How did you start smoking?
What was your first cigarette like?
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My first cigarette was given to me by a friend. A very pretty & popular friend, I should add, who had that elusive "cool" about her that nerdy 12-year-old me longed for. It was a bitter winter afternoon, and Terri, Lynn, Kristy, and I were giddily running out the doors of Penn Jr. High with a mission: we were going to smoke. It was Terri's idea (I think she'd done it before, which made her even more cool).
We cut down the hillside to the shopping center, found a vending machine, and fished money out of our purses. Three quarters later, we had a pack of Marlboro Lights. Yes! We couldn't smoke there, though, so we wandered around the neighboring subdivision until we found a quiet street. And there, in the middle of 7th grade February suburb land, I started something I'd continue for years.
Terri showed us how to "pack" the cigarettes, then doled them out to us and lit them. I remember seeing my breath in the cold air, and then seeing smoke in the next breath, and thinking how neat it all looked. I got a little dizzy. I tried not to cough. The others tried, too. We weren't very successful, but it honestly wasn't that bad. Mostly, I liked the feeling of doing something I knew I was too young to do.
So much so that I started really smoking within a year. I never stopped thinking about how cool the smoke curls looked. I remember detesting the smell of my father's pipe when I was a boy. I swore that I would not drink, do drugs or smoke.
Around 17-18 years old, I started smoking. Camel Lights. I had a girlfriend that was 22 who had been smoking for quite sometime. There was not anything glamourous about smoking, nor was there anything cool. I just had that first cigarette for the hell of it. I wasn't afraid of being caught. Smoking took place away from home.
I almost felt embarrased to smoke because of that oath I made as a child. Funny how things turn out... On my 19th birthday, I found myself bored and feeling a bit lost. Lonely. I had nothing to do, my friends all happened to disappear out of town at the same time. I was bored, simply.
I tried to think of something to do that I hadn't been doing for the past week or two, day in and day out. I went out for a drive and stopped at a 7-Eleven. While browsing through the aisles, grabbing a Coke and some Jelly Bellies, it dawned on me that because I was 19, it was now legal for me to purchase cigarettes.
So I went up to the counter, bought a pack of Camel "studs" (filterless - I'm keen on overdoing things), got in the car, lit one up and drove away. I think I only coughed once or twice.
I quit for two years when I was pregnant and after I had my daughter. Then one day, again for no particular reason, I went out and bought another pack. I've been smoking ever since.
I like smoking. I don't like the way my clothes smell sometimes, I don't like the comments I get from virtually everyone I know. Quite frankly, though, the moments when I'm happiest usually happen at my desk at 3 a.m., while writing, downing coffee and chain-smoking. My mother and I were sitting on the stairway. Not the top step. The one below it. I was 10.
"Promise me you'll be a good teenager." She said.
"I will."
"Promise me you'll always be The Exception." She said.
"I do."
"Promise me you'll never smoke."
"Ewww... gross."
"Promise."
"I promise."
Six years later, after a jaunt in Egypt, she brought back a pack of cigarettes. They were brown, wrapped in tabacco leaves.
I coughed. I wheezed. I pretended I was a flapper.
She didn't catch me for almost three years.
Alexis Massie {pandora@pbot.com} I copped one off my friend Janice at The Tam O'Shanter when I was drunk on Moet & Chandon which had been purchased on the plastic cash of her best friend who was Rick Mears' ex-wife. The music was extremely loud, I was feeling giddy and "adult" and wanted to smoke because that is what adults in bars do.
I did pretty well, but it was all for effect anyway. I wasn't the least bit curious about it and knew I would never be "a smoker".
I still do pretty good, but I am never quite sure how to hold a cigarette. Because some ways it looks very feminine, other ways you burn yourself. I suppose there is a happy medium to be had in there somewhere. If I let it dangle from my lips as I talk like Bogart, inevitably I shower hot ashes on my shirt and end up with little burn marks or the filter gets stuck to my lip.
Come to think of it, maybe I don't smoke because I'm such a complete jerk.
Something to think about.
Lance {utterly.boring@glassdog.com} I cannot remember my first cigarette. It all was a mush from chewing tobacco to cloves maybe pot to cigarettes. I was 14 or 15, I guess. I could not chew tobacco as a lifestyle because it gave me too much a buzz. The first time I did it I was in Computer Science class. We were talking about Pascal the robot, and I stood up, giggled, and rushed out the room to the bathroom next door. Cloves at door three, where the stoners hung out. Cigarettes because cloves did not do it for me. I needed more. I tend to need more. Growing up in Milwaukee was strange. There was nothing to do outside because of the unbearable weather, so all of the high school kids hung out at bars. The drinking age was 18. Cigarettes, beer, and red lipstick. It was about 1984. I was hanging out with some friends at Senior Bar after a long night of studying which had turned into a longer night of drinking. Burke, who is from South Carolina and had come back after a summer of working with chain-smokers, had pulled out a pack and lit one up. I figured: "What the hell," and bummed one off him.
I have no idea what possessed me to do this. Both of my grandparents smoked, and the smell disgusted me. I'd heard Grandpa hacking up stuff in the night; I'd seen how Grandma's face has wrinkled in a pattern that probably developed from sucking on cancer sticks since the 40's. But something clicked in my head; "What the hell."
Burke instructed me: "Inhale as I light it, then suck it into your mouth, then into your lungs." I did.
And I felt like I'd inhaled a golf ball right into the middle of my chest. It sat there, right beneath my sternum, as I finished my first cigarette. And it stayed there for three or four days, and it hurt like hell every time I inhaled too deeply or went biking.
I've had three other cigarettes since then. Every time, the golf ball comes back. I like breathing too much to make it a habit.
Adam Rakunas {rakunas@geocities.com} I started smoking for a part in a play my senior year in college. The show got to go to Hungary for spring break for a competition. The only language that every shared at the conference was English, and then only so-so for many people. So there was really only three ways to communicate, talk about Sam Sheppard, talk about Tom Waits, (in nouns only of course), or you could just stand around and bum smokes off of people. Tobacco had become the esperanto of the western world.
But since smoking was so tied to communication, I smoked and smoked and smoked and smoked and smoked and by the time I got back home, I was pretty damn sick of the whole thing.
I started smoking when I was 15, at the school's bathroom. One time we counted 30 guys smoking there at the same time. It was quite foggy. There, if you weren't a smoker, you were a geek.
stelio {stelio@algarnet.net} I was sqeaky-clean & disdained the whole smoking thing. first cigarette was offered by my Weird Uncle(tm), we've all got one, Tim. I was 15, we were at some family shindig in Walnut Creek, hot summer day & the damp smell of the lawn as he snapped the pack into his palm, the way people do when they're trying to look cool. He had long hair, a motorcycle & a sandblasting business; I thought he was some kind of god. You've never smoked, I can't believe it, he admonished. You gotta get started, kid. And in my headlong rush to shed my childhood i inhaled half that marlboro into some tube i didn't know i had. This tube, and its neighboring network of tubes, made it clear they weren't happy with the situation & I spent the rest of the afternoon lying naseous under an oak tree, trying to throw up. Proud tho, that i'd passed an important milestone. Tim eventually got into harder drugs & the related crime. Now no one knows where he is. But that's another story. I didn't smoke again til i was 20, and then it was the easiest thing in the world. Been addicted to Export A's ever since. C'est satisfait! I sneaked a drag of my father's cigarette one day at a pool club when i was maybe 12. he'd gone out to get some more drinks and had just left his cigarette lying there and so i took a drag. no more. it wasn't such a great experience, i felt no buzz from it, not even from doing the illicit thing. i didn't carry on smoking though, and i didn't even start smoking properly until i was 17, when my friend offered me a marlboro red and i accepted. i've been smoking on and off ever since (i've just re-started) and guess i'll carry on that way, too. but hey, you win some.
kaleid {kaleid@deathsdoor.com} I don't recall actually coughing-but i got very very high. I must've wondered if my dad felt this way everytime he smoked a cigarette. For several years that was the only reason i smoked. I don't recall the first time I smoked a cigarette. Probably because I don't think I inhaled for the first few years I did it. I was a swimmer at the time, and I wanted the best of both worlds: to look cool and to have excellent lung capacity. I also didn't like losing control of my feelings and actions. I was afraid I would do something that made me look stupid in front of my friends, so I would neither get drunk nor inhale and feel high from the nicotine. Somewhere in my second year of college I lost that inhibition.
Susan Paulsen {netgrl@cinti.net} my first was my last.
my father smoked continuously and i recall his habit from the earliest memories i have.
one day, while sitting on the bed in the room he grew up in, he asked me if i would like to try one.
yes!!!! i was going to be grown up and do what daddy does!
knowing full well what would happen, he put it in my mouth and lit the end...
i took a deep breath, i coughed, i choked, i cried.
m i c h a e l {woodward@nicom.com} I remember clearly standing in the barn in New Hampshire, next to the big round table. My parents were still married; my brother and I were only 4 or maybe 5. My parents gave us each a big, fat cigar and lit them up. I gagged; my brother loved it. After that my Mom gave him a cigar once a year. He still smokes; I don't.
kirsten {older@sister.com} "I'll try heroin before I try a cigarette," I vowed. "At least you get a good high to go with a smack addiction."
I watched both my parents try to quit when I was a kid. My dad finally quit after doing a hypnosis treatment. My mom quit cold turkey, finally, a few years later. They both struggled with it for years, though, and it looked like a dirty, stupid thing to jones so hard about.
When I was 16, I read _Still Life With Woodpecker_ by Tom Robbins, which takes place in an imaginary pack of Camels. So I bought a pack, just to kind of refer to as I read the book. I did smoke one of the cancer sticks so I could really "get into" the spirit of the book. Hey, I was 16. That was the only cigarette I've ever put my lips to.
Then, last year I was in Boston for a craft-brewers conference, and the RealBeer Page
Bill Emmack {bill_emmack@mail.gmosf.com}
I started when I was 18, well over the impressionable phase of life. I stopped for ages. Then I had the worst week of my life. In one week I found out my work couldn't afford to pay me any more, my girlfriend of 1.5 years and I had "the talk" where we agreed to break up and to top it all off I had one week to go before being out of my house and I still hadn't found anywhere to live. ARGH!!!
Needless to say, I started smoking again. Love those Peter Stuyvesant soft-packs. I dunno, they taste better than the hard packs which are the way all other cigarettes in Australia are packed... Mmmm... Cancer!
Shermozle {simon@rumble.waratah.id.au}
Now Danny had the sort of innate intelligence that usually goes unnoticed in a macho kind of guy. Caught in a Catch-22 (if he told on me HE got in trouble for smoking), he figured the best way to get me to stop it (he'd tried the punching bag thing, which I took with silent martyrdom)was to get me hooked too.
I still remember the giddy elation when he casually asked, one balmy summer night, if I wanted to walk up in the woods with him. I followed him eagerly like wagging tailed puppy. When we got to a little hillside clearing he pulled out his smokes and lit up. Before I could say a word he offered me one. And I took it, all thoughts of its badness gone from my prudish mind. In a muddy puddle of flattered delight, I tried to get the hang of it. I coughed. My hands shook. I lipped it. I just couldn't seem to do it cool like Danny. He told me as much, using all the disdain at his command to demonstrate my innate lack of maturity. Stubbornly, and of course with the thought of winning his approval, I continued on for many months trying to get the hang of smoking. I remember when I did, too. He had suggested I get my own brand of lighter smokes...I chose Vantages (uhhhg!)...and we were on the same hill on a much cooler night when I finally inhaled. I promptly lost the use of my knees and fell on my butt. After that, Danny never invited me on his private smoking forays into the woods. I kept hoping, of course, and I kept smoking.
I never broke up Danny's cigarettes after that. I was hooked and he was happy. Now, almost 25 years later, I sometimes wonder if I'll ever forgive him. I find many other reasons to continue smoking...from the "I smoke therefore I think" justification to the "I'm not ready" excuse...but I think that deep inside myself, somewhere, there's still that tiny shred of hope that my big brother will think I'm cool.
megan {mcollins@mo.net}
So one could say I started smoking to emulate the old man, but that's not really the truth.
I started to get rid of my upstairs neighbors.
I was living amonst friends in a large rundown victorian house on Mission Hill. At sometime the house was poorly converted into two apartments, a downstairs and an upstairs. We were downstairs... upstairs was the fat family. There was the mother, who lived off of alimony and wellfare, the older daughter who was a reported asthmatic, and the younger daughter "Squid".
Due to the shoddy attempt at splitting the place, we felt each others presence in far too many ways. The mother had a charming habit of calling the cops when we played music past 9:30, and when the police proved ineffective, she would drop heavy furnature on her floor (our ceiling) jarring our conciousness. (My friend Tweety is still shaken by these attacks on his peaceful demeanor) We had to destroy this menace. We decided to start smoking cigars, and scream at them at every opportunity. We made their lives hell. But hey, she was gonna get evicted anyway.
Ummm... so cigars led to cloves which led to Luckys. Luckys got too painful, went 3 floors down to Parliaments, P-funk's too wimpy, smoked Reds. Old Gold. Whatever.
Nowadays I smoke infrequently. Only when I'm drunk or stoned or rilly tired. Or at my radio show. Or after reading this page.
My husband and I split up a year ago, and a couple of weeks after that, I started smoking. I don't know why I did this. I guess a lot of people begin smoking under emotional stress
Mary Rawle {mtrawle@metro.net}
Rachel Chalmers {raze@zip.com.au}
jen leibhart {jen@cnct.com}
I had 5 older sibs. When I was pre-teen, they used to hang out in clubs all night and come home "reeking" of smoke. I remember my sister throwing all her clothes in a pile behind the door and saying she hates thet smell. So I had to smell them. And I Loved that smell. I really loved it. It was sweet and dusky and I could be around that smell all day, I thought.
When I was 15 I decided to try one. I was still and anti-smoking crusader, but if you can't beat them, right? I inhaled the first cigarette. I didn't cough, choke, or feel ill. I liked it. It tasted sweet, like that smell.
Phoenix {phoenix@asan.com} I smoked pot occasionnally before I ever had a cigarette...
My roomate arrived one night with a pack of beadies. Indian cigarettes, no nicotine, a collection of herbs rolled in a leaf. So I tried one. I still remember thinking how it smelled and looked like a joint. And I got a little headrush from it. Good lord, the answer to my prayers... Exam period, and I needed to relax. I didn't want to smoke up, or go on a drinking binge, for fear that I might be losing the brain cells I was using the night before while studying.
So I started smoking. Slowly. I made it a ritual... For two weeks, I'd have one every night.
I graduated to cigarettes. The nicotine started taking over. I started smoking between classes. I started smoking with coffee. I drink a lot of coffee.
Remi {erd3515@umoncton.ca}
Can't remember a thing. I guess memories of firsts are diluted when they lead to consuming addictions.
We (Denis & I) used to go out behind the slope and the snow fence at the end of the football field and smoke kools. The first? - must have been out there lying low, hiding from ...
Imagine hiding - then going back into the school, stinking of smoke - and thinking it was our secret.
I don't remember coughing, although I must have done so. I don't remember any of it. Just the intrigue of getting away with something we knew we ought not to have been doing. Just the thought that we were getting away!
Ben
On the spot, I made her give me one of her cigarettes and show me how to smoke.
What a really stupid idea of revenge.
When I was a baby, my older brothers used to take me to the neighborhood bar across the street from my house. I was a cute kid, and they used me to start conversations with women. And because they (and their potential dates for the night) thought that it was cute, they would give me sips of beer and puffs off of their cigarettes.
It sounded unreasonable to me as well until one day in the Spring of 1979. My friends and I used to walk home from school along the railroad tracks that ran in back of the schoolhouse. One day on the way home from school, one of my friends (actually, the guy who owns the neighborhood bar now) offered me a Newport. He didn't think I could handle it, and was absolutely amazed as I put the thing in my mouth, lit it up, took a very long drag and blew smoke in his face. No coughing. No discomfort. Just the satisfying rush of sweet nicotine in my juvenile blood.
I started smoking in earnest during High School. The people I associated with at the time smoked clove cigarettes. And because I wanted to be one of the crowd, I followed suit. After about a month, I started smoking regular cigarettes.
The rationale I used to justify it was that smoking was something an adult in my family did. I didn't really question it.
Mike Farris {mikef9992mindspring.com}
I asked a cigarette of her (Philip Morris), smoked it without coughing and felt great. About 15 minutes later I grabbed for the next one and when I had finished it I went dizzy. I had to lie down and thought I could vomit this mornings breakfast right there. Fortunately I didn't...
After that I went on smoking Philip Morris (not too many, though).
I've been smoking ever since.
Felix {femuelle@stud.uni-frankfurt.de}
Much of my early experiences with smoking blend with the many other infatuations of a teenage boy. From the very start smoking had for me a direct tie to experince. Music and cigarettes seemed to go hand in hand. Drinking and cigarettes seemed to go hand in hand. Just about anything was better with cigarettes.
When we were old enough to get in to nude bars, smoking was innevitable. It's hard to look casual watching naked women dance without a cigarette in hand. (although it always provided for an awkward table dance). When the smokes were gone, it was definitly time to move on.
In college, smoking added to yet another experience...art. Smoking definetly goes with art and the creation thereof. The only way to really appreciate ones progress is to stand back, light up a cigarette, and enjoy the experience.
Somehow all these links to experiences made me believe I could never quit smoking. But somehow, a wife and two kids later, I have left them in my past. Once in a great while, I will break down and get a pack (only to smoke 2 or 3). I think the smell and taste of cigarettes will always remind me of those juvenile days in nudy bars....trying to look so non chalant.
ron
rebecca {bmwhite@moonvalley.com}
I'd still prefer a box of Godivas
Kristin {Kristin@insnet.com}
Rebekah {reidr@targen.com}
dee {dlfuller@ionia-mi.net}
I didn't last long on the Exports. My old friend Paul and I snuck into the field behind my house, and lit it up... we hacked and qaffed. We thought we were the coolest guys on the planet. Our faces turned blue, but we were cool. I felt like gagging, but hey, we were cool.
After spreading out those Exports for a couple of weeks, I bought my first pack, the smoke of teens in Canada, Player's Lights. I was incredibly easy to buy smokes when you're 12 back then. I was well known at our local confectionary, and my parents and relatives often used to send me there for their cancer-sticks.
I was the first kid in my grade to smoke. Everyone thought I was the hippest guy around. Everyone wanted to be my friend. Everyone wanted to be with the rebel. I started at least 6 other 12 year olds smoking. I don't relish that memory too much. Because it was a catholic school, complete with Nuns, we had to do our evil habit out back, near an old chip wagon that sold fries by the road.
The funny thing about this episode is this - I don't consider myself as a smoker until I was 18. I did smoke between the ages of 12 and 16, but not at a regular pace, and I quit for weeks at a time with little effort. One girl I started dating when I was 16 hated smoking, so I quit, only to start the night we broke up, two years later. Then, I became a smoker.
my frist real cig was when i was 12, at the bus stop at my apartment complex. every morning all the kids at the stop would share a cigarette. i was one of the youngest kids. i remember the guy i liked was real impressed with me and called me "new wave". to be honest i just felt really dirty. i did that for awhile, then we moved.
my first time smoking was when i was 16, when i used to go and hang out at the one and only coffee house in town, it was a cigarette bummed from my friend Jen who had stolen it from her chain-smokin parental units.
after that i quit till i was 18. then i smoked for about a year. i ended up quitting cold turkey, coz i didn't want to be 45 with the raspy voice of a half-dead animal or something.
it's my singing that did it.
One day, in my life as an industrial espionage agent maneuvering through the dank and musty halls of a cloak and dagger world, I was to meet a high-level company representative from an international conglomerate, whose identity (the man's, not the company's, since I don't care who I work for so long as I get my payment in bearer bonds locked in a battered aluminum briefcase whose contents are unknown to the carrier, my contact) must be witheld for obvious security reasons, anyways, as I was saying, meet him in a smelly dive bar on the lower east side to exchange tattered rolls of blueprints, or perhaps thin scraps of microfiche cleverly hidden beneath the swing-out heel of my scuffed up wingtips.
And what if, after exchanging greetings with my contact in that smelly lower east side bar, he offers me a smoke. And I accept. Because... well, every industrial espionage agent simply must smoke. And I light up. And cough. And choke and my eyes well up with involuntary tears of embarassment and regret and my nose expells little chunks of dried up snot cause I don't want to cough up the smoke in a foolish and naive attemt to cover up the fact that I've never smoked and therefore could never pass myself off as an industrial espionage agent instead of the dumbass college kid I was at the time.
So I started. Yeah, that's right. I said dumbass.
Martin Ouimet {rubicon8@concentric.net}
I was 14. At public school in England, we had army officer training, which everyone hated, but everyone joined up, so I did too...I digress. One night we had to go on 'Night Ops', a training exercise at night, which seemed like a good laugh, and everyone I was with saw it as an excellent opportunity to get lost somewhere and smoke while the rest of the poor buggers had to crawl across muddy fields in the rain pretending to be green berets. So I ended up huddled behind an old tree stump with a half-sodden cigarette for company. That was 13 years ago.
I remember not coughing, and doing everything right, and it was only a couple of months later when a friend of my sister's remarked that I smoked like she did, that I realised why it came naturally to me. I also realised I held a cigarette like a woman, which I suppose I still do.
Now some of those suckers from school are actually in the Army, and I bet they still don't smoke. I suppose I still do because I still don't want to have to do what everyone else says I should...
BaZ {baz@dwpub.com}
For years, I went to our local corner store and bought them for her - daily. Never smoking, always thinking it was gross, although I might as well have with all the smoke I breathed. I lived with her.
I spent a couple of years coming home immediately after school playing the flute (classically). I also did all my homework.
Finally, that need to be cool hit me and I smoked the first one with one of the "cool" girls. I fell flat on my ass, basically, another reason (besides my genes) I think I now smoke several cigarettes a day... I also coughed.
"She won't smell it," the girl told me.
After that, a trip to the corner store got me TWO packs of Carlton 120 menthols - my piggy bank dwindled, my grandmother had no idea and neither did anyone else.
Quit, after being thrown into a 12-year culture shock of moving from suburban Detroit to suburban Atlanta...
My mall rat years began, and I started dating a guy who, if he forgot to take his lithium, tended to do things like throw lamps at his mother. At this time, I also decided to try my first hit of acid, but that's another story - where's the "experience" entry form for that?
It was trendy to carry around little tin Sanrio boxes, which, because I still have mine and look at it often, I'm convinced were made for JUST that - all you can fit into it is a pack of smokes and a lighter... So, I did...
College - so broke I dig for butts in the ashtray. Thank god all three of my roomates smoke as well.
New York City - six years after college, I find myself here, going out a lot, drinking a lot, taking too many drugs, and working a lot. All of those are accompanied by my friend, the cigarette.
I land myself a job a year and a half after being here - like you, I jump on the caboose of the web dream, only to find out that yeah, it's a business. I still love it tho - I find stuff like Fray (by the way, Fray was created the day I found my biological father, via the Internet, so if you think there's nothing beautiful about it, there is - and this is one of them), work at an interactive company (wait, that's a "digital marketing agency), and periodically go sit in the room our president, an avid smoker, has designated as "the smoking room."
