball frings has decided that cigarettes cause all the things that physicians cannot cure: emphysema, cancer, common colds and heart trouble. Isn't the absurdity of this obvious? While I believe in freedom of speech, I resent being treated as a pariah simnply because I choose to enjoy cigarettes and always have. I pay "sin taxes" on what is certainly not a sin but a pleasure. The only reason for posting a "No Smoking" sign should be a fire hazard. Burning at the stake those compulsive killjoys, male and female, and who take great pleasure in persecuting smokers may be a medieval idea, but it may yet come to pass. Most people who smoke today, unfortunately, will be dead of old age by then. So will that mad, obsessive ex-Surgeon General.
George {GNG@aol.com} I started when I was a junior in high school. I was going to a local university while I was still in high school. Needless to say I made a lot of friends what were older than me and smoked. Both of my parents smoke also. It was almost natural for me to go into the gas station and get a pack of smokes. I quickly found out that they don't card you when you get the during the day. The either figured I was of age or they just didn't care. The first time I lit up was like nothing I had ever experienced. It was great and I was hooked.
Randall I keep smoking because it makes me feel good. I hate going long periods of time without a cigarette. Sure it makes your clothes smell, put on some colonge. Sure it makes your teeth brown, so does soda, buy some whitner. Sure you cough a little, work out. So some people don't like it screw them. It's bad for you yes, but so is fast food, so is living in the city, so is drinking, so is driving, in fact living outside of a sterile bubble on a treadmill, eating nothing but protein shakes and tofu will kill you! I LIKE TO SMOKE! I would say that it is one of the few things that I do enjoy and I don't care if it is bad for me. One day my opinion might change but as for now, I have no desire to quit.
Josh {sicktats@hotmail.com} yea, to start I have to say that cigarettes were the only thing that kept me sane for the time i was in high school. in those days I had nothing, no money no friends and no joy of life. I really had lost the will to live nothing would help me not even pills. All I did was stay up all night and thing of how fucked up my life is, but then I started smoking. To tell the truth I only wanted to waist time and not thing about my self till I got fond of it and I am still smoking. I still can’t forget those days. I had absolutely nothing no purpose in life and no joy either, really nothing, all I wanted to do was to get rid of my self. At that time I didn’t care if I was a smoker or not. All I wanted to do was to get rid of myself.
In total I have to say that smoking really helped me those day’s to get through my traumas.it was one of the only thing that i enjoyed those days.
henry {h_moameni@hotmail.com} my dad died of somking when i was a kid ...
james {jamestown88@hotmail.com} I first tried smoking last year at age 24. I had been having these strange dreams where I pictured myself "smoking." I really wanted to see how the actual experience would match up with my imagination.
I didn't expect it to taste as good as it did. This might be explained by pleasant childhood associations with campfires or something.
Of course, the culture of smoking has always fascinated me, especially this thread.
A few years ago I read an Arthur C. Clarke novel, 3001 I think, and the part I remember was that the all movies in the future were modified to erase the cigarettes from the hands of actors.
Maybe I liked it because I ended up making out with the girl who gave me the cigarette.
It's probably for the best that I remain "just curious."
Richard Sexton {rich@whypop.net} i never have somked never will smoke and the only reason i came to this sight was to do a school project on underage smoking and drinking! And i don't think that smoking is a bad thing or drinking cuz i drink all the time and my sister smokes ans of course my parents don't like it.
matthew {matthew@hotmail.com} I am 17 and an avid smoker. I am not the type who you would think would smoke...I remember, it was the summer when I was 15 that I started. I walked a half mile to a suburban Shell station and waited with $4 in my hand for an hour. Finally, I found a guy who bought me a pack of Marlboro Lights, I let him keep the dollar change. I smoked them over the summer...one here and there, never inhaled. Finally, I turned 16 and drove. freedom ( to smoke more often ). Through bumming I would have a smoke about once a month untill the next summer. I went to work. I am now 17, and smoke about 2 packs a week. I tried every brand. Marlboro, Marlboro Lights, Parliment, Kamel Red Lights - I now smoke Camel Turkish Gold. I love the dizzy feeling and ashing out the window at night to see the amber dance in my wake. I love the sansation. I love to sit at the mall and watch younger kids envy me, I once envied them. I have made so many freindships via the cigarette. I sit in class, craving and yearning. My body is ravaged...I cannot wait for the bell so I can light a Camel...ahhhhhhhhhhhh the best high on earth.
E it calmed me down, made me feel stronger, more detached. i liked how it felt, mostly, how it tasted to a degree, and it gave me something to DO. oh, and lest i forget - the second time around, i lost about 25 pounds. that was VERY reinforcing. unfortunately i did gain it all back - eventually your metabolism readjusts. so then i had the weight AND a nicotine habit i couldn't shake.
elena {loftus@mediaone.net} I'm 50 years old this year and I have been smoking since I was 16. That's alot of years and I did not have any idea how addicted I was to smoking until I began trying to quit. I have prayed and prayed but I still just haven't been able to stop the first smoking habit and that is the habit of buying them. I've been broke, no food, but always had money for smokes, even if I had to borrow it. It's a terrible burden to feel like this. I often wonder if the manufactures don't put something in them to keep us addicted. I wish I could quit or find a healthy smoking alternative.
Sherry {9soeasy@bellsouth.net} I have always been a smoker, even before I started smoking. I craved cigarettes before I ever lit my first one. It is too bad, but it is what it is.
Sine R. Nomine I smoke because I have an oral fixation.
I smoke because I drink vodka and tequila.
I smoke because I consume mass quantities of dark beer on summer nights.
I smoke because I smoke a lot of pot.
I smoke because I do shrooms.
But, mostly, it's because I have an oral fixation.
My boyfriend doesent mind.
And, I like it.
Alot. It was tough. I was so young at the time and still, then, anyway, living with my father and stepmother, who were death on the idea.
They knew, though, they always did.
It was tough procuring cigarettes because I did, and still do, look a good three years younger than my actual age. I'm 20 now and still get carded for R-rated movies if someone's in a bad mood. But I always snagged them.
Eventually, everyone caught on. Dad didn't care 'cause he always needed my lighter for his cigars. My stepmom hated it, because she did and didn't like me breaking the rules and getting to do what she thought was her thing. My friends thought it was fantastic because they'd come over to my house and everyone, everyone was allowed to smoke. I graduated high school eight months before my eighteenth birthday. My father still had to buy them for me and summers, my grandparents in St. Louis did. It was horrible, though.
I painted ashtrays and sat in coffeeshops smoking and god, I loved the way the smoke felt, the first rush of it going down your throat, drying up all the fluid in there. I even loved the suffocating feeling of it all. The first cigarette of the day always made me feel like I was dying.
Parliament Lights eventually ended up being my brand. I loved the filter and the blue stripes and the way the pack looked like a weather flag gone awry.
I loved all the sensations of it. It was beautiful and intoxicating and I especially loved driving late at night, alone, with my windows down and the radio on and a cigarette in my hand.
But eventually...
evangeline {sweetevangeline@earthlink.net} I'm not addicted to the nicotine in cigarettes so much as the act of smoking itself. I love opening a new pack and pulling out a cigarette. I love flicking the lighter and holding it up to the end. I love taking that first drag and pulling the smoke into my body. I love holding it in for as long as possible, then releasing it in a long stream as I exhale slowly. I love the taste. I love how relaxed smoking makes me feel. If I were to quit--which I don't plan on anytime soon (maybe never)--I wouldn't miss the nicotine. I would miss everything else about smoking.