We have a couple of very comfy leather things back there, a couple of laptops hooked up to the LAN if you wanna browse and smoke, and too many ashtrays, matches, lighters, and Marlboro Lights to count. My CEO smokes my last cigarette on a daily basis, because he can.
He also buys me more.
My roomate does promotions for Camel - basically, she goes from one bar to the next in the East Village, giving out cigarettes and Camel paraphenalia to the bartenders. We have cartons lying around at home.
I just dropped $6,000 on a new apartment in Manhattan - first & last month's rent, plus a broker fee because I'm not going to spend six months knocking on doors or looking for illegal sublets. So I've been told, I'm too Gen-X for that.
You can believe I'm smoking like a chimney, and it doesn't help that I'm also about to make my first attempt at cohabitation.
I'm convinced, as well, that I got this job because I smoked a cigarette during my interview with the CEO.
Quit? What, are you kidding?
dori {dori@usinteractive.com}
I spent an inordinate amount of time in my bathroom, with the overhead exhaust fan running, and various bottles of cheap cologne within easy reach. I thought I had the process down.
I was wrong. One afternoon, my Mom was unusually pleasant to me. This wasn't the norm. I wanted to be suspicious of her, but I didn't think I had reason to be. My Stepfather came home from work. The two of them chatted in the living room and then we all had dinner together.
It was not until later that evening that I discovered I'd been busted for smoking. Step called me out to the living room and asked me if I'd like to have a cigarette with him. Mom sat smirking in the background. I looked at the coffee table, where one pack's worth of Merit brand cigs, laying in a loose pile, had been placed.
Step said I was too young to smoke, and that he had just the remedy for my habit.
I ate twenty cigarettes that night.
A Spilthy Girl {ibidem@boisdarc.tamu-commerce.edu}
It was one of the only things that he told me that had made sense.
I said "Okay Pappa. I won't."
I'm sixteen, and my idiot boyfriend and I are sitting in my Chevette. Of course he couldn't drive. Of course I never got gas money.
"Take a drag." he says.
I say no. He keeps on me. Being annoying. I explain why I don't want to, why it seems like it's the one thing I can do for him, now that he's gone.
He keeps it up. Fuck him. I take a drag to shut him up.
I'm nineteen, and directing for the first time. And this is my baby. I wrote it, with my best friend.
I am a total bitch. I stress everyone out, including myself. They all go out for a cigarette when they get a break. So I go, one break, and see one guy smoking a "beadie"-- dried tobacco leaf, rolled. He gives me one. Head rush. I'm in a better mood for the rest of the day.
Why do theatre people *always* smoke?
Everyone thought I did before I even started. Perhaps it was in my destiny. Speaking of which...
Smoke break. *grin*
Nicole {noizangl@cycor.ca}
But I always say: "Quitting is really easy...so easy, in fact, that I've done it hundreds of times."
i guess it's probably the stress my parents gave me over the examination period and how i've constantly wondered why my father was so addicted to cigarettes that got me started on fags...
i remember stealing a fag from my dad (he usually leaves his cigarette box around the house) and lighting it up around 3 or 4 am when everyone else is asleep...
then i started buying my own occasionally...
but well... i'm the kinda smoker who can stop as and when she pleases... so i'm not exactly a smoker, and i would call myself lucky...
rach {puppy52@pacific.net.sg}
I'm 21 one now and hooked on nicotine. I hate it and I will quit, but that's the hardest part, I've tried before and it hasn't worked yet, but I do know that I don't want to spend the rest of my life with a cigarrette protruding from my lips.
Lisa Winebrenner {lwinebre@indiana.edu}
Juan {Juan1961@hotmail.com}
i still smoke... i'm 19 now... i've switched brands quite a few time, but i always come back... to the fattys... the Camel wides... it's a religious thing i suppose...
Fat Nate {hotdog@deltanet.com}
I found myself at the opposite end of that dark tunnel, so far from ever even hoping to see the light. I started hanging out with these people, just people to keep myself occupied. They went to bars and we drank alot. There was this one bar, a real college dive - they packed them in and the smoke just attached itself to your DNA I think. I started wondering what it was like, all these people smoking while drinking. I had never really considered it before. There was only one person I knew that smoked. I think that I just wanted to do somthing shocking. Something so disapproved of, something that would make me different.
I was also looking for something self-destructive.
As it turns out, if I had just become an alcholic, it would have been so much easier to quit.
Wayne
I was addicted to everything from caffiene to nicotine to cocaine in that period of time, and I enjoyed every fucking second of it. Yea that speed, you only need a couple hours of rest a week, man. Oh man I loved it. Well I quit everything about a year ago, not without pain, of course. But I quit. I've been up, down, around and everywhere else you can think of and all I can do is not do.
By the way, I'm 15.
austin
It wasn't... and all the kids who lived there knew it wasn't. We all reminded one another in case anyone ever forgot.
St Louis, Missouri -- 1977. We'd walk down the side-street into the 'rich neighborhood' that lived behind our place. Sometimes, Kim would be there. Kim was cool. And rich. And she talked to us... she even treated us like we were cool.
Kim was an only child.
We shot pool in her basement, wandered the labryinth that was her home, played the Bay City Rollers on the record player (ugh!), and basically bored ourselves right back outside.
"Hey! I've got an idea!" Kim yelled, "Let's go to Skagg's?" We raced up the road to Olive Street Boulevard and crossed it to the rhythm of the shouts and curses of the drivers. Laughing and panting as only kids can; we rested in the foyer of the grocery chain.
"How are we going to get them with all those cashier's and people there?" Kim worried aloud. "The trick to doing anything is to look like you've done it before..." I sternly advised. Taking the quarters from her hand, I told the two of them to wait. My sister nodded and Kim bobbed her head. I sauntered across the floor to the machine and casually slid the money in, smiling to the cashier watching me and asking her if the dairy delivery had come in..... at the mention of something that might require movement, she hastily diverted her attention. I smiled.
Marlboro Reds. The package crackled in my hands like some chained force... waiting.... for me to invite it in....
We stood behind the children's home; our faces defiantly toward it, our bodies not quite shivering as the snow began falling. The matches sparked, the paper burned, the smoke curled almost lovingly against our faces. We were too new to know about inhaling. We learned soon enough.
The comraderie and sense of belonging that first cigarette brought was a sizzling brand upon my mind. A memory bold and strong with difference; from the others swirling 'round it, from the darkness and pain, from the aloneness.
I have smoked for 20 years now.... and while I hate the smell, the taste, and the mess -- I have discovered for the first time in my life that I cannot quit. You see, I can't even pretend to quit..... because I don't know how to look like I've done it before.....
privacy
driving his Jeep. Back then I hated the smell. Now I love it. I used to be an avid anti-smoker. That shit'll kill ya. I also, back then, hated the tast of coffee... (But that's another story,
Mr. double espresso, xtra large coffee black, no sugar...gotta stay wired...)Anyway, I guess I really started maybe a year and a half ago (January 1996). Never did like cigarettes per say. Never liked the smell or the taste. Cigars, Colts, Mores, Mores Menthol, and my current black vice Beedies. God how I enjoy smoking those. It only started gradually. First when I was drinking. Then a few times when I drive. That sounds funny when you say that combined. "I only smoke when I drink and drive."
I guess the real clincher was when my (now ex) girlfriend told me, after a 3 year relationship: "I'm pregnant and I'm leaving you".... (ouch)....
So I'm nowhere near quiting. Anyway, now it's whenever I can. I smoke on average 6-8 Beedies
a day. Look them up. For those of you who say they don't have nicotine, try 7-8%, no filter.
I might be wrong about that, but THAT'S a death smoke for ya. I guess I just realized tonight after reading all you guys stories, that I'm now a smoker. I guess everyone needs a vice to be able to say later on in life that they beat it.
It makes for good storytelling.
5:30am 21/08/97
Fred {fboulay@nbnet.nb.ca}
sarah averill {jjaverill@earthlink.net}
dad
drp {drp@cyberg8t.com}
bettie rinehart {brine3370@aol.com}
I've been smoking ever since, sure ive quit a couple of times, usually for a month or two but it never lasts. I still wonder why.
Daniel Super {dragnfly@tdl.com}
I became a pack a day smoker two weeks later, when Amanda and I broke up. Okay okay, she tossed me aside like a broken toy. We're still friends, and we're both still smoking.
I guess, for me, smoking is part of the emotional baggage I carry with me from an intense, short realtionship from the summer of '92.
CJ Terrien {terrien@unbc.ca}
Ari Garber {arig@ais.net}
You can see I'm free in more ways than one.
Also - check out a cool book on smoking - Cigarettes are Sublime, by Richard Klein (birthday gift from a friend who knows me). Talks about what cigarettes represent, and have represented, to our culture throughout the ages, illustrated by way of poetry, film, etc.
I love the taste, the aura, the whole thing. Of course it's bad for you, but I prefer to choose my vices. Freely.
Nan {ocru@prolog.net}
so i asked him for one, and i felt it fill my lungs with a new form of bliss. sure enough i hacked my head off the first time, but from then on it kinda grew on me. from it i developed this sort of smoking fetish thing going, i dont know why but since i started, any woman i see smoking is all of a sudden instanty amazingly attractive... i dunno, still trying to figure it out.
right now i've technically quit, for how long i do not know, but as im writing this i really feel like going outside for a drag right now...
if only i could find my bloody zippo... :)
in college, sometime around the time tha bonds to parents and their expectations dwindle, it happened. i was 17, the day after my birthday. i was high on life.
i had just lost my virginity, and was sitting with my cohort (the girl) outside our dorm building in quiet williamstown, massachussetts. we were under the old elm tree we had named "Zach" talking about life and 4 years of college ahead, when out of the blue she asked if i ever smoked. i said no, and before i knew it we were walking down the street to the only pizza parlour in town, to plop quarters in the machine and fish out a pack of marlboro lights, soft pack. we returned to the tree with our prize.
i didn't cough. i didn't look back and i didn't hesitate as i put the first white filter to my lips and inhaled deeply. the buzz was quick, fluid and over before i could inhale again. it has never been like that again, but i am no longer determined to get it back.
i like to smoke. i like to sit at the computer at my desk and inhale. to take a cigarette with a cup of coffee and savour the combination of tastes, ashy and bitter and comforting. it reminds me of those precious moments under that tree during my freshman fall.
years have gone by. i am now 21, and halfway across the world. the girl is engaged to marry a man i have never liked, and i still love her deeply. we still talk. things change and the world goes round, but i can always sit back, flick a brass zippo into life, and remember.
this is how it was.
i smoked when i hung out with people and got stoned and all that teenage freeky stuff.
last new years, i'd been sick witha sore throat and hadn't been smoking... allready went through crying and nicfits and withdrawl for a whole week. i had a glass of champagne and smoked a joint and went and told everyone that i quit smoking tobacco. people scoffed, i laughed.
my dad smokes, my mom smokes, my dad's girlfriend quit, my best friend of the time quit four months before me. she started smoking again after nine months. my sixteenth birthday was in march, and its allready october, and i havent smoked, and at least once a week i realize how glad i am i didnt wait and i quit smoking then.
i hate the i-dont-care-we-die-young attitude that goes along with smoking.
if you want to quit, it's easy after the first two weeks.. so do it.
But, it's over now. I do as I please. I accepted her offer, she lit it up for me, and I took one great drag. Aaaahhh....freedom.
ace {lovejunk@usa.net}
The second time I started smoking, I was 18 and home from college for the first time. I'd quit a year and a half before while on a vegan and anti-impurity kick. I was at a party with my HS friends and sortof freaked watching the people I used to smoke weed with doing lines of coke off the coffee table and (no exaggeration) shooting up at the kitchen table. I had a strict "nothing up my nose and nothing in my veins" drug policy. I bummed a smoke off someone, maybe to deal with the stress or something, and 15 minutes later ran out to the deli to buy a pack. Still doing a pack a day, and puffing as I write this.
LJ {lj@mailexcite.com}
Someone would be allocated to purchase the cigarettes from the shop with the standard "My dad wants some smokes.." excuse along with various packets of chewing gum and breath mints required to hide the smell afterwards.
The whole gang would then venture towards the back of the shopping complex and into the bush where the oldest would dole out a smoke to each of us to then systematically suck on the sticks, chew our gum and go home. Didn' t make me feel anything so I didn' t continue. I thought it was the coolest thing though. That was the first trial.
Later at 16 I actually started smoking, firstly for the head-spins and then just the pure coolness I thought I was feeling when being seen smoking. This furthered itself into the packet-a-day habit I now have.
Jeff {jandersen@clarkson.wa.edu.au}
In those instances, it certainly makes for good company.
Anthony Baker {abaker@reef.com}
Sarah {ssmalhee@sophia.smith.edu}
Zach {TACO2CHILI@aol.com}
The first cigarette I remember was at age 18. I was desperately lonely, living for the summer with three rich sorority girls who were so much older than I was and so vastly different from me that I thought we'd never find a thing to talk about. But one night the prettiest of them, Kelly, invited me to drink with the them. It was the first night all summer I hadn't spent locked in my room writing bad poetry. We drank white russians until everyone was giggling.
Suddenly Kelly jumped up. "Who wants to smoke with me?" she asked. The others groaned. "Kelly, you promised. Not in the apartment." Kelly brushed them off and grabbed me by the hand. "Beth will smoke with me. Come on, Beth."
Together we stood on the roof and watched the smoke curl into the dense Los Angeles sky. We smoked the cigarettes one after another, stubbing them out long before they had burned out. After a while, Kelly jumped up again. (She was a very jumpy girl.) "Do you want to go see Marilyn Monroe's grave? I always smoke when I drink, and I always go see Marilyn when I smoke."
We went to the tiny cemetary wedged between high rises and finished the pack while we thought of Marilyn in her little file drawer. Kelly explained that there was always a fresh rose there, supposedly supplied by Joe DiMaggio.
We visited Marilyn a lot that summer, Kelly and I. We smoked 100 packs of cigarettes and plowed through 30 bottles of kahlua. It wasn't a bad year at all.
Dan
Barry Olver
Somehow i managed to attain a lone cigarette. I brought it out into the backyard under the minimal light of three am. I didn't cough too much, but of course i did cough some.
I remember the headrush i got vividly.
I remember thinking; this is exactly why people do this. They never talk about the headrush. Only the downfalls. Typical bastards. It was great, i was into it.
Then just like with the drink the tolorating begun.
Sometimes i smoke when i'm bored. It's something to do. A way to keep busy. It's not as easy as drinking to kill time but it works just the same.
Sometimes i smoke when i'm alone. It makes me feel like there's something going on. If things are burning, things are happening, things are going down. That's pretty comforting to know.
Sometimes i smoke when i want to be bukowski.
but that never works.
hey, what did i know?
Jesus' Little Brother {jesusjr@mindless.com}
i don't remember liking it
or hating it.
i do remember finding the FREE Coupon in a magazine. Something like Misty ultra-lights, white box, pink and babyblue artwork. Absolutely free.i do remember at 17, feeling daring and free as we drove from Detroit to Kalamazoo, my first parent-free roadtrip. That's where it started, no big deal.
Took me months, maybe years before i tried again. It was probably a clove cigarette, in a dark goth Detroit bar. Sweet taste on the lips, the short lightheaded buzz and the wonderful warm clove smoke. I still love them.
Then the Swisher Sweets. My best bud and I walked around her rain soaked block gagging the whole time, and throwing the 1/2 smoke stogie into a puddle. Years later she would make herself sick on them and never smoke one again. She's a devout anti-smoker. it still cracks me up to think about it.
i can no longer say i'm not a smoker, though i'm still trying to deny it. i would attempt to rationalize it by telling myself that as long as i don't buy them, i'm not a die-hard. Can't really say that anymore.
smoke and a drink. an almost inseparatable couple.
oh well, i guess i'm a smoker.
could be worse things.
colleen
in the summer during the off season i'd buy a couple of packs always testing the waters.
i went to college -- my first semester competing never thought about having one. i moved into a new room and my roommate was a pack a day Marlboro red smoker. my first day in the room, he told me he was going to the store and asked me if I wanted any cigarettes. i told him to get me a pack of parliaments. but i couldn't smoke around people I knew..so I kept it secret. it eventually faded after that semester.
last year I was hurt and not able to compete. i would buy a pack once in a while and keep them around. one night during finals, i pulled an all nighter. i smoked to stay awake and relieve some stress again having to hide. i went to the store that night and happedned to ask for 2 packs of Marlboro Lights. just in case i guess. well i smoked many of them and have felt the rush ever sice then. i smoke camels and marlboro reds to just to change off.still hiding...
jon {frink007@aol.com}
Alexandra Finkle {afinkle@student.manhattan.edu}
Lestat
LiLith Rhys Jester {WritersBlockLili@yahoo.com}
But somehow I went to Monterrey and I started practicing sports like cross training and since I was doing it so well i decide it to quit smoking...
Vladimir Vorizenko {vladi@hotmail.com}
Danielle
Rob {RNoble369@Aol.com}
coughing, bleeding, vomiting. [panic]
run for the lemonade. choke.
green eyes staring into the mirror.
an addict?
games aren't fun anymore. my iron lung
melts with black disease.
Two weeks later i bummed a marlboro. with a filter i actually inhaled. The buzz was incredible. That's the real reason why kid's start smoking. Not because of society or peer pressure or anything like that. It feels good the first time you smoke.
Tom Peryam
I lit it.
I didn't cough.
I looked cool.
I was in love.
Until the earth shattering moment when I was told "your wasting my cigarette, fu**ing inhale now or I'm smoking it my self"
I inhaled.
I coughed.
and my coolness faded...
Some what discouraged I finished my cigarette. And then moved on to another one.. and then another. It got much easier to smoke after the first few.. After that day I smoked very rarely, until about 3 months ago. Now I'm 16 and have been chain smoking when ever possible. (my age does have a bearing on how frequently i can get cigs) I don't know why i started so heavily, nor do my parents who prohibit me from smoking in the house. I doubt ill ever know.
A wise man once said shit happens, and then u die. And im not about to argue with that.
Taylor {artist@santacruz.org}
Não tinha mais que 13 anos e há algum tempo eu ia até SP de bumba pra fazer cursos de computação na 7 de abril.
Num belo dia, com um pouco mais de grana no bolso resolvi comprar um maço de cigarros.
Já tinha filado (nem sabia direito o que era isso) de alguns amigos mais velhos que fumavam...
Era um John Player Special. Maço preto com o logo dourado... Lindo!
Dentro do bumba de volta pra casa, abri a desgraça devagarzinho, afinal era o meu primeiro cigarro comprado!!!
Ignorando todos os avisos de PROIBIDO FUMAR, acendi o danado e comecei a dar umas tragadas.
Por incrível que pareça não tossí... Talvez tenha sido as pequenas brincadeiras de criança (?) roubando cigarros das empregadas, dos pais ou dos amigos mais velhos. Isso quando não sobrava os maços do amigos de meus pais após aqueles fartos jantares...
Pura idiotice de pré adolescente... 14 anos após, depois de muita tosse, pigarro, falta de ar e outras cozitas mas, resolvi mandar esta merda para aquele lugar. E por lá deve estar esta maldita merda... Cancerígeno? Qualquer merda neste mundo idiota é cancerígeno... Ou acha que protetor solar é firula do século 20. Antigamente não usavam e não tinha tanto essa história de câncer de pele... Buraco de ozônio...
No final das contas cheguei a conclusão de que eu nunca tinha visto um cowboy tossindo naquelas maravilhosas propagandas de cigarro...
Cowboy porra nenhuma... Eles não conseguiríam fazer 1/3 do que faço. Pra começar, eles nem tinham internet...
Giovanni Sacco {giovanni@atinet.com.br}
It's to relieve stress, I convinced myself between the coughing and hacking. Stress reduction and a heart attack, all in one handy little stick. I smoked on and off for about 9 years after that initial butt, and I never enjoyed a single drag.
I was an odd smoker. I never smoked in my own apartment, or any one elses for that matter. I wouldn't even smoke with my smoking co-workers on coffee breaks. I only chain-smoked in my car, usually on my way to and from work. If there was someone in the car with me, I wouldn't smoke. I was truly in the closet about being a smoker.
No one knows...
Yeah, right. Let's see people can only smell that shit in my car, and on my clothes and hair (how disgusting is that), and God forbid I try to kiss a non-smoker. See me try to hide my smoking from my family at the age of 27. Why? For years, I was little miss anti-cigarette. What a hypocrite I became...
Leslie {MaxGirl@runawaytrain.org}
Llama {krolo@ibm.net}
Years later, I tried smoking one of his Winston 100's. I remember standing in front of the bathroom mirror, intently watching the whole process. It tasted disgusting.
At nineteen I moved in with my first boyfriend. He smoked. He smoked in our home. He smoked in my car. He smoked on his dates with other women. One night he didn't come home. I smoked his last pack of Benson & Hedges Menthols. I didn't inhale. It tasted disgusting.
At twenty I bought my first pack of cigarettes. I inhaled the first puff. Buzz. Next cigarette Buzz. Next cigarette. Buzz. The buzzes stopped at ciagarette #10. I suspected #11 was a dud, but #12 proved that all good things come to an end.
At twenty four I can smoke a pack a day of Malboro Lights. I smoke in my car. I smoke at work and before the new California law, I smoked in bars. And it still tastes disgusting.
"smoke?"
the object of all my adolecent fantasies was holding out a pack of camel lights. she had noticed me! she wanted me!
"sure"
i accepted. a long swig of one of my first beers.
she lit.
i pulled.
she smiled.
i suavely proceeded to cough my innards out.
she moved on.
11 years later i smoke around a pack and a half a day.
ad oh yes, i discovered pot four years ago.
*sigh*
but that's another story altogether.
shomu {shomuj@hotmail.com}
When I say my best friend, I don't mean in the way most people mean. We spent every hour together possible and had a relationship that was very hard for those around us to understand. No, we weren't lovers or anything quite that interesting, there was just a depth to our relationship that I fear I will never find again.
On this particular day, we had tickets to a concert with a third friend of ours and had planned a "girl's night out" scenario for the evening. At the last minute, Rachelle phoned me and asked if Jim could come. She knew this made me terribly uncomfortable, and she also knew I couldn't say no out of a determined effort to be polite to him. See, Rachelle never even knew Jim had pursued me. But Jim held a grudge against me for brushing him off. We couldn't be in a room together without him picking some inane argument with me, in which I could never be right, since his drunken intellect never even heard what I said, only planned his next attack.
Needless to say, dinner did not go well.
Later that night, after I had driven off in a fit of anger, leaving Rachelle and Jim to walk home from the restaurant, I was sitting in a bar. I had cried all the way home, and was now determined to enjoy myself immensely. Most of my friends smoked, including the two that I was with at this moment, and I decided I wanted a cigarette.
"Give me one," I demanded of Greg while pointing at his pack of Marlboro Lights.