~*Smoking Diva*~ IT WAS GREAT !!!!!!!!!!!! And i love to SMOKE... A REAL MANS CIGARETTE thats why ive alwas smoked CAMEL NONFILTERS. and ive even EMPHYSEMA but thats not going to stop me from doing what i LOVE to do...more than breath.and the reason i did it was because it was always my idea that if u wernt a man unless u SMOKED like one.joepruitt62@aol.com
chain smoker {joepruitt62@aol.com} I started smoking when I was in Europe, I was in Amsterdam with my girlfriend, we hadn't quite figured out how everone around us in the coffee shops seemed to smoke huge joint after joint and remain coherrent. We had tried to smoke just a single large joint of some moderately priced green between us and had found our stroll home through the redlight district a daunting challenge indeed. The streets were a tangled maze of unfamilir street signs. Add to this the Carnival, which we fully intended to visit, but to our horror found it dark and quite unhospitable. (We left it quickly just before the clowns apeared with their razor clown teeth. I'm grateful to this day that we were so prudent in our decision to flee before they appeared.) We made it to the general area of our hotel- I need to specify that this was more of a crazy treehouse than a hotel, we stayed in the top most branch where the stairway became more ladder like than stairway as you approached our door. It was the perfect Hobbit hole. It made up for its size with its nice wide windows. We had made it well into the redlight district when I had a vague memory from the past. But it was my next instance of of deja-vu five minutes later that startled me since it occured at the same instance as my traveling companions. She looked at me and smiled. it was one of those moments where you hope the other person will say "Are you thinking what I'm thinking" and i would respond. "Yes, if you where thinking that we have been traveling around aimlessly for a half an hour but yet somehow we have passed over this exact same spot before, and that we are in fact making more or less increasingly smaller circles around our hotel in a vague hope of finding it but without the slightest clue what it looks like." Instead I smiled back and we started giggling like little kids for the next few blocks I felt like skipping but i was afraid the swarthy man with his low melodic voice who sang to us as we walked by "Cocaineee...x-stacy....you want some speeed maaan"
would get the wrong idea So we found ourselves at the same spot for the third time and i started wondering if we would ever find our cubby hole treehouse, although in reality I hadn't quite figured out how I would ever cram mysrlf into the tiny bed
But as suddenly as we had lost it, it appeared in all its vertical splendor. We made the hike into our perch just in time to hear the Dutch songs of contentment as the last of the stoners made their way through the now crowded now empty tangle of streets.
It was at that point when I realized how important making spliffs are when in Amsterdam and the next day I went to small tabacoo store and bought myself a pouch of Samson zware shag then proceeded to the nearest coffee shop to smoke with the confidence that I would indeed be able to find the Heiniken brewery without to much trouble. of course it was Monday and the brewery was closed to the public.
The joy of rolling my own is something that I haven't been able to kick completely I only wish they sold smaller packs of this stuff so that I wouldn't have smoked so much for the next month while I traveled around. And now find myself thinking of rolling another one before I go to bed
PAUL FIST FUKKIN QUITTERS!!
Jim Bob {jimbo242@hotmail.com} At first, it was a social thing, now I smoke as soon as my feet hit the floor in the morning, before I get in the shower, after I get dressed and then about 2-3 on the way to work. About every 1 hour and a half to two hours while at work, 1 or 2 on the way home, and I smoke all the way til I go to bed. I smoke definitely with coffee and alcohol. If I didn't smoke I don't think I could drink coffee or alcohol. I used to enjoy it more, but now I rely on it. Especially when I am upset, it seems to calm my nerves, this is how I cope with things. I know it is bad and the older I get, the more I want to quit, and I see and hear people tell their stories and seen people with oxygen, and emphesyma, and I need and want to quit but I know I will need help, and don't want to gain any more weight or have depression. One day I would like to have children and I definitely want to quit before then, I don't want to put them in any harm, and I also have a husband that I would like to live a long healthy happy life with, and be able to do stuff and be able to breathe without getting out of breath, and would like to not worrying about what I can and can't do and places I can and can't go because I smoke. I am tired of it being in control of my life.