"You don't smoke," was his eloquent reply.
"I'm starting right now."
Knowing better than to argue with me, especially in the state I was in, he handed me one. I lived with smokers my entire life and was very used to smoke, so lighting up produced no immediate coughing, but I did manage to catch that first cigarette "buzz". It felt good. It made me feel somehow more powerful to be holding that little rolled up piece of paper with the lit end between my fingers. There was something oddly sexy about it almost.
We bar hopped all night, (something I had never done before and have yet to ever do again), and I smoked an entire pack of cigarettes before the evening was through.
The next morning, I coughed like I have never coughed before. I got dressed and went to the Texaco up the street and bought a new pack.
I couldn't smoke at home for about a year, only because I was embarrassed to admit to my mother, to whom I had preached for years the evils of smoking, that I had begun that most horrible of habits.
At my 21st birthday party, an event that garnered a 200 person crowd and had four local bands playing at, my mother for the first time saw me with a cigarette in my fingers. Of course, in the other hand was a beer, so she just laughed.
I was an adult now.
nitesite {nitesite@sunletter.com}
However, once in awhile, under the weight of all that pressure, I would crack.
My first attempt to smoke a cigarette was at about age 11. I was at a friend’s house and found a rather healthy butt in the ashtray. “Let’s smoke it!” I said. My friends were truly shocked. They also declined. I tried... however, the one puff I may have managed was not truly memorable.
Later, at 15, I had a brief stint of smoking after my first real boyfriend dumped me. I quickly befriended his last ex, Brandi (just before me), and together we would smoke, dump on him, and cry. I shaved the sides of my head. I dyed a part of it pink. I began smoking in my car. I began cruising “The Ave” (Nevada Avenue in Colorado Springs) all by myself while smoking. They tasted disgusting, and I never inhaled. I quit after my parents discovered a half-used pack in my backpack. I blamed it on Brandi, of course, saying they were hers.
Finally, at 20, I met Kristen at college. She was two years older than me, smoked pot like a fiend, and was perhaps the coolest person I had ever met in my life. I idolized every thing she did, memorized every word she said, and was absolutely fascinated by her altogether. She also chain-smoked. We became soul sisters.
I inhaled a cigarette for the first time after knowing Kristen for about 2 months. I was over at her apartment (her ex-boyfriend’s actually, but let’s not make this any more complicated) and had been watching the way Kristen smoked in the car. She would take a puff, inhale deeply through her teeth, hold it a second, then let it out, usually while talking or laughing. I inhaled. Then I sucked in a big breath of air behind it. Then I fell over.
I quit recently—well, quit during the week, limiting myself to social functions only—and did quite well. Didn’t crave them, just let them drop out of my day-to-day life. I also discovered how much more boring I was than during the days of smoking pot with Kristen. I didn’t love life anymore. I had stopped rebelling.
Two weeks ago, I took up guitar. Last week I began chain smoking again. Last night I finished writing my second song. I don’t feel so boring anymore. I think I’m beginning to see the light once again, and the point to it all.
Altogether, not a bad trade off, I think.
Laura {AllysonWonderland@yahoo.com}
That evening i was going over to a friend's who had just discovered cannabis.
and was very keen to share.
I didn't want to be the only one coughing and spluttering over the communal spliff, so i thought i needed some kind of inhalation experience.
i went down to a non-local newsagents -i guess i felt guilt, i didnt think i would ever smoke- and went with my packet of 10 to a nearby park.
Then i walked around the field, and puffed through two light-tars. I didn't particularly enjoy it, but it certainly wasn't as abhorrent as i guess i had assumed.
then it started to rain, so i dumped the rest of the pack, chomped my way through a pack of mints, and headed home.
that evening at the friends, i was as cool as someone extremely selfconcious of what i saw as adolescent experimentation with illegal substances can be.
I have never smoked straight tobacco since, not particularly out of a moral preference, or even a deference to my future health. its just that i might as well have been smoking dollar bills...
The very first time was my fault. He was younger than me, and at 17 I looked old enough to make the purchase. He already smoked, and begged me to buy him a pack. I would have done anything for him, but I couldn't let him know that. I made him beg, and finally he enticed me with, "I'll share the pack with you."
I had smoked only a few times before, and was fairly ambiguous on the whole issue. But, he, the love of my life, was willing to share with me. I knew then that I would do it, and five minutes later pretended reluctantly to agree.
We drove to one of the most run-down establishments known-to-man, hoping to score. A little nervous about the prospect of getting asked for my ID, my hands were shaking slightly as I picked up the hard pack of Marlboro mediums.
I was allowed to make the purchase and the high I felt was excelerated by my first puff of the cig. It smelled like him. I was hooked.
It took me a view weeks, but I worked smoking into my schedule. He never did love me as much as I loved him, but we shared a passion for cigarettes. To this day, as our lives seperate, I find myself thinking of him when I light up. I will never quit, as long as we are friends. It's our one last connection. I suppose it's sort of a replacement for his love.
Stephanie
Nonetheless, we put up a decent front and took our friend to Chicago. After an afternoon of shopping and drinking, we all got stoned in the car, and my buddy expressed a desire for clove cigarettes.
We knew of a toboccanist, so we stopped, and he got into my car, while my wife went with another friend to a Persian diner. On the way, I had my first clove. Mixed with the dope, it twisted me, I uh, I liked it.
And so I bought my own pack. And then another, Soon, I researchd cloves and found a few cases where they killed a few kids. Holy shit! I'd better switch to plain tobacco. And so now I'm on a pack a day. Still single. But no cloves, dammitt!
Diggs {z913597@oats.farm.niu.edu}
annie {adarko@hotmail.com}
That carton lasted about a year. Stale, to be
sure, but back then I didn't know they weren't
supposed to taste awful.
(sigh)
I'm on DuMaurier these days. I still don't smoke
that much; maybe a pack every two weeks.
However, I don't think I could give it up. Not
since I noticed how much easier it is to strike
up a conversation with a stranger when you have
a pack and matches on you.
lester bergquist {ralphlb@portal.connect.ab.ca}
hmmm, well.
It was summer and I was 15 or something.
I thought I love a girl I just met in a park.
That girl gave me my first french kiss.
Although she thought that I weren't anymore a virgin
she were a smoker.
the french kiss tasted like old ash.
she offered me a cigarette.
I couldn't deny it.
after I smoked my first cigarette the second french kiss didn't taste that bad anymore.
I never wanted to start smoking,
but somehow all my future girlfriends were smokers
I have learned...
now i don't smoke because of the french kiss to taste better....
i offer them to chew a gum.
david klein
david {david.klein@bas-europe.com}
I was visiting some friends. We had finished dinner. I was sitting with Luigi in the living room listening to jazz records. There were noises in the kitchen.
I got up to see what was going on.
Someone asked if I wanted to smoke a joint. I'd had a lot of experiences in Italy, but smoking a joint was not one of them. Why not?
Luigi rolled a filter. Then cracked open a cigarette. Hash and tobacco. That's something I'd never tried.
What a strange smoke. It made me dizzy. It made me cough. It made we want another.
Ten years later, I still enjoy the tobacco.
Craig Hockenberry {craigh@ix.netcom.com}
I started when I was 15. I was just coasting through the beggining of my first major depression. A that point, I thought I could use some relief from my mental pains. I first turned to alcohol, but that didn't help me too much. Then at a party, me and some friends went out. We got a little crazy and got ourself a joint. We sat down, in a park, lit it and smoked it. From that day on, I have been addicted to smoking. I have now managed to quit smoking, but there is still this void in me. I still have those times when I think: "I could really use a cigarette right now", and I know I will always love the feeling of nicotine flowing through your veigns.
Michael {mtrimpe@dse.nl}
Cesar Gonzalez {cesarxg@earthlink.net}
its all worthless shit anyway.
i really love smoking though,i'm not suer what it is but there is just something about smoking a cig.another interesting thing is that i hate smoking if i'v been smoking pot
sheahan {memnoch667@hotmail.com}
smoker in non-smoker's body
At the end of the two weeks, all the staffers ended up at the arts and crafts directors house for a party. His parents were out of town and the place seemed like disneyland. Booze, beer, and alot of girls, who somehow thought we were cool. I decided that since this was my first "rager" that I would try everything, beer, then booze; pot then....cigs. The beer and booze were alright, giving me my first buzz, which at 14, felt incredible and frightening at the same time. The pot didn't really do anything for me, except accelerate the buzz, so I decided to move on to what I had always considered to be the playthings of the 'bad kids', cigarettes.
My best friend was already passed out, and I knew that he had stolen some of his dads Merit Lights, so I decided to raid his pockets and smoke. After finding the crumple pack in his back pocket, I pulled out a wrinkled, bent cigarette, and lit it with a match from my official Boy Scout matchbox.
I've now smoked on and off for twelve years...
Tray {thoma011@mailhost1.csusm.edu}
They both smoked. It didn't take long before I did, too.
I enjoyed it because it made me feel so cosmopolitan. I also remember trying cloves and beedies and feeling a bit of a head rush...since I was already an on-and-off pot smoker by that time, seeking a buzz was part of the motivation, definitely.
The first coffin nail that I really inhaled was smoked - appropriately enough - at a cemetary: the Montmartre Cemetary in Paris. I had my walkman headphones strapped on with The Wall by Pink Floyd playing, and I laid back in the tall weeds taking slow drags, trying to pretend it was a joint. I was thinking about my boyfriend back home and how much I missed him and how I couldn't wait for that crazy trip to be over so that I could go home, and eat real food again, smoke bong hits and have sex.
When I did get home, as I predicted, I continued to smoke cigarettes: my mom was chagrined, but since she smoked herself, there just wasn't much she could do. She even bought my cigarettes for me, after the obligatory lectures. Since I fancied myself a second generation hippie in the early '80s, I actually smoked Eves, because of those little psychedelic looking, Peter Max-ish style designs right above the filters. But it didn't take me too long to graduate to Camels, once I developed the inevitable nicotine habit.
David M.Dureault {ddureaul@direct.ca}
I had about half a pack of generic (and I mean GENERIC - there was no brand name on these except for R.J. Reynolds in small print on the side) menthols that I had gotten from a friend. So, I hopped into the car - well, kind of half got in (I sat on the driver's seat with the door open and my legs hanging out) - and decided it was time. I pulled out my lighter, and voila! Not lit. This was because there was a slight breeze that was blowing out my light. So, into the car I went, this time completely. This time, I got it lit, pulling on the cigarette slightly in the process.
I blew out this first puff without inhaling it. But after that, the fun began. I decided to take it slowly, so as not to start coughing madly like so many do after their first inhale. So, I took a small puff, and inhaled it. I then quickly exhaled it. Hey, this isn't too bad, I thought, after that small puff. So I took a slightly bigger puff, and inhaled it. I held this one in for a few seconds before exhaling.
Then, it hit me.
I was getting one of THE biggest buzzes that I had ever gotten before in my life. Forget the buzz you get after hanging upside down for an extended period of time. Forget the buzz you get after holding your breath. This was a buzz not to be forgotten. I got really light-headed, but it was fun. However, I did have to sit down, or I probably would have fallen down, because my balance was a little funny for a while because of the buzz.
But who cared about being a little dizzy? I was smoking! And I kind of liked it. I didn't cough, and it caused very few side effects other than the buzz, and these all went away in about ten minutes (the buzz went away in about three).
Although I enjoyed the cigarette, having smoked about three quarters of it, I don't think I'm going to be picking up the habit any time soon, although I would like to experiment with it again. I guess I just enjoy breathing too much to pick it up as a real habit.
Shadoe Sartoph
yup. like every so often, one of them would try to get me to have a cigarette and they always looked at me oddly when I stubbornly refused to aquiesce. now they all blow all of their loots on cigs and can't jog one block without pausing for either another butt or to catch their breath.
(but I do like crack)
When I was 21 I had a pretty serious drug problem and was doing quite a bit of methempathimine and heroin. My boyfriend and I had gone through the Haight Ashbury "Keep on Trucking" detox clinic, which consisted of us coming into the City for sleeping pills to get through withdrawals, going back to our apartment in Oakland and lying around smoking pot, drinking, sleeping it off and freaking out. After about a week of being "dope free" we decided to get high and celebrate. I remember feeling so disgusted with myself, how much lower can I go......I know I'LL START SMOKING. Shortly thereafter I went into rehab where everyone smokes constantly. The most entertaining thing that the shattered newly clean are capable of doing during freetime seems to be rolling cigarettes, so I got really into it. I smoked a pack a day for more than 2 years.
Caroline Murphy {cmurphy@itsa.ucsf.edu}
I kissed my first smoker when I was 16. She wasn’t a heavy smoker, but I still remember how it tasted. It wasn’t bad. In fact, I enjoyed it. When she offered me a cigarette, I almost took it and to this day, I regret turning her down, but I couldn’t block the image of my mother’s face shaking her finger at me.
I went to college after high school. Lots of girls smoked and I dated some of them. College girls were more responsible than high school girls and none of them offered me cigarettes. None of my friends smoked so I never took it upon my self to try it.
When I was 21, I met the woman whom I would eventually marry. She was my computer science teacher. She was 44, beautiful, a wonderful person and a heavy smoker. After graduation, we flew to Las Vegas and got married. I called my parents and told them the day before we flew back and they met us at the airport. I was surprised at how well my mother took the news.
My wife and I have been married for two years. I lover her dearly, but there are times I feel like I’ve married my mom. They are so much a like, especially when it comes to smoking. They both say they hate but I know they both love it and now I know why.
I smoked my first cigarette while we were on our honeymoon. I asked her for one and she gave it to me. She knew it was my first and she told me it would be my last. The smoke hurt my lungs and it tasted nothing like I had imagined, but I loved the way I thought I must have looked. I felt like an adult smoking with my wife. Of course, even if it tasted good, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it because my wife gave me a lecture about how awful it was the entire time I smoked it. I didn’t smoke again until three weeks after we got home.
Sneaking cigarettes behind my wife’s back became a passion with me. She didn’t catch me until almost six months ago. By that time I was hooked, but I told her I wasn’t. She was very angry. She even told my mom. They lectured me together.
My wife has not caught me since but I’m still smoking. I know I should quit or stand up for my self, but some reason, the hiding and sneaking are exciting.
Derrick
Derrick {dsr42163@aol.com}
Smoking has always been a lonely thing for me, something to do while drinking coffee and writing, to do while walking around a city alone, to keep myself company. I think of them when I am alone and when I need to talk and there is no one there, I smoke.
I have been smoking for so long and haven't quit once. I worked in a tobacco shop for nearly two years selling cigars and cigarettes to older men and strange women. I liked that part of my life a great deal. I still think on it fondly as a time when smoking was no longer a thing to do alone.
Now I am the lone smoker again. Going outside in the cold to shiver as I inhale the thin trails of silence and share with my friend, a Sherman MCD, all the things I dare not speak. The lonliness always goes away for a little time, while I send out my smoke signals, hoping someone will understand.
I am 23 and I don't think I will quit for a long while yet. Some of the most revealing times in my life were while I stood looking out a window, reading some new book, fighting the futile games of love; all with the kiss of a cigarette lover tickling my nose, my ears and my throat.
One simple caress of death.
I had read the script before, so I knew he would want me to smoke. I wasn't big on the idea: I don't care for smoking because the smoke bothers me. I don't like the idea of cancer. But I always thought it can look kinda cool.
The big problem was, I've got a funny personality: anything I do a few times I'll try to do every time. Come home one day and have a slice of cheese? Do it every day. Check my mail 9 minutes past the hour? Do it every hour. Any habit I pick up is a royal pain for me to break. But I did it anyways because he's a good friend and I didn't want to make him write it out.
I smoked two, without pulling smoke into my lungs. I got a buzz off it. I liked it. Dammit.
All I did was have it in my hand or let out a little puff while walking by. I enjoyed it.
I tried to think of a way to justify having more. It didn't help that another friend who saw the movie said I looked good smoking. It bothered me for a week or two.
Then I got over it, I walked away.
And I'm not getting near another.
tom {mobygrape@vt.edu}
Back to me, I was a "musician"...that's all I ever wanted to be. I played the bassoon, I couldn't afford to lose the lung capacity to smoking, so I never even tried it. Then, right before I left for college, sitting on the front porch of a frat house with some of the guys I worked with, I decided, "What the hey?", and took one of the offered cigarettes...
I don't remember actually inhaling. I think I just sort of held the smoke in my mouth, and blew it out shortly afterward. I hated the taste...I didn't have another cigarette for three years.
One night, while surfing the web and chatting with some friends in a haven, someone started rhapsodizing about cigarettes, and I got this odd compulsion that steered me to the convenience store in the neighboring dorm's lobby, and I bought my first pack. It took a week before I actually inhaled. It was all downhill from there...
I've had an on again, off again relationship with cigarettes ever since. I go through phases of smoking almost a pack a day, to going several weeks without so much as a puff. Although, i have noticed that the more time I spend at my computer late at night, the more I smoke...
I went back to college at age 21 and became a social-closet smoker. No one knew that I smoked. Being a Sinatra fan I have always associated cool with smoking.
One night I was trying my first martini. It made me so sick that I wanted it out instantly. One really long drag on a lucky and my wish came true.
I met my wife and at the time I was still a closet smoker, but I knew she was a smoker so I brought a box of cloves with me on our date to impress her. 4 years later I was a smoker and not so in-the-closet. I would be embarassed to admit to Frank that my brand o'choice were Virginia Slims-I've come a long way baby...
With other male smokers I always smoke luckies or camels. Now I'm quittin' 36 hours and going strong. I just won't be able to watch Sinatra movies for awhile...
Bob {bobsinatra@hotmail.com}
Steven L
During that period, an uncle stayed with us for one summer while he was home from college. I started stealing his Kool menthols one and two at a time. I would go out in the cornfield behind the house and smoke them. The rush was fun, incredible, dizzying and giddy.
About that same time, I discovered orgasms, and found that the excitement of being a "bad boy" when I smoked gave me an erection. I began a more elaborate ritual of removing all my clothing, running naked through the cornfield and jerking off while I sucked on one of those Kools. It took me 20 years to finally stop smoking. Throughout my twenties and into my thirties I continued to couple the nicotine rush with masturbation.
I learned to quit both, eventually, but it was hell, and I still have moments when a cigarette sounds really yummy, especially when I see a luscious model with my favorite body type. I stay away from newsstands mostly, they're dangerous for me.
mark
I say again that I am not some kind of anti-smoking reactionary...I am a musician...but I am also a person who likes the idea that other people look out for me as I look out for them, and I don't appreciate my air being spoiled when I am outside. And I don't like the fact that the perpetrator is generally a teenaged girl....and she is just as regularly pregnant. Which is another of my gripes, but I won't go on now, cos you don't care....
andrew {roo2_1998@hotmail.com}
I smoked on and off for the next four years, and when my term of enlistment was up and I left the Air Force, I quit smoking.
Except when I drink, of course.
Paul {tintin2@mindspring.com}
Seems strange to start there. I was not allowed to get out of bed...none of us were, except the smokers. Most of them were older ladies, about my mother's age.
One day they stopped at my door, and asked the nurse to let me come and smoke. On the way to the smoking room, I told them I didn't smoke and they laughed. "It is just an excuse to get up and walk around sweetie."
Twice a day they came to get me. Some of them left after a while, and a few died, but still someone came by every day to bully a nurse into letting me go with them.
When I finally left, I was hooked.
Got thru SPM with flying colors.
Terence
Loved the warm feeling of calm that overcame me with each slow inhale. Loved the gorgeously provocative way I looked gazing into a mirror with a Marlboro nestled between two fingers. As far as I was concerned the equation was [smoking=cool] therefore [smoking+me=now I'm cool]. A straight-A student and much maligned "teacher's pet" type, I latched onto my new status as smoker extraordinaire with a vengeance. No matter what--I would be cool. I would ditch classes, hang out at the local pool hall listening to "Tutti Frutti." I would lean over the pool table, a cigarette dangling from my mouth, catch glimpses of myself in the Budweiser mirror over the bar. Damn it, if smoking could give me a bad girl image I would be coolest of the cool. 10 years and a two-and-a-half pack a day habit later I was ready to quit. Was it because I disliked smoking? No. Was it that I never attained the height of coolness I'd expected? Naw--after high school being perceived as cool tends to lose some of its vast appeal. I wanted to quit because I began to worry about what it was doing to me. Did I quit overnight? Not hardly. Actually, it took three times of quitting--once for a couple of years, then again for another year, and finally...well, let's just say it's been a good 10 years since I've had a drag off a cigarette. When I look back on it I wonder why I ever started such a disgusting (not to mention smelly) habit. My friends who started with me still smoke--both look years older than they should--and they'll possibly smoke themselves into an early grave. It's sad when a kid will do anything to be a part of the "cool group." Not that it ever actually bought us our ticket to cool-city. You'd think that after all the soul wrenching pain (yes, withdrawal from nicotine is one tough monster) and will power it took to avoid smoking I'd be completely free of the urge by now. But ya know--it never ceases to amaze me that to this day I can't go into a bar and order a drink without fighting a deep hankering for a pack of Marlboro Reds.
With access and nothing else to do, I would smoke with friends after school. I stopped for a while and never really started strong until this year(1998). I still don't smoke heavy maybe a pack in 1-2 weeks.
I just recently tried my first clove and It was sweeter than anything I Had tried in the past, but I only have those to treat myself, I stick to Marlboro Reds the rest of the time.
sarah {reflexive@nerdcore.org}
The long golden box held more than cigarettes for me , it held mystery , and later a way of life.
I ran around the back of the shop with my box of matches "cara" they were called. I struck the match and inhaled, i coughed, it did not stop me for i proceeded and coughed and coughed untill my lungs were raw. Now as i look up at the shelf, 8 years on , im in front of this machine watching the smoke rise in to the soft light i remember the day i through my life away.
niknak
But then I thought I might be missing something associated with drugs in college. The only time nicotine entered my lungs was when someone would cut hashish with tobacco to make it last longer -- I felt a headrush which wore off after a couple of seconds. Pot made me feel stupid and out of it. Drinking was fun, but very confusing.
These days the only drug that has a hold on me is caffeine. And I can give up any time I want.
Will Sargent {wsargent@best.com}
Thus began a love affair that lasted nearly 35 years.
Thirty five years of Kools,the initial sneaking of a smoke when the occasion arose progressed to a 3 pack a day habit. Chain-smokersRUs! From waking with the ability to smell breakfast cooking, to eventually ending up thinking Hacking & Coughing were a normal part of the morning.
From buying them from a machine at a gas station during the 70's for 35¢,to paying $3.25 a pack in bars. "Made enough money to buy Miami,but I pissed it all away"-Jimmy Buffett. Sorry Jimmy, I set fire to mine. Finally decided to quit, wasn't easy but have managed so far. The first 2 weeks are the worst.
The only girl in a flight of 20 guys, I had to prove my worth to stand among them as an equal.
So after a night of drunken hazing, I was handed a smoke, and told that if I could smoke the whole thing without coughing once, I was in (Hell, I'd already passed the 20 beers and still standing test, so why not?). I smoked it, no coughing. I quit the Army 2 years later with my 10 dollar a day habit still in tow. I tell myself every New Year's Eve that this is the year I will finally quit...
Liz Patterson {athena@cnss.ca}
For the next 3 years I would "puff" on a cigarette every so often, most often dousing myself with deodorant and lysol afterwards to avoid being caught. It wasn't until I was 15 that I learned to inhale a cigarette properly. Ironicaly, it was the same guy who had given me my first cigarette at the boy scout meeting who, 3 years later taught me how to inhale. Neither of us were boy scouts any longer. I spent the night at his house and his mom purchased me and him each a pack of Newport Lights. We were sitting on the couch watching a movie and I lit one up. He said "you aren't inhaling". I protested that I most certainly was. He told me to take a breath while the smoke was in my mouth. I did. I coughed,hacked,and my eyes turned red. I got a huge buzz. I stayed up all night and "practiced" inhaling. The next morning, I felt really sick.
It didn't take long for me to become an all-out smoker. Especialy once I got my driver's license. I could get in my old beat up 81 Ford Fairmont and drive far away from home and smoke a lesiure without being caught. I have smoked ever since.
A romantic ending of riding off in to a cancerous sunset, in a car that gave you about as much carbon-monoxide as the cigarettes smoked within it.
Today as I write this,it is the first day that I haven't smoked a cigarette since what seems like forever. I would be smoking like a chimney if I could. The only reason I can't is because I have the flu, and I'm so damn sick that I can hardly move. I'm only 16, however tomorrow I'll be 17. Maybe this is just the right time to quit. Besides, exactly one year from tomorow, I'll be old enough to legaly smoke. I won't be breaking any laws. That would just take all the fun out of it, a habit that I started because "they didn't want me to".
Will {will236@webtv.net}
The next day was my turn. I began to feel terribly guilty. I announced I was taking the dog for a walk, and threw out the cigarettes...two or three in each garbage can all up the back alley two streets over. I told Sharon I'd had a "nicotene fit" and smoked them all, and paid her out.
I began smoking in earnest when I was 16, quit for each pregnancy and just quit again three weeks ago.
Janice
Dave {discord@alloymail.com}
My mother is also the one who gave me my first cigarette. I don't remember how old I was, but it was young, ten maybe. It was menthol.
Then came others: sneaking from a party at the age of 14 with a friend and the DJ (an older guy - 16) for a smoke, "borrowing" cigarettes from a friend's mom and so on.
When I was sixteen, I think, I bought my first pack of cigarettes; it was a pack of Camels.
I remember this pack very well. It took me a month or even more to smoke the twenty cigarettes. I used to smoke them when no one was home, sitting (or standing) in front of a mirror.
My head was spinning; I even once lost grip and fell. But I felt so cool looking at the mirror, making faces like I was Humphrey Bogart. I was happy.
I was happy because I had something in common with my mother.
Farsh {farsh@geocities.com}
EMR
C Mawson {cmawson@hotmail.com}
Kay M.
Despite my newfound form poison cosumption though, it wasn't until i was thirteen that i actually began smoking habitually. i hadn't even smoked for a year i think, but then one day, one of my new neighbors recommended that i start, and i, being the moron that i tended to be, was a willing recipient of idiotic suggestions. i don't really regret it though. Sure, it's going to kill me, slowly and painfully, causing me to wither out in a gruelingly long and drawn out process of progressive invalidity -coughing, hacking, gagging, wheezing, or in other words, living death, but i simply enjoy smoking.
ÐÆMÖÑŠÍÄX {m0lten_m0llusk@hotmail.com}
Carl Pone
kristen mason {martiny@oblivion.net}
matthew
my senior year of high school, my friend tara asked me to skip out early from christian service and have a smoke with her. i agreed. i don't know why. i convinced her that we didn't have enough time to have one each so we shared. at least i didn't look like a total fool... my sister had taught me well... but i did cough and get dizzy and i hated it still...
then my freshman year in college, my roommate came home with a pack. she and i limited ourselves to one pack during exams each semester - neither of us inhaled, but we kept doing it...
i was still a non smoker though...
my sophmore year in college, i dated a frat boy, he was always smoking and so i would smoke one to his five... it made me dizzy and sick still, but i kept doing it. i never bought my own or anything, but if other people were smoking, i wanted one.
i still considered myself a non smoker.
that summer i took to smoking with the other people at the camp i work at. i was on the two cigarrettes a day plan. i left considering myself a light smoker.
that winter i went back to school and increased the amount i smoked dramatically...
that year on my housing form i checked the box that said "are you a smoker?"
that's when i think i officially became a "smoker".
mary ann
Carl Gilbertsen {strangebrew@excite.com}
Let me say up front that I knew damn well how bad cigaretts are for you when I started. I had no friends who smoked, I didn't think it was "cool", I wasn't victimized by some clever marketing campaign or seduced by some girl who wanted me to smoke with her. I was just bored, and figured cigs would help me pass the time.
I was working the night shift at a gas station, 10pm - 6am, alone. We got maybe 4-5 customers a night, and almost all of them self-service, so I had nothing to do but clean up the place (~1 hour), inventory (~30 minutes), and restock (~30 minutes). Basically, I had six hours of sitting around, and getting paid at bonus rates for it. In most ways, it was heaven, except that I was bored.
I started smoking to pass the time. At first I smoked Camels, but I moved to Newport Lights pretty soon, 'cause I liked Menthol better. Never really had a problem with coughing or anything, and got a nice headrush.
I'm a closet smoker. I've smoked for 5 years, never around anyone I know, never while I'm at home, never when I'm near my parents, never with my friends, never near my girlfriend. I wear gloves when I smoke, so that my fingers don't smell or get discolored. I wear a jacket when I smoke, so that mu clothes don't stink. In a bit of hiding in plain sight, I stop at a pub for a pint or two every day on the way home from work. Everyone knows this, and it easily explains why my clothes and hair smell like cigarettes when I get home. I drink coffee constantly, and blame any tooth discoloration on that. Really, it's pretty sick the lengths that I go to, but the difficulty of not getting caught has managed to keep me from ever getting above 1/2 pack per day, which I ought to consider a blessing.
I quit two weeks ago; cold turkey. It sucks. My throat hurts, I'm coughing up crap, my muscles ache. But you know what, the worst of the cravings have passed, and I feel like one bad-ass motherfucker for being able to kick this thing. I know millions of people have done it before me, so it can't really be that hard, but it feels hard. I decided I'm quit of them, and no drug is going to get the best of me.
Yeah, I'm talking trash to convince my self, and yeah, I still need to pump myself up every day to stay quit. Kinda funny, cigarettes are still serving me in a way. They are my enemy, and I will fight them, and I will win.
I'm not bored anymore.
Paul
Where I live, everyone does pot exept the real cool people and 2 year olds. I mean, some people write and draw out pipes and shit on their notebooks. God people, open your *#%@& eyes.
I'm not sayin' this cause I'm clean, I'm just trying to save the life of another child, or person, that starts smoking.
Amber {bluelilie14@yahoo.com}
So that first cigarette wasn't that bad. And the one after that was even better. Soon I was buying Camel's from the Citgo station on Amherst street feeling all bad ass and rebelious. Little did I know that I would be trying to quit off and on for the next four years. Little did I know that I would get a horrible cough, or that I would have to steal money from my mum's purse to get smokes.
Luckily now I happen to be seeing a fellow who hates cigarette smoke. That is the only way I can ever quit- for someone else's sake- never my own.
Allison {aoskar@zoo.uvm.edu}
christina {psycochick84@yahoo.com}
I am a dancer.
At seventeen it was time for a new word. A word for the no-longer child. A word for me weighing more than 100 pounds, and not being always on a diet, and not being always training and praticing and competing.
I am a smoker.
I discover my body in new ways. In ways not before practice mirrors in tights and long hair. I grow breasts. I smoke. I drink. I get high. I have sex. I cut my hair. I have friends. So many thing my body can do. So many things I was always too busy, too disciplined, too good to do before.
I am a smoker.
Skyler {skyler2@inetport.com}
Obviously, there was so much wierdness going on in my life at the time that it would be hard to pinpoint the particular instance of wierdness that got me to smoke.
I remember that a lot of the 'cooler', younger patients, the ones I identified with most, were smokers. I remember watching Vicky, who was seventeen, and a real 'alterna-chik', playing with her lighter at the dinner table, flicking it. Maybe she was doing one of those goofy lighter tricks. I don't remember. But I wanted to try. I remember everyone being extremely amused as they instructed me on how to 'flick a Bic.'
I don't remember the moment I actually started. I suppose I did it because I thought it would help mr to be thin, and because I knew it wold piss off some of the squares on the ward. Also, because I'd already spent some time in conquest of the perfect hand-to-mouth fixation.
I remember being taught to inhale. 'Watch,' she said, 'I suck the smoke into my mouth, and then. . .' POOF! "I really shouldn't be showing you this."
Wow, those first few nicotine highs were something, eh.
liZa {anotherliZa@yahoo.com}
Valerie {sprin2kles@aol.com}
Brad Busch {Brdsno18@aol.com}
-agentex
http://www.phonerangers.org/
http://www.freekevin.com/
agentex {agentex@hotbot.com}
Too bad it's so damn bad for the body, eh?
nicole {somazone@hotmail.com}
When I was 11, my mother wanted me to switch schools because "I wasn't getting challenged." I was stressed out, and always heard about people smoking to ease the stress. Later that night I snuck into the upstairs closet and proceeded to suck in the smoke and slowly blow it out, pure cool. The stress rose from me just as the smoke curled upwards to the ceilings and dwindled there, just as my stress did. When I left that room, my stress, however, fell right on top of my head. I guess I'm still stressed out.
Big A {swing3r@bitstream.net}
I don't remember starting smoking. I guess I was probably ... 14. I think I was 14, anyway. 15 years seems like a damn long time.
Anyway. I do remember my first few years. I was a shy kid, no real friends, bad self-esteem ... basically, I was a stereotype.
I was overweight and I was unattractive. I suddenly developed an eating disorder when I was 14, causing me to lose a lot of weight. To keep the weight off, as well as to give me something to do when I was lonely, I started smoking. Not a lot and not real often, but enough.
Enough to make me smoke for 5 years. I'm 19 now, and I've cut down a lot. For a while there, I was 16 years old and smoking two packs a day. Now, I only smoke occasionally.
Unfortunately, I still can't say that I quit, because I haven't.
I still like to smoke when I feel lonely.
Krista {pro_widow@hotmail.com}
-lucky
http://lsmft.com/lehi/tatoos/
lehi 'lucky' davis {lehi@lsmft.com}
I was about 12 when I smoked my first cigg.
I was about 13 when I learned how to inhale.
My friend's, Curtis, and Wesley taught me how.
I thought it was cool. It was somethin' to do.
Sittin' on the back porch when my mom was at work, smokin' a few cigg's. But then, it wasn't long before I started smokin' when my mom "WAS" home, cuz I was starting to be addicted.
"But hey, dosn't everyone smoke?! Nah, I'll quit sometime. I just do it for fun. It taste's good. My girlfreind smoke's!"
Yep, that's right! Those are pretty good excuse's to tell yourself. To talk yourself into the #1 habbit in USA.
Dont listen to me though. Its not like I dont know what it's all about. It's not like I smoke my self.
: put's out ciggerate :
Not like I die if I forget my cigg's at home either.
: light's another smoke :
Ya, I'm kinda broke right now. I dread what I'll go through without my ciggerate's.
So go ahead, smoke another.. Come one.. GO ahead, smoke it while your "NOT" addicted.
Just mabey your one of in million who actualy will quit. Probably not though.
Jeremy {trent98749@n-i-n.net}
I don't remember exactly when i started smoking, i do remember when i was about 9 sneeking a couple of times some pall mall red non-filtered from my dad while he slept. right from under his nose, cuz ya know the real addicted smokers keep there packs right by them, on the table in front of you so when you wake up you can have one first thing when you wake up. you know to start the day off right.
anyway me & a friend of mine would go sneek behind the church behind our houses & sit under the church busses where no one could see us. if i remember right we were arguing about lighting it because it was windy & all we had was maybe a 1/2 a pack of matches. when we finally got it lit it was like cool, this is so good. even though it pretty much tasted like shit. we didn't know how to enhale anyway.
later when a was 12-14 i would go w/ another friend of mine from time to time when he would usually steal a pack from his mom, he didn't care, niether did i as long as we didn't get in trouble & we would go to the park a few blocks away & hide in the woods & chain smoke the whole pack if we only had matches, sometimes the wind would blow the out & we needed a source of fire. if we had a lighter, we would just hang out there until they were gone.
he would never get in trouble, & if i would come home smelling like smoke well my dad smoked anyway. so the house usually smelled like it. if my mom would say anything about it, rarely, i would just say~ my friend's mom & others @ his house smoked alot, which they did.
& dad smokes "thats why i smell like smoke mom" my mother wouldn't give it second thought.
that was only periodically in those days.
from that time until i was about 14-15 we would steal them from the store or someones parents time to time, matches & lighters too.Nothing like fire & smoke to make you feel like a real adult huh?
I pretty much didn't do it as much when i was 14-15. but i remember when i was 16, in summer school, i started walking home w/ a girl that smoked all the time. she lived on the way home to my house. she would give me cigarettes & by then i already grasped the concept of inhaleing & that would be the point when i made it a habit to start finding ways to buy them more often. she & some other friends were also the one who would get me high, funny huh. i began to love pot when i was 16, although i tried it times before that.
I usually smoked when other people had weed though, lack of money kept me on cheaper highs like cigarette's & caffiene. When i was 17 after my parents got divorced, i continued living w/ my dad, in the same house i grew up in. i didn't care after that if my dad found out or not. he knew i did anyway. he was always gone too. i just always felt funny for a while about smoking in front of him, i didn't do it. i & would keep my ashtray in my desk drawer. I would tell my freinds when we would smoke in my room to have the same respect. after a while i didn't care, niether did he. we then smoked in comfort together, like father like son. funny, i used to find my older sister's cigs' & tell on them when i was a kid.& i had broncitus bad when i 2 yrs. old my mom told me one day when i became a bit older. prob. from second hand smoke is what i thought later after i started.
Now I have been a constant smoker for 7 yrs. & it makes me feel like shit sometimes. i havn't been able to quit for more than a day for 7 yrs. either. as a matter of fact, i haven't had one in about an hour & i'm fighting not to light one up, but i know i'm about to. i have 1/2 a pack left you know~" I wouldn't want to waste em', i'll quit when there gone" I have heard that so many times, quite a few times from me too. It sucks i'm 24 yrs. old & should be in the physical prime of my life. instead i wake up coughing so bad some mornings i can't quit for about 1/2 hour. or hacking up a litte lung butter. then i have to get out of bed & get something to drink. waste of good sleep time if you ask me. Oh ya & the other benifits like not being able to walk to far or up a large flight of steps w/ out getting winded. Oh ya, & my shitty stained teeth, smelling clothes, house, car. All the good looking girls I get a crush on that doesn't smoke &/ that doesn't date smokers or can't stand to be around it, thats always a treat to. Oh ya, & can't get my heart rate up or exercise to long w/ out feeling like my heart is pounding, really helps me keep on those extra 20lbs. I really need. Oh & the best of all is the feeling you get like i have now, because hold on~ Ahh, heaven. thats better, i was weak, i had to have one. when i don't have one for a while my lungs feel like, well its hard to describe unless you feel it yourself, like your lungs are trying to cough up all that shit, like theres a little gas floating around inside your lungs. Nicotene withdraw~ i cough when i don't have one for a while, then i light one up & it goes away. If thats being addicted to a drug, tell me what is?
Sorry this was so long, hope you read it though. maybe it will help someone think about trying to quit like i really want to & have for a long time, or those who are thinking about starting, belive me Don't Start!
It's not worth it. As a matter of fact it's like sucking on a Death Dick! You know how people say crack addicts(alot of them use a glass pipe) Suck on that glass dick.
Also think about this. The Tobacco Industy Makes billions of dollars per year in America alone off smokers & give's out Huge political contributions that is tax deductible, while your getting taxed out the ass buying cigarettes thats making the government Rich! Hmmmm, wow I sure don't know why smoking isn't regulated? Ya, Neither Is Alcohol for the same reasons. But alot those Rich Politicians who colabarate with "Palm Greasers" or Fund Providers that help persude or make these laws like there share of cigarettes, expensive Cigars, & alcohol just like the rest of us.Oh well, i'm babbling too much now. Peace.
Steve Ritter {thekokiri@webtv.net}
kenny {darylezero@hotmail.com}
I've smoked on and off since...Quite a bit in high school, not so much in college. I'm 27 now, and I and smoke Marlboro Ultra Lights, mostly out of boredom. I commute to work by bus, and I pass the time at the terminal by lighting up...usually only three or four cigarettes a week.
My experiences as a smoker are pretty scattershot. Sometimes I get a terrific buzz, other times I just get sick. I'm a nervous person, and the nicotine usually takes the edge out of my jitters.
My girlfriend is a health fanatic and deathly afraid of cancer, so I hide my smoking from her. Eventually I'll give it up, for her sake, if not for mine.
Maidrin Rua {maidrin_rua}
Well times had changed when I turned 14 I went to a pool hall all the time with all my friends. Well they all smoked and I though it was so cool. Well one day we were shooting pool and my friend Shawn gave me a Malboro Red. I smoked it because it was cool to shoot pool and smoke. So I would usualy bum smokes off of my friends but then I got tired of it. So i started smoking Newports cuz i enjoyed the Menthol taste. Well now im adicted at the age of 14 and have to get runners all the time. It is a very costly habit too, i never have money anymore. I smoke all the time now anything i can get, and i mean anything. I prefer Newports but if I bum them I'll smoke whatever. It is sad and I feel sorry for myself. Please take my advice and never smoke no matter how cool it looks. Thank You
Joe {hevymtl419@aol.com}
She was beautiful. A Eurasian goddess from Conneticut, who could care two flicks of her cig in regards to my special blend of Nerd and Drug Addict. Everyone she knew smoked. Her whole group of friends would sit in the quad and chain-smoke for days. Deep into the night I could hear her laughing outside, then KAF KAF, *pt-tooey*, then more laughter. I was in love.
Once we were talking--actually, she talked, I sweated--and I asked for one of her smokes. Camel Lights Hard Pack--little did I know I would be asking for that little box nine years later...and I never even got a kiss.
schlomo {johngaltsjournal@hotmail.com}
well. i took on the one-girl anti-smoking campaign for my soap operatic lifestyle, i was able to pride myself on being "straight-edge"..of course, that is for alcohol. but hey, what's the big deal about that when you're a quiet drunk. no fun in it, anyway...
so. i was the anti-smoker of the group, until that day. you all know it. that really bad day. or maybe it's a really bad week. when all you REALLY need is a damn godforsaken cigarette.
so here i am, a 15 year old, in the middle of a smoky pool hall. with a 17 year old chain smoker girl i knew and my 19 year old chimney of a best friend (the only one old enough to legally do so). deliciously scary, wow, i'm in a public place, smoking. and it didn't matter that i came home smelling like smoke. "i was at a pool hall", i'd say. believable. the scary tattooed pierced guy behind the register couldn't give a shit. the labor workers there with nothing else to do didn't even speak my language. who was going to care?
my hand shook a tad as i was handed a marlboro light, the brand of "weak ass" cigarettes that were oh-so-popular among underage smokers. it was lit for me, oh i felt babied.
the first attempt to smoke it was received with laughs. "you've got to inhale, dumbass!" .....okay. let's try this again. the second time
i sucked on the lightweight roll of paper and breathed in the grey twirling smoke, letting it destroy my supposedly "pure" lungs. hrm. interesting. i didn't like it, i didn't hate it. it wasn't pleasant, wasn't disgusting as i had imagined.
made me feel a little light-headed.. a bit dizzy, almost like i was buzzed. interesting. so i finished the one and that was all.
i'll occaisionally smoke one here or there, or take a drag if i'm out with people that are smoking. then there's the breaks at work with my fellow people in back hallway.
Joe {VvZiDvV@aol.com}
Jason {jch1785@cs.rit.edu}
and smoked it I can't exactly remember when that was he caught me so I quit for a long while i wasn't very poplular so i did not have any friends that smoked so one day when i was talking to someone in class he told me how easy it was to steal cigarettes so i started stealing I stole buy the carton I stole cigars and chew i experimented with them i can remember smoking three cigars in twenty minutes i got caught and i was put away for along while when i came out I stole a pack of cigarettes again because i was so desperete for smokes so i decided i didn't want to steal any more so i asked my grandma if she could buy them for me so i wouldent steal any more so today im almost six teen and im smoking marlboro and camel wides buy the carton i like to smoke but i would not encourage anybody to start smoking.
KRIS
Then, in 6th grade, some friends of mine gathered at my house and we were sharing our opinions about smoking. We came to a conclusion that smoking was decidedly disgusting but we wouldn't mind trying it just once.
"I hate guys who smoke"
"It's so passe"
"So disgusting, I hate the smell"
"We should try it sometime"
Since I was the only one who had a dad who smoked, they tried to get me to nick a ciggie from him.
I stuck to my ground and voiced my dissaproval. I was such an anal nerd.
I found out later that they tried it anyway. They found someone else with a smoking dad. A girl named Audrey. I felt somewhat dejected.
Then, in grade 8 we had to make some anti-smoking leaflets for English class. I overheard someone say that Audrey used to smoke to relieve stress but she quit. It was then that, while cutting out that picture of a pregnant woman holding a ciggie to stick on my leaflet, I decided to be less anal. I'd be a hippy sort of person.
Now, 2 years later I smoke. But I'm not a smoker. Hah, that's what I keep telling myself. "I'm not really addicted, I'm just being liberal and experimentative." Being a non smoker seemed sort of uptight.
Kate Moss smokes Marlboro Lights in between photo shoots.
Camel brand ciggies are so cool. I love those old ads. I had a thing for vintage stuff once. There was something very 'indie' and appealing about those war-time cigarrette ads showing those sexy women posing in front of fighter planes. I remember going into an antique store and buying cigarette cans. I then used them to store my pens and stuff later. I thought I was so cool.
Also, this guy I knew smoked and we used to say to each other: "Ugghhh.... I'm dying for a fag" and talk about how the best thing after a day of crap was to just lock yourself in the bathroom, sit on the sink and enjoy a fresh ciggie with no people around to bug you. It seemed so cool to be able to have a smoking buddy. I thought I was so cool.
And then I read this book about this clever girl my age who was really cynical. She took whatever she could get her hands on.... caffeine, prozac, cocaine, cigarrettes, sugar, Red Bull, weed to keep herself awake to study for tests. She made insomnia sound so cool. I thought I'd do the same.
I smoke 3-4 fags a day. Sometimes I buy my own. Most times I nick some off my dad. If I see an open ciggie pack lying around anywhere, I'll just help myself to a couple of em.