Jenny Ritter {bcatch@bellsouth.net} Tried my first when I was eight at my father's behest. I had found an unopened pack of Marlboro reds. I asked if I could try one; he was a pipe smoker so I guess he could identify. As an object lesson, he lit one and blew smoke through a handkerchief to show what the tar does to one's lungs. I was not fazed. I tried some, got sick, didn't try again until sixth grade when me and my friends were trying everything like sex, pot, beer, etc.
I went to a Catholic military high school wherein there was actually a "smoker's corner" at one end of the building. Of course I hung out with cool cats that smoked dope and cigarettes and were into the Doors in 1983. Between junior and senior year is when I started smoking in earnest. As a lifeguard at an apartment complex pool that no one ever swam at, I smoked all damned day. I even fell asleep in a chair smoking, regularly. I have a nascent skin cancer and cigarette burn scars on my belly to attest to it.
I've rolled my own cigarettes for many years now. Mostly because it's cheaper than factory fags and because I have less guilt about throwing the butts on the ground and in the bay and sea. They're biodegradable, of course.
I am hopelessly addicted, dedicated, infatuated with tobacco. I've even believed that smoking menthols when I was suffering from the routine brochitis was somehow "better" for my poor lungs. I think all dedicated smokers have believed that.
Now, it is so much a part of me that when I quit for a year, my wife actually said she missed the smell. I'll quit someday - for the sake of my kid. He hassles me regularly. But for now, I don't have the "burn" to quit. I've never had the burn to quit. That's the hold of my soul that nicotine has, that old devil...
mordo {mordo@verizon.net} i started smoke when im 14.i always lie and lie to everyone who advise me to not smoke .i just tell them im not moker now!! but now i really realise that ,when i got heart attack .smoking making myself dying.. Well I really don't have much to say.I smoked a few times but then I quitted.Thank god I didn't get in to deep.
Shanice {dat-sha@my.domain.com} It was poetry, dark and soulful, in and out sexy. It was a release from work and pain and boredom. It was the deep inhalation of a smoke filled words and sparkled eyes and longing. It was hidden and secretive full of mystery and misery. It was pacing hallways and crying and taking breaks with the other misfits. It was a part of me, a ritual, a remember when, a sexy kiss of burnt smoke. It was who I was and defined my being. It was my addiction to more than the nicotine butt to the image of seductive smoke curl upwards spiraling down dance among substance reaching never quite touching.
sigh.
Its now a memory of the way things were and who I was and what I did. Smoke eventually rises and disappears and I have found my substance. I actually don't remember my first cigarette. Not that it wasn't a wonderful thing, more that it just gets lost in the morass of my early teenage years, somewhere between fourteen and sixteen. I do remember the first time I smoked for a concrete reason– new york city club, downstairs, probably age fifteen. A big party of my friends, and I was doing everything I could to keep my eyes and mind off of "her", so I ended up bumming a Djarum black off a friend and pulling into a corner to smoke it.
Believe me when I tell you that first sweet pull was heaven. The whole thing was warm, sweet, fragrent, a total experience. I enjoyed my first, and second, and third before the nausea kicked in and I stopped having fun...but that never stopped me from pooling half-smoked packs of cloves with my friends on the summer nights we'd walk away from our houses and neighborhoods and just walk around the open grass among the trees, taking refuge in those single moments when we knew we were alone, really living and not just killing time...
September 11, 2001, in the giant morass of confusion that dominated the school day, I bummed a king size, walked out into the woods behind school and sat by a creek, smoking slowly and purposefully, wondering where we were to go from there...
Smoking in my car driving aimlessly around central Jersey in the time I took off after high school, still trying to figure out the difference between living and passing the days and nights away became the camaaderie of smoking cigarettes with my roommates, all older than I and fingers deep into packs of Camels and the late late nights, late mornings, and every summer night sitting out on the fire escape, puffing thoughtfully about the sunset.