I introduced smoking to a friend of mine. I remember the frustration of teaching her how to inhale properly and then laughing when she coughed her lungs out. It made me feel sort of superior. I wasn't really addicted then (I think)
I think I'm addicted to niccotine now. I'm not sure how the transition from experimenting to addicted happened. But I'm definately going to quit someday. I'll just think of it as a journey of self discovery.
Beth {orbitgal@chickmail.com}
So, there we were, me, Penny, and Aunt Lorraina, all sitting there in the front room of Aunt Lorraina's half a double. Lorraina is babbling on about how much Penny and I have in common, and I'm twitching at the thought of having to be alone with her, which I figure is coming at any moment, and it did. Off goes Lorraina.
Penny's asking questions, I'm mumbling answers, I want out of this deal big time. Penny leans over the coffee table, opens the cigarette box sitting there, plucks out a cigarette and fires up. What in hell is this? She's eleven, she smokes, and looks like she doesn't much care who sees her doing so. This singular act of boldness is like nothing I've ever seen. I've yet to find the guts to even try smoking, and she sits there like it's a prefectly normal thing for one of us kids to do.
Exhaling what I remember as one huge drag, Penny tells me not to sweat, not to get uptight, Aunt Lorraina is cool with her smoking, she knows, lets her, and it's not a problem at all. Want one, she says?
I light, I gag, I sputter, I'm certain all hell is going to break loose if Auntie does a walk through and sees us smoking. Here she comes, cokes and snacks on a try, never even acknowledges that two eleven year old kids are parked in her living room smoking her Winston Kings.
Never saw Penny again, and only saw Aunt Lorraina a time or two in the neighborhood, but shortly after my first, I went out and did it again and again, until I got it right.
Just DS {flyboy803@yahoo.com}
ester {ester89506@yahoo.com}
Now I'm 37. I still have never smoked a cigarette I haven't enjoyed. I smoke more than two packs a day, and I've totally surrendered to the addiction. It's part of what makes me who I am. I don't even try to limit my cigarette consumption anymore. With every cigarette I'm still trying to recreate the experience of that first cigarette, I accept that I'm a lifetime smoker, and I expect I'll be doing this for the rest of my life. It was my destiny to smoke, and I'm just living my life as it is supposed to be lived out.
Michael
I didn’t smoke again until I was 14. This time it was with my best friend Alexandra. Her older sister drove us to the YMCA parking lot. It was Marlboro Reds again. And I inhaled. And then I fell out of the car coughing my lungs up as they laughed mockingly, only to follow suit a few minutes later. Smoking was not a pleasant experience, but somehow it was inexorably intertwined with the slightly dangerous, very cool kids, and this was a compelling enough reason for someone who always felt two steps behind to pick up the habit, however awkwardly.
My first pack was also with Alexandra. We gathered up our change and headed down to the local Friendly’s, where they had a cigarette machine out by the pay phone. We dutifully (and swiftly, as one of the waitresses was getting increasingly suspicious) poured in bucketfuls of change and pulled the lever for (what else?) Marlboro Reds. The lever got stuck—somehow we just didn’t pull hard enough. Panicking, we tried banging the machine. The waitress, now sure that we were doing something wrong, came rushing in. Alexandra backed up against the machine, the stuck lever now sticking her comfortably in the ass as I picked up the phone and feigned a fascinating conversation with the dial tone. The waitress loitered about, peeking around Alexandra as she nonchalantly leaned against the cigarette machine. Sick of waiting, and lacking the audacity to come right out and accuse us, she finally left. We pulled on the lever until our precious contraband finally came out and made off with the prize. I was hooked.
Jen
I was never encouraged to start smoking by friends or my brothers or sisters. I started on my own and was mostly a closet smoker. I had an opportunity to quit when I was 13 and we moved to Florida. I didn't smoke for 3 months, until I had a job as a paperboy and had money to buy cigarettes. For some unknown reason, I bought a pack and started again and throughout high school was a closet 2 pack a week smoker.
In high school, I switched to Benson & Hedges, cause that's what the "cool" kids were smoking then. That would be my brand for the following 23 years. I'm still smoking today and it's a fetish for me. I masterbate while smoking and that's what makes it so hard for me to quit.
I've already tried to quit twice this year, once when I turned 40, I only lasted a day. My only advice to any kids that are bored and looking for something to do, is not to start smoking. It's my only regret in life.
Tim aka bh100man
Tim {arntim@bellsouth.net}
sarah
I walked over and casually mentioned that I had never been able to smoke. It didn't do anything for me.
He laughed and said I didn't know how. It tured out he was right. We sat down and he taught me how to smoke.
That is right.
He taught me how to smoke.
As the first hit entered my lungs I felt a rush of pleasure and pain that I have never again experienced.
I smoked the entire cigarette. I was unable to walk. I was dizzy and excited and thrilled.
I knew that the cigarettes where even then, even with that one cigarette destroying my body. I could FEEL it. And I craved it. With all my heart and soul I craved the ecstasy that was my lungs burning way into ash.
Paul E. Burns IV {paul@globeset.com}
Yeah, I was just a deprived 80s child...
Kym
co co
Fin
I got a new friend his name was Duane one day he slept over and he had already been smoking for 1 year he pulled out his pack and lit up a smoke. He didn't want to try but I did he slept over many times after and we would always go biking to smoke and I would always have seconds on his smoke now im 15 and now I go out every break and lunch for a smoke. Every weekend Im either drinking Grampa's secret medicine and smoking weed. I guess I smoke because it cames me down
and makes me feel better I tried quitting but you know what they say NOBODY likes quiter.
Chuck {neumeyer.c@hfcrd.ab.ca}
mishelle {mishy734@hotmail.com}
Now, I have completed my first year in University, I smoked when I got the opportunity and managed to buy a pack by second semester. It felt strange, but there was no guilt associated with it. Now I am smoking half a pack a day and would love to quit, but don't have enough control over my self to do so. I still get nothing much out of cigarettes, not even the light headed feeling. Well...I do get something an overwhelming depression for the few minutes after I finish my cigarette. Yet this negative feeling is not enough to make me quit in one attempt. I guess I am addicted (I'd like to think not).
Mohammed Sobhan {online@mohammed.com}
Even though I coughed and choked on that first cigarette I also enjoyed it. After smoking that first pack over the next few days I became a regular, but light smoker (about 5 a day). I moved up to filter cigarettes, but I still occasionally buy a pack of Camel unfiltered when I really want the ultimate smoking experience.
Jason
Later that night, half a mickie of Bacardi later, I snatched the cigarette out of her hand. I had always heard that first-timers never knew how to inhale. I understood what that meant and decided to suck on that cigarette. Next thing I knew, the cigarette had mixed with the alcohol and I was laying flat out on the pavement because the mixture made me incredibly dizzy. Everyone was standing around me laughing.
Tina {limabean@lynxcity.com}
Most of my favorite literary heroes smoked. Archie Goodwin in the early Rex Stout Nero Wolfe books. Everywhere I turned it seemed that people were smoking, from Sherlock Holmes to Wolverine of X-Men fame, and had been doing it for eons. I even, during the experimental phase, put coffee grounds in an old pipe and tried to smoke them. Not much of a buzz, but christ what a rush! I eventually got over my mania with smoking, but I still would accept a butt from high-school friends that smoked, with the adolescent fumblings that those experiences entail: MOM:Have you been smoking? You've been smoking! I can smell it on you! ME:You're crazy mom. Why would I do that?
Why indeed.
Then, I went to college. At a party early in my first semester, a really cute girl I had been flirting with all night said "y'know, you're cute. Wanna get out of here? I've got some beer back at my place." Jokingly (like I'd pass up an opporitunity like that) I said "I don't know... you smoke, and I don't" Cheap patter, smalltalk. She replied "Have you ever smoked?" I had. "Would you like one?" Why, thank you, I think I would, in my inebriated state. Then a friend of mine from high school who accompanied me to the party saw me as I lit it up. "You know those things will kill you". I do. From that moment on, I both smoked, and saw the dichotomy of smoking. It was never a great realization that broke upon me like the dawn of a new day. I knew that smoking would kill me, and yet, I had to smoke.
The reason? Because I hated myself. That's all I can say right now. Now if you look at me. Well I do cocaine mostly but I'll do any drug you shove in my face. Or you don't even have to do that. I'll find it.
debbie {dinknas3@aol.com}
dave and jess
When I went home I practised and kept smoking. I eventually got the hang of it. The next year I was more developed and got into the bars with her. She also taught me how to drink, steal, smoke pot, take acid, and dress like a slut. I really have nothing to thank her for but must admit that those were some of the best times of my life. On the other hand I am no longer 12 but now 28, desperately trying to quit as we speak.
rebecka {rebecka@stockholmmail.zzn.com}
I didn't start smoking until this year. I am 18 and I didn't start smoking to be cool or any of that bullshit. I started smoking basically for 2 reasons:
1) Boredom...I would get so bored that there really wasn't anything else to do...so what did I do...I smoked...stupid maybe...but hey, what can I say?
2) Stress...Yes you heard me right stress. My parents expected so much from me and I couldn't deal with it anymore. I needed any escape and that came from a little magical stick called a Newport. Most people say they hate the first one...not me...I loved it. When I picked it up and inhaled...all the stress, all the anger...gone...only for a short while...but gone..I suppose it was a stupid decision but oh well...maybe I will quit someday but I doubt it.
chris Sherwood {smeg25@hotmail.com}
Hope {NHGaziano@aol.com}
I started smoking in college by not inhaling. We would go to frat parties and stand in a tight group on the porch or go to a friend's apartment in Boston and go up on the roof and light up and pseudo-philosophize. I became the queen of not-inhaling, nobody knew the difference, but eventually I started sipping the smoke until I realized I was smoking correctly.
It was a social thing freshman and sophomore years. Sitting on the steps of the dorm talking to people I might not've otherwise met, meeting guys and bumming Marb Lights from them.
Junior year we got an apartment, and smoking became a more solitary thing. One on the way to class, one after class, one in the courtyard of the apartment complex taking a break from a paper. I downgraded to Marb Ultra Lights.
Senior year, I dropped it as easily as I picked it up. I was never addicted. I graduated, moved to New York and got a job where nobody smoked. Even having a smoke in Washington Square Park didn't match the glee of having one on frat porch. There just wasn't the same joy. I miss it because I know it's not as good.
Sometimes I have one or two, at a bar. But just to recreate that same feeling.
Melissa {mtagliamonte@publishers.org}
Being that Christie swore to me that Nestle Crunch bars were made with spiders' legs I considered her the official spokesperson of "THE TRUTH"--she not only saved me from death by spider leg ingestion, she knew how to tell the difference between the three flavors that make up a candy corn with her eyes closed. When she ordered me into my apartment building's underground garage for a smoke, I couldn't resist. The week previous, my new bike with training wheels had been stolen and several of the neighborhood kids made fun of my shoes on the way home from school. In other words, I needed a cigarette. I'll never forget the smell of caged-in gasoline fumes dancing with the match's crackling sulfur, the sublime and sexy trail of smoke wagging off the end her cigarette. "gimme one, " I begged.
Although it was several years until I actually smoked again, Christie still holds the distinguished honor of teaching me the ropes of smoking and peer pressure. After all, who likes to smoke alone?
a year later i went to summer camp. among my fellow campers was a girl who was, to me, the pinnacle of cool. she showed us a picture of her boyfriend. he had long blond hair and looked satanic. he was 'old': 14. i was jealous, or at least in awe.
we went on a camp trip. she got some cool looking dude in sunglasses and a trench coat to buy us a pack of cigarettes out of the machine. we pooled together just enough money. they shared one right there. i stood and watched.
when we got back to camp, they asked me if i wanted to smoke a cigarette. i tried not to appear over-eager, but i was exploding inside. we went into the woods and a bit of the path. i held it in my mouth and she tried to light it. i must have done something wrong. i think i was so nervous i was drooling all over the freakin thing. we eventually got it lit. later we dropped the cigarettes and ran because someone was coming.
i remember that it tasted like marshmallows to me. a beautiful, roasted flavor. she said she liked to smoke because it reminded her of how her boyfriend tasted when she kissed him.
my friends at home, like me, were straight A students with little social life. i lived for a few years more wanting a smoke. i inhaled air in smoky restaurants and pretended i was smoking.
one day i rolled up some dried sage and smoked it in my back yard. luckily i didn't get caught, really luckly because the stuff smells like pot.
in 8th grade i saw him. my mom drove me to the high school graduation. he was standing in front of a black limo with a cigarette in his hand. he was a metalhead. i was in love.
i didn't see him again until a year later. he had been out of high school for two years. his band played at a festival, i watched.
my senior year in high school, i called him. i think it was the bravest thing i have ever done, even braver than my 'strange' piercings in my opinion. we hung out. he was perfect. he smelled like smoke.
smoking is like kissing him.
i like to smoke.
the fact that I hadn't tried a cigarette before
and this nerd was a smoker just tweaked somthing inside me, "ok thats it" i thought to myself, "cigarettes please!" so I bought myself a pack after class "Winfield please" "what kind?" "er.. anything" "what kind do you want(confused look)?" "anything, doesn't matter (i dunno, what kinds do they have!?)" finally she gives me a pack of extra mild. I walk over to my train station to go home,
"hmm can't smoke at home, better have one here" I open the pack (after a bit of a struggle) and find myself staring at a neatly packed army of orange heads, i pry one loose, they dont budge easily,
"this is your last chance fella, put us down now and you'll save yourself some trouble"
I light one up with my fresh new lighter
Inhale...
"gee, lots of smoke"
I didn't cough, not once, my train arrived and i got up off the ground, and almost fell over,
"wow, this is preety cool" i giggled.
Matt
Hey. Do you smoke?
Shouldn't
Do you want to?
Yeah.
First time I really sucked it in and all that Parliaments MMM. It was almost straight to unfiltered cloves- 8 times as bad, last 2 1/2 times as long, twice the price.
Girfreind made me quit after almost a year. Breathing is better.
Andy {andrewmcleod@usa.net}
---Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Man, Derek, have you opened a can of herpes-riddled maggots with this topic. I wonder how many people actually will read through the whole list, or how long it will get before you stop having it on this site. Smoking is such a large topic, but I'm not so strong as to not add my experience as well, even though I doubt it's all that unique.
There were two firsts for me. My father smoked Pall Mall unfiltereds, and I must have been around 9 or 10. Right around the time he started to quit, I took on of his and walked under the pier by the beach and lit it up. It tasted awful, but it was the look, the movie look, the dramatic poet look, that I was looking for. After that, I went on in a stint of sneaking smokes from a pack of bad ass little girls I ran with, though only for a few months until my parent intervened. These girls were indeed bad, drinking and having sex at the preteen ages of 12 and up, vandalizing homes on Halloween, making themselves pass out at sleepovers, sneaking out of the house. I remember once my father gave me this strange hug when I came home after a night out with them so that he could sniff my clothes. My father was once a fire captain in Baltimore before I was born, so he could smell if I lit a match in the attic. So I was grounded for quite a long time, forced to sleep in the spare room for weeks on end because he was afraid my smoking would catch the attic on fire, though I'm sure he was more mad at himself that he didn't quit soon enough, that he had been the introduction to my rebellion. He quit for good later that year and since then has admonished all smokers in front of me for the last 15 years, trying to pull me onto his side of the issue in agreement. It didn't work.
My second first was the one that got me hooked. I was given a Sampoerna Xtra, a clove cigarette wrapped in black paper with mint on the tip of the filter, very exquisite and foreign for a small college dorm party in the middle of the Blue Ridge mountains of Virgninia. The guy that gave it to me became my boyfriend and then financee for the next 4 years, and so my smoking became the exclusive smoking of cloves. In them, I had found a uniqueness in a common vice. They smelled to people like incense, like pot, like something burning that wasn't supposed to be. My friends could always smell me when I was in the caf, and everyone, even non-smokers liked the smell, letting me smoke in their cars and apartments when others were confined to the back porch. People who don't smoke as a rule will bum several from me at parties. I felt special, bridging the gap between the races of man.
Even now, when trying to quit, I cannot bear to smoke a regular cigarette; they make me sick, no matter how many times I've tried to make do with what was more easily available. In Virginia, I had to drive an hour to Charlottesville to buy them, and I learned to cherish that little drive. My fiancee's parents would buy them for me in the cartons for Christmas while my parents were kept in the dark about my smoking. When I moved to New Orleans, getting a pack was as easy as walking to a nearby cigar emporium; the goths and night crawler crowd love them here, even though I downgraded to lights to avoid getting too much attention from the black paper. In VA, people would ask me if I was a Satanist, simply because of the black paper, simply because it was different.
I've been smoking about a pack a day for 7 years straight, and now I'm trying to quit for the millionth time, using every holiday as an excuse. I don't want smoking to be something I will always do, but something I did when I was young and stupid. Now at 24, being young and stupid is losing its luster, so I'm constantly trying to quit. I'm sure it's the case with regular smokers, but I like the taste of cloves and the feeling of being set apart by them, so for me it is a stack of struggle. My change in setting has gradually leaned to non-smoking. I used to work in an office where I could smoke right at my desk and hang out with all smokers. Now my office is off limits and few people I work with or hang out with smoke, so the social pressure has waned a bit. However, I smoke at my computer during long spats of IM or e-mail. I smoke when I'm reading a good book, that spot of fire alive in my mind. It's hard to give it up, like a good friend, an ever listening ear, a purchased companion that will never leave, in more ways than good ones. Despite the ashed that litter this computer desk, the yellow fingernails, the endless tongue-scrubbings at bedtime, the coughing of little green gobbies (and no, my lungs haven't begun to bleed yet, a side effect of long term clove use that I've heard time and time again), the stench seeped into my car, or even the disgust of a new friend for whom I am trying desperately trying to quit, I can't seem to kick the monkey off completely.
I know that I would more likely quit for someone else than for myself, so in lieu of having a boyfriend, I'm trying to quit for him, even though he is for now just a ghost on my screen at night, and IM pal. I am orally fixated, a chronic nail biter and junk food feind, addicted to people and things with a horrid tenacity. I realized recently that I have never gone through stress as a young adult without cloves being there to help me deal, and when I'm not smoking for periods of time while I try to quit, I become aware how much more hyper energy I have had hidden inside, a reminder of the hyper kid I once was. I still hope to be free from smoking's grasp, so all I can do is keep trying.
templeton {laurauhl@mailcity.com}
djarum supers. never smoked regularly until college. now, it's pretty regular. but i don't have any desire to quit. i enjoy it, i enjoy the taste. the only part that i don't enjoy is trying to find djarums at 1 in the morning, when there are only two stores in a 50 miile radius that i know about that sell them. damn imports.
I smoked pot later, in sixth grade. It made me cough, but didn't taste half as bad. I smoked weed more frequently as the years passed, but avoided cigarettes.
When I was seventeen I worked in an ice cream store. I learned that a clove cigarette with a chocolate shake was really good. Cloves hurt, though, and I switched to Phillip Morris Internationals when I was a senior.
Since then I quit pot. I have quit and started cigarettes more times than I can count. Many different brands, too. Favorite: Nat Sherman Classics. Most recent: Camel Wides.
I'm "trying to quit." I haven't bought cigarettes for about two weeks. Yesterday Gene told me as I bummed a smoke off him, "You didn't quit smoking. You just quit purchasing them."
Brian
kerry watson
At 15, as my mother was being lowered into her grave - someone - an older teenager, young adult -- I don't even remember who now, offer me the smoke. He told me it would help ease my nerves.
It's now taken 24 years to bring an end to that gesture. But at least I buried it before it buried me.
Angela
I had always despised smoking before this, quite probably for the same reasons that I instinctively found repellent most things in which my parents and other immediate family members took part. Church, family meals, and cigarettes were not for me.
Strangely enough, after taking my leave from school during my second year, I found that I had become something of a role model for some younger first-year students, still testing the waters of debauchery. And frankly, I felt that I would be remiss if I did not introduce, and encourage them to indulge in, the wide world of smokable products. In order to do so, however, I had to make an example of myself.
I walked myself down to the convenience store, bought a few packs of unfiltered Camels (if you're going to do it, do it right) and the rest, as they say, is history.
(Note: This was about 5 or 6 years ago...I have since switched to Marlboro lights because I find they make my lungs bleed considerably less.)
Pete {sharp_peter@hotmail.com}
Nicholas Ciccone {nciccone@intlspfx.com}
Danielle {deders15420@aol.com}
I smoked cloves in college for a bit. I don't remember the justification for that. But I had maybe two a day. You can't maintain a serious habit with those things.
I took too many pills one day because a girl I loved didn't want me. And I went, and I found her, and in that blurry dream it felt like she saved me. She didn't, of course; but she did pass me her cigarettes when I asked. That was when I started smoking.
I have remained loyal to her brand, although she did not remain loyal to me. On a drunken phone call evening years later she heard the distinct sound of inhale and chortled "Still smoking huh?" That's when I realized that with every cigarette I was reaffirming that she owned me.
I still couldn't stop.
I think I am quitting this time. I wish I could brag that it has been weeks but it has only been days. But I am tired of it.
You bring the reek of it with you wherever you go.
David {dzbrazil@bestweb.net}
she would go to T h e C i t y everyday, with her books under her arm and bring home more sentences for punctuating. maybe today she had finally figured out how to make the revolution happen. maybe she was just about to fucking lose it. maybe one of her friends had heard a rumor about me they thought she should know. or maybe she ate good soup and chased it with strawberry cake and everything was gonna be ju-ust fine.
everyday i would watch her smoke away the city, because it can really drag you down if you don't. it can fuck with your head and make you think yer part of it.
and when she left that's where i would sit and smoke and take time out to think about the shit nobody else really cared about.
Megan D {design@romanticadesign.com}
stephen {stephen direct.ca}
Nick {nnbreen@flashcom.net}
and to make a long story short, i cant stop now, i wish i could
dont start guys, its not worth it.
Bryan {darkevil_osa@yahoo.com}
Billy bob snortin {emmerz8@aol.com}
Joe R.
Judy
Jane
ANthony {addcted23.com}
And she’s the one who smoked most of that first elicit cigarette.
Years later (seven to be exact), Melanie already had a habit. We both had parents we didn’t want to go home to. We took a booth in the smoking section at Denny’s most afternoons. Soon I took her habit, too.
We moved into an apartment together, second semester senior year (and if you think two high school girls with their own apartment can’t pretty much write their own ticket, think again). Let the festivities begin.
Trai
We all were very bored and didnt have anything to do. But it just so happened that my oldest cousin whom at the time was 17 had some ciggs. So she offered us some and we accepted them. (There was 4 of us ) we all took one and smoked.
I really didnt think anything of it.
Ever since that Iv craved ciggs.
cindy hill {cindyhill@aol.com}
James {Mckcowboy@aol.com}
After that came stealing, extortion, more smoking and i regreted it cuz we made so many enemies.
It really aint worth it.
Varun {greatestcooldude@hotmail.com}
Patrick Mc Neal {xbt@hotmail.com}
But years later I found myself sitting in Paul's Motor Inn, hours ticking by as endless cups of coffee drain into my system. Swirling conversation mixes with swirling smoke as time becomes non-existant. It began as just the odd puff. Never smoke a whole cigarette, never buy a pack, never light a cigarette. I'm not a smoker. And yet as I spent all my time with smokers, having just one puff each time they lit up. I just loved that little buzz on top of the coffee rush!
Then I moved to Korea, away from all my friends, vowing to quit not-smoking. But what do I find but $1.25 a pack Marlboro's, my new best friend!
Will I quit, sure, when will I quit, later, probably when I have to start forking over $5.00 a pack again.....
I always was a cheapskate.
Danger D {donnamf@yahoo.com}
Ashlee Nash {Brad Brister @ Mpi net .com}
Ray F.
lindsey ray {Lindsey_Ray@telusplanet.ab.ca}
a half year later i smoked again but stopped til now.i think i`ll start again
Sebastian Paul {zool84@web.de}
I am now 14 and still smoking ever since. I have tried and tried to quit and I can't. I am up to about 8-10 cigerettes a day. I completely regret that one day with the "cool" girl.
Liz Urmston {Lizzy1369@hotmail.com}
I'm not sure when I started to get the same feeling from the thought of smoking, but by the time I was 10 I definitely had a real "thing" about it; I used to watch smokers with great interest and excitement, wishing I could do it myself. I was always ashamed to admit this, and I came over as very anti-smoking to other people, in a strange kinda attempt to hide my secret desires from people, but I always used to long for the day when I was old enough to do it myself.
I actually decided to try it one time at the age of about 11 -- I rolled a couple at home and took them to school, but I didn't have the guts in the end, and I chucked them away.
As I got older my feelings of smoking-related excitement merged with my natural growing interest in women (I still find that smoking greatly increases attractiveness) and when I met my first proper girlfriend, who happened to smoke, I thought it was great.
One day I got the idea to nick a cigarette from her pack and smoke it secretly. I kept it in my drawer all day waiting for night time when everyone was in bed, then I took it and a box of matches I'd found to the bathroom to light up. Call me a wimp if you like, but I was really nervous. After I'd stopped shaking enough to light it properly, I proceeded to smoke half of it before deciding "I've had enough of this, it's horrible" and flushing it down the toilet. I walked back to bed worrying about the smell and thinking of the nicotine in my veins for the first time. Little did I know that there wasn't any -- I hadn't inhaled, of course, though I'd thought I was doing it properly.
I must have been stupid. I smoked occasionally, not inhaling, for several months; I even wondered why I never felt the effects, but I never realised.
I really don't know how it came to me in the end, I just suddenly realised one day (and felt suddenly embarrassed -- oh, the people who must have laughed because I didn't know I wasn't inhaling!).
I quickly retreated to somewhere out of sight where I could practise inhaling for the first time. I was surprised, after all those painless cigarettes, at the unexpected feeling in my lungs.
And when I felt the dizziness for the first time, I suddenly realised "so this is why people like smoking!". I decided that I LOVED that feeling and I wanted another one straight away!
It's now almost a year later. I've gone without one for a week or two a couple times now, and that wasn't a problem, but I always want to start again.
I generally find that I really enjoy it out of doors, especially when I haven't had one yet that day, but if I smoke inside I nearly always regret it right after the first drag. Not sure why.
Ken
chris
When we got back home i smoked on and off socially for all of year nine, but it wasn't until about yeaer 10, when i was 15 that i really got into it. I smoked Marlboro Reds for 3 years! And now, i of course, at the age of 19, i'm trying vainly to quit. It won't happen. I'm too in love with the damn things.
Jennifer {lagomorph@bigpond.com}
*snap* like that, I became a smoker. I was no longer a high school athlete, and nobody expects an "honors" student to be a smoker. I dared to be different, albeit in the weirdest ways.
I must have been 16 when a back injury prevented me from playing Ice Hockey. I couldn't play soccer any more either. All I had left to do was sit around and read... and by that time, I was already a coffee fiend. The times when I'd go sit at a coffee shop and involve myself in some useless reading materials, I found a pack of cigarettes somebody had left behind - Marlboro Reds 100s. Whoever it was, they had conveninetly left behind 2 cigarettes for somebody like me to find. I stared at it blankly for a second and almost matter of factly picked up a cigarette, asked for a light and proceeded to read.
Not a choke or a cough... slowly sipping away at my coffee and taking lengthy drags of my new habit-to-be. Several paragraphs in, and the ashes were nearing my fingers. In came the acquired skill of chain-smoking! And thus, was my first cigarette - at 16 years old.
I made sure the smell didn't stick around me and headed home - stopping by a drug store and buying a pack first... and by the following week, I was smoking at a rate of a pack a day. I've struggled financially since. haha.
Truthfully, I've always vowed not to become my father - the beer guzzling chimney. Well, I didn't become him... I'm a coffee cuzzling chimney now... and at 20 years old, I don't see myself quitting any time soon - though, in my mind I know I should and eventually will need to.
I however took this as an accomplishment as an actress. The director had passed the pack amongst the cast and after each of us had taken one we did the play. It was laughable to watch some of my fellow players - pinching the filter of the menthols between their lips and straining as if they were trying to drink a McDonald's shake in one inhale. And there I sat. Completely at ease. Hand to mouth, faint drag of dry air that came through the unlit smoke and a slight pucker to "exhale". And I was the most natural. Who knew?
After the run of the show was over, I was pulled aside by one of my cast mates who made me promise over and over that I wouldn't do it. She must have known that I was lying to both her and myself, but took it rather well, all things considered being high school mates.
Within months, I was in college and had scored another personal coup in being cast in the opening show of the season. It was directed by the most noteworthy director on campus who had cast his core group of players who were idolized by the department. And there I was, being let inside.
"You don't smoke, do you, Erin?"
"Oh, I used to," I lied. "Not anymore."
"Good for you. It's terrible."
How could I honestly believe that when they were all there on the stoop outside the loading dock for the theater, all of them very noir and chic? I broke a few days later and bought my first pack on the way home to rehearsal.
They say Hollywood is to blame for some of the smoking problem. I can't find fault in that at all. Every show closing I quit, and every rehearsal I start. We all smoke, or so it seems, at least the ones of talent that I meet. And we all say the same thing.
"Should really quit. It's terrible."
Erin {auto21721@hushmail.com}
We were all worried about getting caught so after we went down the shops and brought about £5 worth of chewing gum.
i didn't have anything for another two years when i was in secondary school, the first year of my school i was quiet and didnt know anyone cool, so i got some very good grades at the end of the year, in the 8th year i began going to clubs under 18s night at Zeus and Dukes in Chelmsford, thats when i got close friends with my mate sam he probably started when he was about nine.
i smoked from then on and by the end of the year my grades at school dropped.i also bunked off school several times smoking got me into bad habbits.
in the ninth year i new everybody in school met most at the back of the fields which is where we smoked, half way through the year i was fully addicted.nearly all my close friends smoke im 14 at the moment and have smoked most drugs. i suppose it was the city i grew up in. unlike most of the people in this room i enjoy smoking but i am going to give up by the time im 15, not.it takes the piss how easily i get served, and if they say got any I.D. i wip out my fake one. big shout out to chelmsford skating crew, sam adam frazer my beautiful girlfriend and all u other smokers and friends sorry cant name u all. oh and mum dad u will never catch me..
chainer {http://withit2000@hotmail.com}
One day I was walking down a gravel road to this spot when I saw a half-finished pack of cigarettes sitting on the front step of a cabin; nobody was there.
I took the cigarettes, and, hoping and anticipating for such an opportunity, had stuffed my pockets with matchboxes before I had even left. As I said, I was interested in trying it out, and prepared the entire length of the trip for the moment about to come.
I went off to my spot, through in a fishing line, and lit up one of the cigarettes. It was a Marlboro light, and it left me light-headed, something I had never felt before. I wanted to try it again.
So I smoked two then by my private spot on the creek, and was overcome by the high. I stuffed the cigarettes away and promised myself to do it again soon.
Soon came quicker than I thought, as the entire family wanted to go down to the creek that night and stare up at the stars. They left me to tend to the campfire, and it gave me once again a perfect opportunity to try out this new thing. I smoked another two, and then, wanting to test how far this high could go, I smoked another three, and was so powered up by the nicotine that I quickly became very sick. The following morning, I through the rest of the pack into the creek.
I picked up and put down cigarettes many times over the years, but always, the first two were always the best, and then it would just go downhill from there. It was the only way I never got seriously hooked.
But you know, a cigarette wouldn't sound bad at this time...
Frank
tim {espnzone2000@aol.com}
ever since then i bought one pack of cigarrettes, and it's still half full, in my bottom drawr.
i do enjoy smoking when i go out, around midnight and after, it's never my cigarette, and i love that tipsy feeling, that beginers get. if i feel i might really be hooked, i'll stop for good.
Tali {pixiebells@hotmail.com}
i think kristen gave me one, because kathleen had only menthols. i think menthols are disgusting. my first one was on the highway downtown chicago. a marlboro light... i remember i didnt know that you had to inhale twice really, so i just kinda breathed in and out. then they laughed, and i laughed.. i coughed too but it wasnt a big deal.
i smoked camels for a while, but then i realized that i cant do anything physically rigorous while smoking.. so i quit. im a closet smoker. haha.
alli {panaphobic@antisocial.com}
Well actually it was my 2nd stick; my real first stick had been when I was around 8 or 9, when I fished out half a stick from the ashtray and the pounding in my head and the coughing afterwards made me promise never to try something so stupid like that again.
From then on, until that night, I had never touched another cigarrette. Though quite a number of my friends smoked, I never caved in to the temptation to try one. Cigarretes were a bad thing and only stupid people smoked. I detested smokers for what they did to themselves and the people all around them, the ones who didn't even smoke.
I was already living away from home with my brother at that time, studying in some college. I knew he smoked and my parents had found out once or twice before resulting in a big hoo-ha so I felt it was my responsibility to get him to stop for the sake of his health and filial responsibility. So one night, as he was about to go out, I confiscated a pack of his Malboro Reds.
I don't know what happened but the next thing i knew I was standing at the balcony, puffing away. I knew how to smoke from listening to my friends talking about how you have to "inhale it like you're breathing". I got quite a kick from my first stick and my immediate reaction was to go rest my poor dizzy head.
I soon began swiping more sticks from my brother, telling myself that it was all under controled. A bad experience with a girl soon after led to me smoking heavier and heavier and a significant loss of weight. By the time I got over her, I realised that I was no more in control.
I've tried stopping on several occasions, but after the last time, I just gave up. The longing for the first stick of the day is just too strong. I'm now 18 and I smoke at least 1 big pack of Malboros or Dunhills every 2 days and I know my lungs are as black as hell and if I don't stop now it's going to be harder to quit in the future. But everywhere and anything I do just reminds me of the little buzz you get after the first puff of the day.
Bryan {sludgef@hotmail.com}
... 'til I was fifteen, lots of time off school (exams), bored, pressured and lonely. No peer pressure involved - in fact, if there had been I'd never have started. Just curiosity, and, I may as well be frank, a definite sexual allure to the smoking mystique.
One or two a day, often sneaking up into the attic or out into the yard ... my first pack of many ... telling myself I wouldn't smoke any more when I went to university, but buying a pack my first day there ... still lonely, the cigarettes become friend-substitutes (no, I'm not just sitting here by myself, see, I'm enjoying this cigarette)... falling for a girl basically because she was a smoker and available (MISTAKE) ... and all the time, hiding it, the ultimate closet smoker.
Nowadays ... I alternate Sportsman Reds (strong local brand) with menthols, and smoke cigars on long road trips. Totally, blissfully addicted. And ashamed of my weakness. And masochistically thrilled by it. And and and ...
It's no simple thing, the whole smoking bit.
Tony
LynZ
LynZ {LynZ10@msn.com}
Carlo Carelo {ptong55755@aol.com}
Shea {celestey_63@hotmail.com}
what was i to do with the stubs? being a logical 16 year old, i didn't want to throw them in the garbage, lest my mom would find them. so, i, of course, lined the stubs up against the outside of my window pane. sure enough, weeks went by, and the stubs were fighting to get in line...
one day, i got home from school, and as i opened the door, my brother immediately came up to me and said, "mom knows." i was like, "holy shit!" he was like, "she found all your cigarette stubs lined up outside your window."
i guess i wasn't that clever when i was 16, but it sure seemed like a good hiding place back then...
anyway.
i smoked for 9 years. next year would've been my 10th, but i didn't like the idea of getting into the double digits, so, 10 days ago, i quit.
jen {jenxr@hotmail.com}
off and on, this lasted until my junior year of high school. a lot of major changes in my life, complete with the requisite running away from home, a friend of mine got me to smoke with her. her mother was the coolest thing since sliced bread to me. she was nothing like my mother. whereas my mother was as strict as hell, tina's mother let her do anything she wanted. and i wanted to be part of that life.
i regularly smoked by the time i was 17. i have quit smoking exactly twice. once when i entered the air force (manditory). there was no smoking in basic training.
the second time was because of my boyfriend. he smoked and wanted to quit. so i quit with him. it lasted for 3 weeks. i told him i wouldn't quit with him again.
the cigarettes are still with me, but he left my life three years ago.
i know of smokers that talk about how they hate cigarettes. i don't believe it. if you hate it so much, why are you still smoking? i'm honest with myself. i like to smoke. i like inhaling the smoke, feeling it fill my lungs. the nicotine hitting my system.
maybe i'll quit one day. when i no longer enjoy them.
mary {corinara@aol.com}
Kaylynne {blackkat6@hotmail.com}
Christine {coolchristine@hotmail.com}
Then about six years ago, I was running errands and happened to park in front of a smoke shop, saw a couple of people smoking there, and the curiousity came back. So, I figured I was plenty old enough to try it now, just to see what it was like, without actually becoming a smoker. So I went in and told the two female clerks there that I just wanted to try it to see what it was like. One of them said, "You really don't want to start smoking now." And I, truthfully, said, "No, of course not, I am not going to, I just want to try it to see what it is like because I've never done it before." The other one said to go ahead, so she sold me a pack and showed me how - but made sure I sat down to try it. It wasn't great (I could see why they wanted me to sit for it), but it wasn't as bad as I expected either. When I was done I went on with my errands and then home.
But I still had the pack, and I figured I might as well really try it and finish the pack, in time. So over the next few weeks I did. Then I said, I wonder what they would say if I wanted to buy another pack, so I went back to the shop; the same clerks were not there but I bought another pack anyway. And several weeks later, I did it again. This went on for several months, I only saw one of the original clerks (the one that said to go ahead) once again, and when I told her I had smoke a few more packs, about 1 a month, she said that was pretty reasonable, that she knew some people that only smoked like a pack on a weekend or at parties and stuff like that and implying that what I was doing was OK.
So I played around with it for the next few years, sometimes smoking as many as 5-7 in a day, and sometimes not smoking at all for weeks. It got to where I pretty much liked it, and it was fun occasionally freaking out people who didn't think I smoked. But it was never a big deal. Then I quit for about a year, because I had satisified my curiousity, and I thought there wasn't any reason to keep smoking. I kind of missed it, but quitting wasn't a big deal.
Then about 10 months ago, I figured I'd buy another pack and play around with it some more. I'd played around with it for years and then quit without any trouble, so I figured, I kind of liked it and could play around with it some more. But this time, after about 5 months I was smoking about a half a pack every day, and I have every day for the last 5 months. So now the surprising/scary thing is that I rather like smoking this much every day and even being a smoker, and I don't really want to quit now.
michael {cuilen@aol.com}
Christine
anonymous {anonymous}
lilley
Jar Jar {weirdo_890@hotmail.com}
My first smoking opportunity came one fall weekend. I had always been too chicken to steal one of mom's Salems. But two weeks before, while wandering in the backyard, he had seen the neighbor's 13 year old daughter smoking with friends behind their garage. One day, I discovered a small piece of plywood just laying on the ground behind their garage and absentmindedly picked it up, only to find a pack of Marlboro Lights hidden beneath! I remembered that the whole family was going away Sunday to a big mall in the city 90 miles away. I wasn't interested and was going to stay home.
The family left around 8:30am. I grabbed the "discovered" pack and one of Mom's lighters and headed to the basement. I slowly pulled a cigarette from the pack, discovering the weight wasn't as much as I had expected. I lit the lighter and held the end of the cigarette in the flame. After a fairly lengthy lighting time, the cigarette was burning enough to take the first puff. I put the cigarette to my mouth and pulled lightly on the filter. I let the smoke stay in my mouth for a second, then quickly exhaled. The bitter taste was surprising - Mom's cigarettes didn't smell like they would taste like this! I continued to take puffs from the cigarette in the same manner, letting the smoke sit in my mouth for a couple of seconds before exhaling. Finally, I pulled slowly on the filter, held the smoke in my mouth, then opened my mouth and inhaled. I felt the smoke mix with the chilly basement air and slide down my throat and into my lungs, a great tingling sensation developing in my chest. I exhaled slowly and watched as the stream of smoke wafted toward the basement ceiling. I suppressed a small cough, then began another longer drag. My heart was pounding so hard, this was so exciting!
I crushed out the first cigarette and picked up the pack again. Finding 5 or 6 cigarettes left, I pulled a second cigarette out and placed it in my mouth. With a flick of my thumb, the lighter flamed to life and I slowly raised it to the end of the cigarette, drawing slowly until I had it lit. My third inhale! I proceeded to walk around the basement with the cigarette, aware of how I was holding it as I walked, and emulating the beautiful young women I had been watching. I sat down on an old couch and pretended to have a conversation with someone, and at one point actually took a long drag, inhaled, then spoke "I'm fine, how are you?" just to watch the smoke escaping from my mouth with each word.
After finishing the second cigarette, I was pretty light-headed as the nicotine took affect. I smoked one more cigarette later that day before my family returned home.
I continued to develop a small smoking habit afterwards, stealing cigarettes from waitresses and other cooks at the Pizza Hut where I worked. I would stop in a secluded location on my way home from work and smoke in the car. Occassionally I would steal one of Mom's Salems, but found that I truly dislike menthol cigarettes and would only steal one if I wanted a cigarette and I couldn't steal any real cigarettes from someone else.
When I got to college, I would buy a pack of cigarettes about once a month. I would buy different brands, experimenting to see which tasted best. I continued to keep my smoking a secret - high school valedictorian, univeristy honors student, I couldn't reveal that the "All-American boy" smoked.
After college, I moved to a coastal city to start my new job. The second day there, a full week before I started my new job, I bought a pack of cigarettes and planned my first "day in the life of a smoker". Up until then, I had smoked 4 to 6 cigarettes a week. Now I wanted to prove my independence. So I lit my first cigarette upon waking, and smoked at regular intervals throughout the day - after meals, and usually at one to one-and-a-half hour intervals. After that day, my smoking settled down to 5 or 6 cigarettes during the weekdays - usually two in the morning before work, and 3 or 5 at night after work - and maybe half a pack on weekends. I didn't smoke while at work. The workplace had not gone smoke-free yet, but the "brilliant new employee" kept his secret.
When I was 24, I started going out with a co-worker. We had been friends ever since I had started the job, but the friendship turned into a serious relationship. She smoked, at the rate of just over a pack a day. I continued to keep my secret, but one day I just lit a cigarette in front of her. She was very surprised, to say the least! But after that day, she would consistently ask me why I was continuing to hide my smoking, what irrational fears did I have? Did I think that people would think less of me and not respect me because I smoke? And she was absolutely right! I smoke, I like it, and I'm proud of it. My days as a "closet smoker" were over. We've been married for 8 years now, and I smoke just over a pack a day, just like my wife.
anonymous
Travis Stanley {ekoston182@aol.com}
Jordan {Lindvall}
bill
Rich {Pfunkin77@aol.com}
i saw them siting there on the table when my dad was drinking and they where juss siting there so i took them all a pack,
i took them out side and i tryd to light it up but i didn't know how to, so i juss try smokeing it i thought maybe it was light and i juss couldn't see it,
so i puffing it and it didn't work so i try lighting it and puffing at the same time it worked and wow it was amazing i liked it,
after that i was smokeing all the time i showed my lil sis to she smoked about 3 cigarettes now in her life but she stop when are mom and dad found them in here room they got mad and she stop ever since she never said a thing about me goodie sis, but when that happen i was about 10 at the time and then stop tell i was 12 then start again then now i'm 15 now it's off and on
I felt a mixture of guilt and excitement about smoking, and still do. The price rises year by year. At 39 these things are quite literally shortening my life. I've stayed reasonably fit, and if I quit now, I could still cancel out a lot of the damage.
But cigarettes are gorgeous. When I light up I think about beautiful women smoking, and if I'm lucky I get to watch one whilst I smoke. If I could perhaps only just watch, it would be okay, a voyeuristic fetish, but pretty harmless. But somewhere there is a connection between the sting in my lungs, the sensual pleasure of the smoke coiling down deep inside me, and the hungry way she is smoking, long white fag lit with gold lighter, held between tapering fingers, shiny painted nails. I love to watch awoman publicly pleasuring herself with a smoke.
paul {aecha55@hotmail.com}
I was 15 the summer was hot and I was bored so bored that I had to just do something, so during the middle of summer i had gotton a cigg from my neighbor who is like 40 yrs old i smoked all summer every chance i could because of the buzz, If i smoked it fast enough i would get a good freaken buzz. during this school year every day i go to the bathroom where kids always smoke i smoke and bum off the kids...
although it may be hard to quit i hope to quit when i turn the legal age to do it..
Brian {bobobchillin@yahoo.com}
Dawn Johnson {dedj@yahoo.com}
laura
Yet, since during my Christmas break and my new independace sparked a motto "Tis the season to be stressed" I walked out the door Christmas night in order to find a gas station that sold cloves. No luck. But helping my friend move the next day we stopped by a shop and got some. Been slowly smokin' the pack for a week. Trying to tell myself I won't start but hey... who am I kiddin'? I've always been a fan of being light-headed. I feel like I could spare a few brain cells, I'm probably just killing off the ones that would stop me anyways.
Josh {jwstone@hotmail.com}
Corey {kory95@yahoo.com}
but I still smok so... oh well!
Cass {Trustys@hotmail.com}
Chris {B5N2R7@aol.com}
i thought ewww that stinks
the years went by and i became more interested in smoking...and i remembered we kept that project. so first i began to just smell it..and i would get hard doing so.
one day my parents were at a party and i found a cigarette butt in the street, brought it to our yard, lit it, and sucked in. it burned!
i thought eww im never doin that again
then like a month later i figured what the hell...and rolled some tobacco in paper...took it into the garage, and lit up.
i didnt really inhale, but it felt good.
a couple months after this, after smoking like 10 times, i figured, "I dont want to be a smoker," and i threw the tobacco out. Yet i still had an urge to smoke, and i entered my present phase...scrounging for cigarette butts. Now i inhale (at least i think so), but i only have like 2 cigarettes a month. Can someone email me A)how do i know if im inhaling.....
and B) how can i buy cigarettes and smoke without peiople knowing
Rob McNab {funkycoolspot@yahoo.com}
A few months later I took a pack of Winston 100's from my dad. They tasted better and didn't look so dorky. By the time the pack was finished I was hooked.