The nicotine itself isn't why I smoke. It's the zen calm of studying each inhalation and exhalation, the way it frees my mind to roam while my body remains fundamentally engaged, rooted to the experience of each puff. I smoke away anxieties, lonliness, rejection, all the negative things that settle into the mind and refuse to leave are all smoked out like and exorcism. I smoke to keep my demons at bay, or to invite them inside. Sure, a day will come when I go to light up, and the thought of smoking my thousandth, ten thousandth, howevermany cigarette will make me ill, and that's the day I'll put them down.
Until then, however, it remains far, far too much fun. I'll quit when I'm done.
Rosser I loved smoking. Coffee, beer, scotch, wine, tea are all better with a smoke. That cig after sex, a good meal, strenuous exercise, anyu stressful ordeal was one of life's great payoffs. I had a girlfriend in college who was such a smoker that we would take smoke breaks in the middle of sex, during which we would plot our next moves. One of my better smoking memories. Drugs required accelerated smoking. I chain-smoked whenever I was high. I wrote thousands of line of code with a cigarette in my hand, and many reports. I might have gotten 2 or 3 puffs off of those, but it was reflex to sit down at the computer and light up. One of the biggest obstacles to quitting for me was learning to be productive at the keyboard without smoking. I often relapsed when a big deadline loomed at work. If I could limit my smoking to just 2 or three cigs each day, I would never have quit. But, alas I cannot. It's sad really. Starting to smoke is my one regret in life. I fear I will always want another. I guess this is how recovering alcoholics feel about a drink. Kiddies, are you listening? Probably not, I didn't.
bruce {gusbowman@bellsouth.net} I like smoking!!!!! woooooo!!!
Tane I started smoking when I was 16, because I felt that it would lead to more inclusion in certain groups in high school. Little did I know, I would start a life-long battle. I am 25 and have smoked for 7.5 years out of the last 9 of my life. (Minus the year I was pregnant, and the year afterwards.) I started up again because of the many stressful situations a person encounters in their life. I was angry for many reasons, and said, "Well fine, I don't give a f***! I'll just smoke cigarettes!" HUGE MISTAKE! I had the addiction beat, I hadn't smoked for two years! But because I couldn't find a healthy alternative, (If there really is any healthy alternatives to dealing with stress, I sure don't know of any.)I sucumbed to the security blanket of nicotine once again. Quitting has been the most frustrating game I have ever played. Everyone goes through situations in life that define who they are, Lord knows I have had my share, and I am a stronger person because of it. But this one 3.5 inch tall, white, enemy of mine manages to make me realize how weak I really am, and I hate it!!! I am going to have one! DAMN IT ALL!
Shannon Smoking.
This is going to be a long one. I'm sorry, but I suppose I need to finally put this all down somewhere.
It's the one thing I swore I'd never do. My father, a hypochondriac-diabetic-chainsmoking ananthema towards all things holy, smoked every day of his life since I came into the world. He would go through bouts of trying to quit, and then start right back up again. When I was much younger, I can remember all my family members sitting in the living room, enjoying whatever smoke-brand they held allegiance to (Dad's Family were Marlboro men and women, Mom's were true to the Lucky Strikes).
My first real anti-smoking feelings started when I was 10 or so, and learned one day in school as to how bad smoking was bad for you. Small town school mind you, but they really pulled out all the stops. They had pictures of blackened lungs, and even cow lungs treated with cigarette smoke to show what it did to you. When I got home that day, I saw my Mom smoking a cig-- and became completely disgusted.
Those feelings lasted the entire way though high school, and even into my freshman year of College. I was always a Chubby kid, and that freshman year-- it was a big turning point. I hit the Gym everyday (For lack of anything better to do), and got in really good shape. Much to my shagrin, A young woman by the name of Ashley took interest in me-- and for the first time in my life, I thought I was well on my way to being really happy.