I started buying my own cigarettes when I was 15. At first I smoked Marlboro Reds because that's what all my friends smoked. Then I tried Marlboro 100's. I liked them better and smoked them for almost 12 years. I now smoke Marlboro Lights 100's.
Tracey W.
I thought about my offer, and when I returned I said "Is that ciggarette still on offer?" She gave me one I then placed it in my mouth and lit it. As I took the smoke in I felt totally different almost like I was being naughty, I smoked the ciggarette with her and then stubbed out the remains.
Before leaving to go to her house I bought 10 ciggarettes, when we arrived I lit one of my own and smoked it, I was really liking it. I smoked 6 ciggarettes that night when I got home my husband smelt the smoke on my breath and said "have you been smoking?" I said "only a couple".
I loved smoking and to start with it was occasional, special occasions, nights out but soon I was smoking 5 a day everyday. I am glad that I was 30 when I started because although my parents hate me doing it they cant stop me, but there were times when I wished I never started at all.
Michelle
Sarah {sarahmars@earthlink.net}
I started to really smoke when I was 21, because the girl I started going out with smoked. That was eight years ago. It's wierd. I remember being 18 or 19 and thinking that people who smoked were idiots.
Kevin {kevinclaussen@yahoo.com}
I wanna drink as much as I want.
I wanna smoke as much as I can.
Ole Petersen
Kat Silver
Jon {Absolutelylive@hotmail.com}
Evan {evan_milz2000@yahoo.comm}
I sort of started smoking when I was 17. My best friend Colleen smoked and I'd occasionally join her just for fun by puffing on an unlit cigarette. One day I actually lit it and after a few puffs, she taught me to inhale. I coughed. Ewww. Why would anyone want to do that?
But a few weeks later, my mother and I managed to get into a huge argument just before Colleen stopped by to pick me up. I was fuming, and about a mile down the road I said "Give me a cigarette!" Things went on like that all summer, with me occasionally bumming a cigarette from Colleen. But it wasn't until college a few months later that I really started smoking.
Colleen's birthday was in late August, so I bought her a pack of her favorite brand: Benson & Hedges Menthol Light 100s. I'd planned to give it to her before I left for for college, but we were unable to hook up for that good bye smoke. So I took that pack with me to college.
It sat in my desk drawer for probably a month, without me ever giving it a second thought. But then I had to write a paper... I'd procrastinated everday for a week and was down to the last night before it was due. Sitting at my desk, desperate for something--anything to help me procrastinate even a few minutes more, I remembered that pack of smokes.
Fifteen years later, I'm sitting at my desk writing this, while smoking a cigarette.
Telsie
katie
My parents are smokers. My friends always asked me if I smoked, because they could smell it on my clothes. They used to smoke Drum tobacco, but since they can no longer easily get it, they have been trying a number of roll-your-own brands. Just before I entered high school, they managed to quit for a year, but when my father and I went to Japan for 3 weeks (everyone we met there offered him cigarettes) he succumbed, and when we returned, my mother was also smoking again. The emotional stress of the following years (my mother received her nursing degree at 49, and having no work experience, had to accept a five hour commute for her first job) postponed any real chances they had of quitting. After my mother got a job closer to home, and my parents discovered that they could acquire Nicorette from New Zealand at a fraction of the local cost, they tried again, unsuccessfully. Now that my brother and I are out of the house, and my parents are seperated (amicably, for the most part), my mother has managed quit cigarettes. My father has not, but I think his main reason for trying in the first place was to support my mother's efforts. Perhaps he feels he needs them now more than ever.
Few of my friends in high school smoked, and while I was on several occasions tempted to try myself, I was convinced that the best idea was to wait until college before trying any drugs. Besides, the sound of my mother coughing in her bedroom at night--a distressing sound that I was accustomed to hearing even when I awoke at four or five in the morning to go to the bathroom--would echo in my mind, disarming the temptation to smoke.
I have been told that the ratio of smokers to non-smokers in my college is one of the highest in the nation. This certainly seemed truest my freshman year, when I was constantly being stopped by people that wanted a cigarette, or a light, or both, and when the lawn in front of our commons was always scattered with a bed of cigarette butts. Despite this, most of my friends here are not smokers, and more than a few detest the habit.
I don't smoke a lot, and I expect that it will trail off as my last semester nears its end. My parents don't know anything about it (I intend to keep it that way), and my girlfriend (who is currently 3000 miles away, but will be in my arms in two months) has such a difficult time with ambient cigarette smoke that she wakes up with a pounding headache whenever she stays the night at my father's house. No one approves, and San Francisco (which is my home, and where I will be staying after college) is not friendly toward smokers. But smoking has been fun, and it will doubtlessly reappear in my life, though hopefully as nothing more than brief affairs. I don't want to be coughing through middle age at four in the morning (and I certainly don't want cancer, or emphysema, or. . .).
My recent desire to smoke began about three months ago, when I kept thinking how wonderful it would be to smoke during films (I watch seven films a week, usually in my room), particularly long ones. After seeing Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love at the Upstate Theater, I was beset as never before with the urge to smoke. So I bought a pack of cloves (what could be a more typical choice for a college student?). Since then, at an inconsistent rate of two or three smokes a day, I have worked my way through packs of cloves and regular cigarettes, and a few cigars. About half of these I have given to friends (somehow 4 or 5 of my close friends are now smoking). Last night I learned how to blow smoke rings, and this solidified my prediction that smoking is something that I will come back to, even though I will have ended this affair by May.
Smoking is doubtlessly a part of my tendency to chase after the illusion of 'the finer things in life', such as single malt whisky, Spanish and Italian wines, French cooking, high-end home theater equipment that I can't even begin to afford, films from Renoir and Fellini and the French new wave--pretention is my greatest comfort. There is a grave risk that I will become addicted, though I feel it is slight for the moment, but I would be beside myself thinking that I was missing an appreciation of fine tobacco out of fear. Ironically, if I somehow knew that cigarette-smoking would be my doom, I would quit it instantly.
In any case, that's my story. You might see me someday on the other board, telling of how I quit after 40 years of chain smoking and 10 years of failing health, in which case this would become a precious warning to other kids that would ignore 22 years of the whole world telling them not to smoke. I certainly hope not.
One slow night I was working on register number 6, which was the 10 item or less, cash only express lane. I had no customers. I decided to raise my coolness level up one notch. Discreetly, I tucked a pack of Marlboro Reds, in a box, in the my pants pocket whick was veiled by my company frock.
I don't know why I did it. I had never before stolen anything in the year I had worked for that store. I guess I stole the pack of cigarettes just for the rush of doing something that I knew was prohibited. The fact that I was stealing cigs made the act all the more dastardly.
Well, I bided my time, scanned more cans of corn, London broils, and lobster tails before I was finally cut from my shift.
I got in my car, turned the keys, drove out of the parking lot and pulled out that first smoke. I tried to lite the cigarette but for some reason it wouldn't catch (later I learned that when one wants to light a cigarette they must first, put the cigarette to their mouth and second, inhale deeply). The more I fumbled with the cigarette in one hand and my lighter in the other I realized how futile the whole debacle was.
Additionally, I was a good kid. I began to wonder why I had stolen the pack in the first place and shuddered at the thought of being held captive the the tentacular grip of an addictive narcotic. So, not only did I throw the unlit cigarette out I threw the whole pack out. Now, as a smoker, I wish I never abandoned such resolve.
Adam {mrcrapahito@hotmail.com}
Robin
A few months ago, my best friend and loving boyfriend of two years dumped me. Not only did he break it off without any real reason, but he was being really insensitive. And yes, I'm getting to the smoking part!
Eventually, we started working our way back towards each other, I even slept with him (but not to the fullest extent of the word). Then I find out he screwed some loose, tight-whipped hoe when he was supposedly with me and when he supposedly knew I was suicidal.
I was on the verge of that. But I didn't want to completely self-destruct so I started smoking whenever I got real pissed. It only took one time and I'm hooked. A lot of people around me are really disgusted by this choice, but I just look at this way: I almost died last year. I shouldn't even be here, but I am. So if I get sick, I get sick. It doesn't matter all that much any more.
I'm trying to remember what that first cig was... I believe Swedish Golds. I remember sitting out on my porch, feeling like a little kid... afraid I was going to caugh up a storm. To my surprise, I didn't caugh once, nor did I gag. It was light and soothing, and soon I found myself more relaxed. But afterwards I had this nasty taste in my mouth, and the smoke smell caught up with me. It was gross, so I decided to try something else.
Juli Piatt {PoeticJuli@aol.com}
when i was about 10 i moved to a nearby city. It was much different then the one iused to live in. I hung around the "cool" crowd. All our parents smoked so we thought it was cool so my friend stole a pack of ciggerates from her mother. We tried it and we thought it was cool. So all the other people we hung around with stole ciggerates from there parents and we would think we were so mature. I smoked till i was about 13 and i started hanging around different people that didnt smoke. But then when i went to highschool i started hanging around with all different people and some smoked so i just social smoked but didnt inhail. Then one day after school my good friend offered me a ciggerate and i inhailed and coughed and said it was because i havent smoked in awhile(which was a lie). After that day ive been smoking ever since. Im now 16 and have tried to quit for almost a year now and im getting tired of wasteing my money on ciggerettes and killing myself. now i see its not the cool thing to do its the stupid thing to do.
Danielle {deders15420@aol.com}
unknown {unknown}
craig {MOFOnSTUFFS@aol.com}
later that night i had another marlboro light. without the menthol. another of my cousins gave it to me. four years older than i am. she was cool. and i took a drag and i thought, this one tastes a lot better. i stopped after that.
then i got my o'level examination results. goddamn thing fucked me up so bad i bought my first pack and practically ate all ten. marlboro lights. i got high.
i've only stopped once, this year, for four months, because my boyfriend hated it. we're not together anymore, so who gives a shit.
that's it.
airhead {absolutfrux@yahoo.co.uk}
that spark was'nt there, after high school i met
a realy bueatful girl that smokes.She was a doll
and she got me started smoking too.It was fun being a smoker, we would smoke in bed to get there and all crazy stuff. Afer 2 years we broke up, but we are still friends. Now I only date smokers. And thanks to her iam smoker now!!!!!
Crazy F
Lena {Lbaby224@aol.com}
Rachel Brown
Have fun!
michaelHanley {michaeljhanleyjr@mindspring.com}
Alvin
I haven't smoked much for a few years - recently started up again. Mainly exotic kinds of cigarettes. The sort of thing you don't smoke too much of. Sweet Dreams Vanillas, Cloves, etc. 'Back in the day' I was a huge Marb Reds fan - not so much anymore.
I suppose that bit about tastes changing as you age is true.
Daimun {daimun@theorigin.org}
Five hours later we had another one and did our "experiment" again. We did it over and over again until I was 15 years old.
jennie {jjjj@hotmail.com}
David
couRAGE {faun_macy@hotmail.com}
did i say im 13 now?
a gurl {prfctblond9@aol.com}
J.S {Josh@avci.net}
From that day, I've smoked on and off. During that year, when it was still possible to buy ten packs, we'd buy one between two or three of us and smoke it over the course of the day. It was real easy and real sociable. Smoking at parties wasn't compulsory or anything, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, which seems a lot like peer pressure with hindsight.
At university, there were harder drugs to get into, as well as all the alcohol of course, and smoking became a bigger part of the picture. I found it helped to have a couple of stress relieving cigarettes when studying or getting an essay done, and there were always people congregating in the stairwells to get their fix. It was so easy just to go with the flow. I really didn't give a thought to quitting.
The first time I seriously thought about quitting was a couple of years ago, when I realised that I was past smoking because it felt good and was into smoking because I needed the hit. I'll still always need it, I was damned from my very first puff, but even though I know I'll smoke again, I can't see it ever being a regular feature in my life like it was for a while.
Greenfish {busstopbread@hotmail.com}
Lilianna {hafabrit@aol.com}
melodie {misty_sauve18@hotmail.com}
ombra {ombrastarr@aol.com}
my mother smoked for a long time, and six-year-old curiousity demanded that these strange, bad-smelling smoky things HAD TO be tried by me, too. i am quite rare, because i asked my mother to try a cigarette.
she smiled and handed it over.
i took a puff, trying futilely to look adult and sophisticated.
i spent the next half an hour hacking and downing as much water as i could. somehow the water didn't stop the burning, and i realizing it was in my "air tube," not my "sozzle tube." i was dizzy, but the burning killed. eventually it went away.
the memory didn't.
i will never smoke. that much i know.
Verifeil {light_of_deadly_beauty@hotmail.com}
Marianne {MCScott4@hotmail.com}
Becky {BAHAMA1@webtv.net}
ashlee {arws3email@icqmail.com}
Forrest {forrestbrown@ireland.com}
maria {xx1maria@aol.com}
andrew
Im 21 now and 6 months ago I was in my friends car and he offered me a cigerette...and it was a menthol again. I lit up and coughed like hell. A week after that I bought a zippo...for the tricks actually...but every now and then I would feel lonely and light up.
I found this site looking for sites on the effects of menthol cigerettes. I've never tried to quit so far...but im sure ill try in the future.
auryn {third__I@hotmail.com}
Alex
i grabbed a Marloboro Light from my Mum's purse and went to the bathroom,and bent over the toilet chair(cos i had heard that you puke the first time you smoke)..and there i was,bending over the toilet chair,an unlit cigarette dangling from between my lips...i lit it and puffed like five times or so.It didn't tasted that great,and i didn't feel dizzy cos i didn't inhale..and the following months,i accepted to smoke with friends but still didn't inhale.
When i was 16,we went to Italy ,in a school trip,and there a girl taught me to inhale by saying:"HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,dad is here!!!"and while is said "HHHHHHHHHH" i inhaled all the smoke in the world..And i caughed.I felt dizzy,but i liked the feeling,like when i walked i didn't walk really steadily cos my head was spinning.Now i'm nearly 17,and i smoke everyday(5 cigs a day).I kinda like it,but i'm planning to quit in the near future.I' tried it,i know what it is,so i'll definitley quit.
Dylan.
Addict
Josh {sicktats@hotmail.com}
kelly johnson {kelkel4444@hotmail.com}
Space Munky {SpaceMonkey@cfl.rr.com}
I really didn't start smoking seriously at the time; I would buy a pack and it would sit in my bag for weeks; I'd end up giving away most of the cigarettes, maybe smoking three or four. Then I discovered cloves, and became a fiend. First it was a pack a week, then most of a pack a day. That's a lot of cloves; pretty soon I developed a nasty, painful cough, and quit for a month or two.
I started again when I found myself in a bar with a group of my friends. I was the only one who was underage and the only one who wasn't drinking; I sat around all night and felt bored and miserable and really, really wanted a beer. Then it occurred to me that a cigarette might be almost as good. I bought and smoked a pack of unfiltered Camels that night, which cheered me up immeasurably; since then I've been smoking a pack a day, more when I can afford it. I wouldn't give it up for anything or anyone.
Ishmael {ishmael@ecphrasis.com}
it wasn't until about 5 years later that i started smoking. my whole family smoked when i was younger....parents, grandparents, friends of my mum. the smell of smoke in the house, cigarette butts in the ashtray was normal. "smoking isn't for me" i told them. i was going to be the healthy one. the one who could say "no".
...i remember going to scout camp at the age of 14 and buying some smokes, smoking the whole packet in my tent with a mate and then buying some more. this was the start.
how could i tell anyone i smoked. especially after my vows to be a healthy non-smoker.
so for 12 years i have been in denial. at 26 people ask if i smoke and i always tell them....."no"
maybe i still belive i am that healthy person i promised i would be.
Jason Lloyd {jason.lloyd@wilcon.co.uk}
Krystle {EmeraldGreenLady@aol.com}
Reason #1: I didn't want to cough and look like a complete idiot
Reason #2: My mother worked at my school, and if she found out, she would literally KILL me.
That night, I sneakily stole one of my mom's First Class Menthol Lite's(now i can't stand them... they're extremely nasty), and I went down to her bathroom, where she smoked, and lit up the cigarette. I expected to cough my head off, like I had seen so many other people do, but I didn't, probably because I had been exposed to cigarette smoke from birth, but I felt extremely cool. Then next morning, when I asked a friend for a cigarette, she looked at me like I was a complete idiot. So I went outside to find my 'cool' friends up by the picnic shelter at the park, and got a cigarette, lit it, and expertly smoked it, without coughing. Everyone there was surprised, and said that they didn't think that I smoked. I told them that I had forever and found a new group of friends to hang out with. Now, I'm 16, a Junior in High School, and I can't seem to quit. I used to be able to go weeks without a cigarette, but now I can't seem to go even a day. It's a good thing I have friends that are old enough to buy cigarettes for me. But I never seem to have any money, my boyfriend is trying to get me to quit, and it's annoying when I am with friends that won't let me smoke in their cars, because even my mother finally lets me smoke in the car with her.
Rachelle Johnson {sweetfrogbaby@pawgear.com}
sam {unigolyn@hotmail.com}
fourteen years later i picked them up again at a party, this time stone cold sober for almost 10 years. clove cigarettes have always been tempting to me and finally i just gave in. i was able to smoke just occasionally or a few a day for many months but in less than a year i was a daily smoker, quit the gym, and was desperately trying to quit again.
elena {loftus@mediaone.net}
Andrew {JewishPlaya69@aol.com}
Gabby {redsugar_roxy@yahoo.com}
David
Pedro Rivera {CandCkrazy@hotmail.com}
Fat Tony
Erin {erinm19@hotmail.com}
ron
Jon
Now my stepmother had smoked the entire time I knew her and I hated her. I hated the way her voice sounded and I hated her smell and I hated the way she looked, so when Sean held out a Camel Wide for me to try, I cringed.
We were out, though, where all the smokers in the labs congregated. They tried to make us not smoke since we were all so very underage and they failed. So the least they could do was make us come inside the quad, where passing university officials were less likely to see us. But that was before that, and I've always believed that when in Rome...
It was horrifying. I'm fairly sure that, somehow, I didn't cough. Sean knew it was the first time I'd actually tried this and he understood, coaching me. It was almost like having sex for the first time. I stood up afterwards and stumbled a bit. I was, although I couldn't know it, buzzing like nobody's business.
Sometimes it still did that to me, years later.
evangeline {sweetevangeline@earthlink.net}
I first tried smoking when I was eight. I found a half-smoked butt in the ashtay (unusual for either of my parents to leave one unfinished), and tried to light it. I was so dumb, at first I puffed out on the cigarette instead of sucking on it. I got that part figured out, and started pilfering smokes from the packs that were always lying around.
I had heard my parents talk about how some people didn't inhale, and that meant they weren't really smoking. Of course I wanted to be a real smoker, and when I learned how to make it come out my nose, I thought I was "doing it right," but I found out I wasn't. One day, when I was fourteen, I had just filled my mouth with smoke when I hiccuped, drawing a big drag deep into my lungs. I don't recommend this method to anyone! I became violently ill and swore I'd never smoke again. Of course, as soon as the dizziness wore off, the fascination returned and I soon became a regular smoker, smoking for the next 35 years until quitting one year ago. I still miss it, and will probably start up again.
Mikey
phil {invalidaddress@yahoo.com}
M.J.P.
No, I didn't want to look cool. I was curious, at 16, you're curious about everything. And willing to act on it.
Bob smoked. Let me try one of those I said, as we prepared for another jaunt into St. Louis, the urban escape for our slow small-town southern illinois lives. Dave castigated me, I had promised him I would never smoke. Dave was not willing to act - yet.
A Marlboro red. Later, I would have another 50,000 or so. I didn't get sick, hardly coughed. I can't deny it was good, and got better, before getting much worse.
I'd raise a cigarette in your memory, Bob - if I hadn't give up that particular deadly habit. Dave was right, of course.
Jonathan
I hated it but wanted to smoke too at the same time. From my earliest memories I figured I would eventually be a smoker, even though I knew it was bad for you. I thought older boys who smoked looked "cool"--a cliche, I know. It's true, though--they looked like members of a secret club that was more fun than any other. In Cincinnati's East End neighborhood where I mostly grew up, kids and teenagers would smoke quite openly, on the street, in the park, on porches, waiting for the bus.
Those were the influences that had me stealing a book of matches and a few cigarettes from my mom's pack, lighting up on the sly. I loved it immediately even though it tasted like crap. Drag, blow, spit. If you see a kid smoking and spitting, you know he hasn't been at it for long. I was 8 years old.
I didn't inhale and didn't smoke enough to get addicted. I was content to smoke when I could and sometimes went months without smoking. Anyone who's smoked knows how it grows on you, and by the time I was 10 I was smoking more and starting to buy my own. Think a 10-year old can't buy cigartettes? Maybe today, but in 1987 it was easy enough.
I got caught by my mom a couple of times and always promised never to smoke again, but I was always lying. She worked and couldn't watch me all the time anyway. She told my dad, I think hoping he would keep an eye out, but he had a different reaction. When we were together he'd offer me a cigarette and light me up. Now I think that's strange but he always wanted to be more of a buddy than a father. "Don't tell your mother" was his mantra.
I smoked daily and was smoking about 10 cigarettes a day in the fifth grade. I don't recommend this to anyone. It's hard to deal with a cigarette craving and finding places to smoke without getting caught was a hassle. Other kids around my age were starting to smoke too, and we gravitated toward each other. I thought about smoking all the time, practiced making smoke rings, and got comfortable with other people knowing I was a smoker.
For a long time it was "don't-ask-don't-tell" with my mother, but eventually she got tired of me stealing off to smoke and told me to quit being a sneak and either stop smoking or smoke around her. I chose the latter. I was about 13-14 then. In high school I smoked a pack a day and really enjoyed it. Cigarettes are all-purpose little friends. They pick you up or calm you down. They're an antidote to boredom. A social crutch.
I dropped out of school in the 11th grade, which highly pissed my mom off, because she hadn't finished high school either. I hated school though, was bored and got beat up for being a "fag." No one there cared anyway. The teachers sucked. There wasn't a class I liked, although I did like to read. I'm basically self-educated
I worked at convenience stores and restaurants--dead end jobs. Got pierced and tattooed, drank some and smoked a lot. Basically fucked around like a young fuck-up on the way to nowhere.
Two years ago I got my GED and enrolled in community college. At 22 I was tired of my life and realized I wanted better than to be stuck like my parents. That was something I used to know but had ignored over the previous 5 years or so.
I don't know if it was nature or nurture, but I think I was born to smoke. I guess starting so young makes a difference, but I feel very natural smoking. Sometimes I get disgusted with the habit, but it never lasts long. I still smoke a pack a day, and I buy them by the carton because I don't plan to quit for a long time. I've been smoking more than half my life and being a smoker is part of who I am for better or for worse. I'm sure there will come a day when I'm ready to quit, but I don't see that yet. I'm 24, soon to be 25. I hope to finish school in another 3 years, and then become a writer.