..Oh the trepidations of youth. The relationship was definitely one-sided (as my friends tried to tell me). And later on that year.. as my girlfriend, she cheated on me. When I confronted her about it, she claimed a number of things-- all of which took my new found self-acceptance, and threw it down the toilet.
While for a time, my broken heart served as a fuel to a fire within me (I went to the gym for much longer periods of time, studied harder, expanded myself socially).. It soon took it's toll on me. I had worked my body so hard, that I became very very sick. After which, I couldn't keep up with my own routine, and soon became apathetic.
That summer between the two years is hazy in my mind, I just worked. I went on with my life as if nothing had gone on-- But something was different, I was dead in some fashion..
Sophmore year, I lived with a bunch of guys who were all really cool. They were from Jersey, and introduced me to a culture that I never knew existed. Hunter S. Thompson, Underground Rap, Hardcore music-- all of that was introduced to me. Beyond that, something else was as well. My one roommate, Ryan, used to Smoke Marlboro Lights-- and would always offer when we would sit outside bullshitting.
Many times I declined-- but one day, I decided that I had to try. Needless to say, I really enjoyed the entire action of smoking. The first weeks of getting the buzz off one or two smokes a day. The first time I bought a pack for myself. The Zippo that the guys got me. The late nights, and early mornings of Guiness and Boges-- there was something about it all that just screamed.. "THIS IS LIVING!"
And, you know what-- for a solid year, I was content with my growing habit. What was once one or two a day, turned into 5 or 6, which turned into half a pack a day. As I came back home from School-- the habit came with me. The younger guys from my hometown started because I was smoking whenever we went out. My mom chastized me (much like I did her when I was younger), and my Dad told me to quit.
Funny thing is, 2 years a smoker now (and a pack a day habit), I cannot find one good reason to quit. Although I don't exercise as steadily anymore, my weight has stayed down (probably because I substitute cigarettes for meals). Since I've got my own place now, I can smoke indoors and enjoy the things I've always enjoyed just with more Gusto.
The thing is, I can't do this anymore, while it was a good run-- I can't end up like the people I love. My mom and dad have both had multiple heart attacks-- my Gramps and Aunt both died due to lung cancer... and the girl I'm currently dating, doesn't like it much either.
The problem is, that I don't want to. I'm addicted by large amount. Activities are related to smoking (after a meal, driving... and dear god even taking a shit).
I gotta stop, and I swear as I type this, the last cig in my pack is my last.
..that is... untill Buy 1 get 1's come back...
C. Sullivan Smoking became a social activity very quickly for me. My closest friends smoked too so we would always go out and get coffee and smoke cigarette after cigarette. Cigarettes became our common bond sort of.
As I got more and more addicted, cigarettes became my close friend. They calmed me down, they woke me up in the morning, they helped me fall asleep, they kept me from getting bored.
I've quit now though. More than anything, I felt GUILTY whenever I smoked the last few months. They were hurting me, my boyfriend, my cat and anyone who was around me while I was smoking.
I could have prepared myself for causing my own death, but I could never prepare myself for causing someone else's. i was 10 when i had my first cigarette. a filterless Camel, courtesy of my dad, who died a couple years ago at 64 of esophageal cancer. i'll be 34 this week, and i'm desperate to quit and feel powerless to do so. "avoid your triggers" is impossible when everything is a trigger. what will i do when on a "break"? sit? eat? what?? there is nothing TO do but smoke.
i quit when i was 12 for a couple years. the 7th graders thought it was uncool. unfortunately for me i was way too bored one night when i was 15, bought a pack of smokes and here i am 18 years later..
i most crave cigarettes in the morning, after coffee, with coffee, after eating, every couple hours, after a shower, before bed, before working out, after working out...you get the picture. i'm trying again to quit. good luck to me. i hate phillip morris....
kathy |
smoking how I started what it was like how I quit