Alex
I don't really remember my first cigarette. I remember stealing two from my aunt. They were Salem Lights. I was probably 12 or 13...in junior high. I went in the woods my my house and smoked them. Later on, I took some Marlboro Lights from a family friend, and smoked those. I don't remember a rush or anything, so I probably didn't inhale.
After that, I didn't smoke again until two years later, when I was spending the night at my aunt and uncle's. In the middle of the night, I went to the kitchen and took a Salem Menthol out of a pack that was sitting on the table. Then, I went in the bathroom, turned on the fan, and smoked it. I inhaled this time, and I didn't cough or anything...just felt the incredible sensation of the warm smoke being pulled into my lungs and released again. I didn't like the taste of the menthol, though. I was 15...a sophomore in high school.
I didn't smoke again until a week after my 18th birthday. It was midterms week at school, so we only had to be there during exam periods. With my exam schedule, I didn't have to go at all one of the days, so my mom had me run some errands for her since she works. I went into a convenience store to pick up some milk and stuff...and saw the huge selection of cigarettes behind the counter. Then I realized I was finally 18...I could buy them legally. I walked out of the store with a pack of Marlboro Lights. As I took the first drag off the first cigarette from that pack, I knew smoking was for me. I loved the taste, the dizzy feeling I got, the way the smoke curled up into nothingness, and the feeling of the cigarette dangling from my fingertips.
I am not a heavy smoker, maybe 2 or 3 a day, because I am afraid of getting caught. I only dare smoke more if I am going to a club or a concert where people will be smoking, because then if I am questioned for smelling like smoke, I can blame it on others. I have only been smoking a couple months--since I realized I could buy them. I have no regrets about starting, because I haven't loved anything so much for a really long time.
~*Smoking Diva*~
anonymous
My mother caught me when i was 13. She said since I inhaled and was smoking every day, it was too late to stop me. Within a week of getting her permission I went from 6 or 7 cigs a day to 12 or 13.
I am now 18 and wish I had never started. I smoke between a pack and a pack and a half a day of Benson and Hedges 100s. It seems my whole life revolves aroung when I can have my next cigarette. My 12 year old sister has started smoking and I feel responsible.
Beth R.
I lit the cigarette and took a long, deep drag. Dijarum unfiltered. Clove cigarettes. Sweet, raw, harsh, perfect. I could feel the smoke roll over my tounge like thick incense for the tastebuds, my lips suddenly sugary and slightly numb. I could feel my airway traced from the back of my mouth all the way down through both lungs in a hazy white sketch of pain.
I could feel it killing me.
Exhaling, the smoke did the same beautiful death-sketch back up through my nose. I could feel cilia cringe and curl as the smoke broke free and out the window. It was a glorious way of hurting myself. A subtle pain that only scarred my inside, not my arms where people might see and send me to a mental hospital.
(Nobody calls you crazy for simply smoking.)
I didn't even cough.
Instead, I took another drag and sighed. This was it. This was the ultimate, most subtle, surefire way of dying. And it was simply beautiful, feeling the scars mark the virgin territory of my lungs. I knew that I would never cut myself again. I'd found a better way to paint the pain of my soul.
Marie Sandin Eng {sulleneyes@aol.com}
Bum {haha@yahoo.com}
Biddie
Biddie
Sophie
Brian
Ross Valverde {rossco3456@yahoo.com}
It didn't taste as bad as I thought it would, but my parents came home and I had to pretend nothing happened (good thing I smoked it in the bushes in my side yard). I figured I wouldn't smoke again for a long time.
I smoked again 3 weeks later. I rolled 10 smokes and stole a lighter. I smoked 4 in a day, then 3 in a day, then 1 and I flushed the other 2 for fear I would get caught.
I smoked maybe one or 2 a day from then on out. Until Yesterday (9/23). My Step-dad found a soda can with 2 butts in it in my room. I got rid of them without him knowing and scince my mom and him had been arguing, my Mom figured he was just trying to get me in trouble.
I still smoke, and I am not ashamed of it. I can't smoke in my room much anymore because of what happened yesterday, so I started going up into the woods near the park in my town, and I smoke.
Still only between 1 and 4 a day though.
Matt
I didnt even care that I had hated my parents for smoking, for once they were cool. I went into my bathroom, shut the door, turned on the vent and cracked the window. I lit up my first cigarette on the toilette, and with every puff I got an erection. So you can see how I would become addicted to cigarettes, almost immediately.
I liked the coolness of the cigarette, but have grown to love the taste. I have since replaced the cigarette with Orbit chewing gum, and have found the taste of the gum to be much, much better than any cigarette I have ever puffed.
By the way, when I first started, I didnt inhale--then I started to inhale when I found I was doing it wrong. Before I quit smoking I would inhale the smoke seldomly==but never the less I was still addicted.
Greg Max
Peter
I remember once i got a sticker from a pal of mine "i wont smoke" it was from some lung organization in the USA.
Then wen doin my A'levels (high skool that is)
2 dudes in the class smoked so i just kindda like felt that i could try doin it!
So one day i asked our guard's son to get me a Dunhill (it was on my mind coz Dad used that brand in the past)i just hid behind our boundary wall!
but i couldn't inhale it n coughed wenever i did!
so i just puffed for the first time!
lolz!
Dad had a habit of smokin in the bathroom, so i'd takea bath as soon as he came out! i tuck in a cigarette in my underwear as well as a matchbox!
A few years later i applied in the army n had to stay in one of their testing centers for 3 days!
It was there that i inhaled the 1st cigarette n it was AWESOME.... The fact that i got selected didn't feel as good as the fact that i had actually grown up!
lolz!
Well a lil later wen i went to college in another town, i smoked for a year! heavily!
at times i'd smoke 3 packs of benson & hedges in a night!
I tried a whole lotta stuff then!
the next year wen i was home for a vacation i was just crashed into a black hole! an employee of ours was gettin fired n he told mom that i smoked!
So here i was in DEEP SHIT! i was grounded! In addition to that mom found out that my best friend did smoked tooo! so inorder to get even she called his mom tellin her that i n her son smoked together!
So i was out of the fryin pan into blazing fire!
Then oneday mom forced me to swear on the Holy Book that i wouldn't smoke again! Now here i am!
Under OATH! i can't break the oath!
I just parted with somethin that felt gr8 in life!
though i know i'm better off without it but still!
I miss the times id lay in the lawn n gaze at the starry sky n kiss my best pal! I miss Benson *sigh*
when i was 15, i went to stay with a friend in Ireland for a few months. -everyone- in ireland smokes. except for us americans... so i guess they kind of became a little more acceptable to me. i think i may have already tried a puff before this, but my friend and i found almost a full pack on the street. we coveted our newly found contriband, and ran home. later over cups of ciderwhile her mother wasn't home, we brought out the pack of cigs. "go ahead and try it," i said, "but i'm warning you: don't inhale. you'll regret it." so she promptly inhales and hacks coughs wheezes all over the kitchen. i told her so.
later the year after, i was at state 4-H camp. people up to the age of 21 attend, so they had a smoking section set up on the grounds, sex-segregated (?). many of my older girl friends smoked, so i hung out over there quite a bit, despite there being rules about underaged being there. a girl i knew from theatre, BJ, offered me a cig. i accepted. no hacking, no nothing... just buzzed as hell. i remember toddling off down the sidewalk back to my dorm.
after that, my friend from ireland and i stole them from my parents all the time. occasionally we'd be able to get them from the local kind-of-illegal store by flirting with the cashier-guy, and we'd buy about 10 packs at a time. marlboro reds, camel unfiltered & filtered... as long as it wasn't light or menthol. i've smoked ever since. i got my live-in boyfriend started again, and we buy 'em by the carton...
meagunn {mhart2@mix.wvu.edu}
then he pulled out a pack of tobacco and dished stick after stick for all of us present.
i hated smoking. i hated my dad for it. i hated the smell.
yet i took one that night. and another and another. in total i had six. drunk, high and totally dazed out, i lied on the floor, the ceiling spinning and me, laughing like a mad person.
and that night, i broke up with my ex on the phone. and i stole my dad's dunhills to drive away the sadness.
i haven't stopped smoking since.
k
After that I didn't try another cigarette until I was about 13 or 14. My dad was a smoker and I had asthma. Crazy enough though, I found myself with a cigarette in one hand and an inhaler in the other. Talk about nuts. I was standing outside at school on our lunch break, and everyone around me was smoking. It really was the cool thing to do at the time. So, I bumbed a few and continued to do so until I was 16 when I was finally able to buy cigarettes legally. A few months later the age limit changed to 18. However that didn't stop me since there were many stores that didn't care how old you were. Eventually, my parents caught on. In my most brilliant moment I decided they wouldnt notice if smoked out my bedroom window. My dad came in and almost beat the living crap outta me. They were ticked but I didn't care so of course I just kept right on smoking. Everyone of my friends smoked and it didn't take long before I stopped coughing and completely became hooked. Saddly,that was my goal.
I continued to smoke reguarly (about a pack a day) for about 10 years. At this moment ive been a non-smoker for about 8 hours. I'm on the patch. Here's hoping for the best!
Tammy {tclark_9@hotmail.com}
i think it was because my dad smoked around me all the time. it caught my curiosity i guess.
Todd Maurice {maurice251@hotmail.com}
michael baker {michaelbakerII@msn.com}
Few weeks later, I got 3 nose bleeds in 1 day. My mother got me and told me that I was smoking. I said no but Jesus said yes. Fuck u Jesus!
michael baker {michaelbakerII@msn.com}
Jenny Ritter {bcatch@bellsouth.net}
The real thing began when I must have been 13-14. I was in 7th grade. And in India kids that small (from decent families) just cannot smoke. But again the laws were meant to be broken.
There were few kids in the class - who thought that I was cool and demanded to try smoke. We bought 2 cig's went to a park. There we tried out our might and vigor and lo there it was. By the time I reached 15, I smoked too much. Today at 24 – I feel half dead.
Yeeee {yogijoy@rediffmail.com}
The time is now: march 21th 2004. I am writing my entry here. Next to me, a cigarette is burning and in my deepest voids of my deranged brain, I think it's cool.
wim {balancedchaos2003@hotmail.com}
when i was a kid, i hated it
i broke her cigarettes in two
i flushed them down the toilet
i screamed at her that she was going to give me asthma (this was the early 80's. we weren't so sure about the second hand smoke thing yet.)
i swore i would never EVER be so inconsiderate and malevolent as to subject other human beings to something so horrid.
all through my teenage years, i never drank or smoked. everyone i knew did, however, and they would all offer me cigarettes and then be suprised when i said i didn't smoke.
just when i was growing out of the peer pressure sector, i discovered Bukowski and coffee shops and mark, the dreadlocked henry rollins fan.
it was so great to take a drag from his cigarette, begging my lungs not to reject and turn me blue. so i guess, i could say my first cigarette perhaps dragged out over an entire pack of drags.
it took a couple of years and a shitty retail job to really cement the habit. and then restaurant work really did me in.
and now i flirt daily with quitting. i almost invent crisis to justify it.
but i will quit.
i will.
courtenay
umhj
I am now 45 and my wife and i still smoke. We also have to daughters the smoke one 13 and one 15. I say there is nothing wrong with smoking.
Jimmy
John B.
Harrison {GHT187@nc.rr.com}
And then ...
When I was 15, my younger sister almost died. She lived in the timeless drain of tubes and nurses and intensive care. My parents were never around. I started smoking, breathing in the smoke and crying and coughing and choking and spewing bile in my parent's bathroom. Soon I found reasons to believe I enjoyed smoking and by the time I was 20, I was up to a pack a day and up until a few months ago, I was still going strong.
20 years from the day I started, I quit. I'm glad I did.
Kenny
a few days ago a girl i hang out with told me i was a nerd because i had never had alcahol and because i liked to read. I have never been called a nerd before and it hurt. After reading this page i worry about what i will be called when i refuse to smoke a fag. I wonder will i have to ahng out with the boys who create comics where the characters are 2D shapes if i choose not to start a habit i will regret.
Ellen
Upon our arrival we proceeded to get wasted...and while I had smoked while drunk before, this particular weekend was different because it was pretty much three straight days of drinking. And so over that weekend I bummed probably over a pack total from numerous people.
After that weekend I started buying my own and smoking whether I was drunk or not.
I'm a sophomore in college. I have my whole life to quit smoking, but I don't know if I want to. I guess you could say every time I light another cigarette, the memories of that amazing weekend remain fresh in my mind.
A girl.
It took me 26 years to quit. I could smoke one 4 feet long today, 2 years later, a Marlboro red, please. Starting to smoke is the only thing I am sure I would not do over if I could go back and do it all again. My trick to finally quit - I have promised myself that I can smoke again on my 80th birthday. I don't have to quit forever, just for the time being. After all, something is going to kill me; if I make it to 80, I choose cigs. A lovely fresh Marlboro red, please.
bruce {gusbowman@bellsouth.net}
I quit entirely once grade 9 started. I lasted about a year, and then I started smoking cigars. I wanted badly to go back to cigarettes because I liked smoking, but I was deathly afraid of being caught..... It was the image of sophistication that attracted me to cigars. I developed a passion for the things when I was 14 or so, but "real" cigars got too expensive and so I started buying packs of little wine-tipped cigarillos. I went through a couple packs (or three) a week until I was 15; and by then I was back to cigarettes. I didn't much care about caught anymore. Cigarettes were far cheaper and I had friends now who were old enough to buy for me. On new years, which was shortly after I turned 15, I got my first pack of smokes.
They were JPS... also known as the 'black death' around here; because not only are they the strongest smokes you can buy in Canada, they also come in a plain black pack with gold lettering. So began my life as a real smoker. I bought JPS because they were so strong, so I figured I wouldn't need to smoke as many of them. I was wrong. I loved the taste, no other cigarette came close (and still doesn't). Besides, they also had the best looking pack around.
I went though usually four packs of JPS a week from when I was 15 till I was 18. Sometimes if I was drinking (yes, underage...) I'd chain a whole pack away in one night. Finally, almost immediately after I turned 18, I managed to catch a really bad case of bronchitis that was going around that winter. It lasted for almost a month, and the cough stuck around for another 2 months on top of that. I decided then and there that I would quit, not because I particularly felt like quitting (I loved smoking and still do), but because the strain on my lungs on top of the bronchitis was just too much.
I lasted three days without a single cigarette. But on the fourth day I broke down and got a pack. I still planned to quit, but cold turkey was obviously out of the question so I got myself a pack of Player's Filter, which are one level down from JPS. They didn't have the rich strong taste of JPS which I so liked, but they were a bit less bad for me and I planned to work my down the various strengths of smokes until they got so weak that I could quit without any problem. That idea unfortunately didn't work out. From then until now (I'm 19 as I write this) I've been smoking away almost a pack of Player's Filter a day, sometimes more. I tried Player's Light a couple times (the next step down) but I found I smoked way too many of them to compensate for the lack of nicotine. Now I don't even care anymore, I'll quit when I'm ready.
Smoking gives me an excuse to talk to people. It gives me an excuse to take breaks at work. It's something to do when I'm bored. When I'm stressed. All the good times of my life are associated with smoking... cruising around with friends till the wee hours of the morning, smoking and listening to the radio, smoking and shooting the shit with people outside of school or work, smoking at all the parties, smoking outside at 3am in summertime and looking out over the sleeping city... smoking has been there for all of that. It just wouldn't feel right without a smoke.
E.
Tim {navillus2005@yahoo.com}
homer simpson
Suzzy
i still smoke to this day.
n/a {n/a}
I would usually have 1 out of that pack every night or every other night before I went to bed. I know I got very high on them when I first started so that got me coming back for more and before I knew it, I was addicted.
I didn't smoke until I was 21 or so. I had smelled friends smoking cloves and rather liked the smell. So, one night at the club, I bummed one. The filter tip was sweet, the smoke flavorful. It was another prop to make me feel less exposed and self-conscious...a beer...a cigarette. Since the cloves were so harsh, for about 6 months I only smoked two on Saturday night when I went to the club.
When I started working at a domestic violence shelter, I discovered that everyone there smoked. If you didn't join them on the smoke breaks, you'd be left to answer the crisis line. I thought that was fine--I'll just bring my cloves with me. For some reason, they teased me about smoking cloves. So I bought some Marlboro Lights instead because that's what my friends had smoked (when I had chided them for starting). I soon switched to Camel Lights for some unknown reason. Smoking was not only a way to bond with my coworkers, but it was also a way to bond with the residents of the shelter. The smokeroom was a place where the kids weren't allowed. It reeked, but it was an indoor haven where I wasn't the worker and she the victim...we were just two people having a cigarette. I smoked at the club, I smoked at work, and, eventually, I started smoking at home.
I kept this a secret from most people, especially my parents. One day when they were visiting I got my cellphone out of my purse to take a call. I left my purse open on the table. My mom saw my cigarettes and asked whose they were. I told her they were mine. It was the most hurt look I had ever seen on her face. I felt like I had just plunged a knife into her gut. After seeing that face, I quit for a month. I started back because smoking was still a good way to bond with the clients.
Since I didn't date much, I smoked more when I got a boyfriend. Although I told him I was only smoking socially since I wasn't working at the shelter anymore. I would actually have a cigarette right after he would leave my house. I would also smoke on campus, wherever. Since I only smoked outside and chomped Altoids, I didn't smell like it too badly. It was 8 minutes of time when I could be alone and just think about him. Though we've broken up, I still spend my lonely smoke breaks thinking about him.
In the past year, I've quit twice for a total of six months or so. The only way that has happened is for me to have bets with fellow smokers--2 cigarettes are allowed on the weekends, any other cigarettes cost $30 to the other person. Chewing the nicotine gum helped a lot (the Equate brand doesn't taste too bad and was cheaper than Nicorette). A week and a half ago my roommate and I dropped the bet after drinking way too much. I was afraid that I would get back to my old habit of 3 pks/week. So far I'm only having two per day, but that's more than I want to be doing. I'm only smoking in the evenings and have no desire to smoke at work (I moved a couple months ago). I want to start the bet again, but I'm enjoying my smoke breaks. I'm just enjoying them a little more than I want to.
Jen {hennywenny@excite.com}
The first cigarette i ever tried was a brand called Lambert and Butler (again in the UK). It was when i was 8 years old and we were playing down by the harbour in a scottish town called Oban. my friend Amy was a couple of years older than me and was already smoking. Her parents knew and didn't mind - they even gave her money for cigarettes! We were sitting on the shore and i just came out with it and asked if i could try one of hers. i was expecting her just to pass the one she was puffing on but no - i had let myself in for the full experience. she took another fresh cigarette from that silver and black stripy packet. the end of the filter was totally white. she passed it to me filter-first and went on to tell me how to smoke.
i'll always remember the way she instructed me:
- put the filter in your mouth but be careful not to let your tongue touch the end of it as it'll get wet
- just before you light it, start to suck on it like a straw
at this point she passed me her lighter - i was really impressed cos she had a sparkling and shiny zippo metal lighter (i've now had one for 4 years and only managed to set my hand on fire once!)
i put the lambert and butler in my mouth and flicked open the lid of the lighter. the smell of lighter fluid was really strong but at the same time it smelled really nice. there was no wind and i flicked the wheel, creating the famous 'zip' sound. the flame was several centimeters high. I moved the lighter closer to my face, and the cigarette and started sucking on the filter. at that point i lit my first ever cigarette. i remember thinking to myself 'oh my god i'm smoking, i'm actually smoking'
At first i didn't know what to do. i closed the lighter and gave it back to amy. i took the cigarette out of my mouth and looked at it, between the fingers of my left hand. it was really light, i thought it would have been heavier than that, i thought the burning end would have felt heavy and wieghed it down.
i put it in between my lips once more and sucked another mouthful of smoke, blowing it out straight away. amy asked me if i liked it and i didn't know what to say. it was all very new to me. should i like it?
i didn't answer. i just looked at her and put the cigarette into my mouth again and took another mouthful of blue, hot, wispy smoke. i asked amy how to inhale and she told me. the easiest way was to learn by taking a mouthful of smoke and then just breathing in normally. i did this and coughed a little. she said to try it a few times until i got used to it, which i did. then i burned my finger as the heat got down through the filter. amy took pity on me and passed me another to light. she told me not to just take a mouthful of smoke as i lit it, but this time to actually breathe in through the cigarette.
i flicked the zippo again and put the flame up to my 2nd cigarette, breathing in through it at the same time. it tasted very diferent that time. i could taste the lighter fuel in the smoke and it tasted really nice. i didn't cough up as the smoke went down into my chest. i just breathed in and held it there for a couple of seconds before starting to breathe out again - the plume of blue smoke came out fo my mouth and drifted off on the light breeze.
i felt wonderful. i was now a smoker. amy and i had 2 cigarettes each that morning and then we went back into Oban town.
As i grew up i carried on smoking. at first it would be when i would bump into amy and she would give me one (or 3) of hers. but then my parents found out when i was 10 and although they weren't pleased, they also weren't surprised. i wasn't allowed to smoke at home but my dad did sneak me the odd packet of cigarettes here and there (nice one dad!)
i took to smoking like a duck to water. i had no problem inhaling. my favourite brand in the uk was one called Regal King Size, in a white pack with a two-tine blue diagonal stripe down the front. the smoke tasted sweet and earthy and was not too strong so that it hurt the throat.
i think i was responsible for about 8 or 9 other kids in my class starting to smoke at school.
for my 12th birthday my dad bought me my own zippo lighter - a chrome one. it was when i filled it for the first time that i managed to set my hand on fire. i was a bit careles with the fluid and my aim was poor. i must have missed the lighter padding and doused my right hand... when i put the lighter back together i took a cigarette in my left hand and into my mouth and flicked the lighter with my right thumb. the flame shot across my right hand and i felt heat like i'd never felt before... happy birthday jamie!!! (Note to brain, be careful when filling this thing up! It burns extremely hot!)
That was 4 years ago adn i'm now 16. if i were still living in the uk i'd just have turned old enough to buy cigarettes for myself, but i live in the crappy USA now and i sometimes get refused. i wish i lived in england still.
Yeh i'm 16 and i still smoke. i still use my zippo which is now on its fourth wick and 6th flint. i sometimes use matches although they smell crappy and make the cigarette taste bad.
jamie daniels
then came 17, i found 3 whole cigarettes on the grass, went home and gave it a shot, i remember it like it was yesterday, i inhaled and everything around me went black and i blinked again and all i saw was floor.
mr.bobo {bobo2dodo@hotmail.com}
My aunt new I was curious as to what smoking was like. Id always experiment a bit with her, you know holding the unlit cig pretending to flick the ashes, putting it in your mouth and inhaling to see what it tastes like and feel like your smoking.
One night i was in her room, she had a pack of marlboro light lying around and I picked up the pack to jokingly see if there was any in there. She asked if i wanted to take them home with me, I said no.
She than proceeded to ask me if i wanted to go downstairs and smoke a cigarette with her. I said sure. She had her marlboro mediums but she stuck one light in the pack because she knew i wanted to try one of those. We get downstairs she takes out her medium and takes out the light for me. She tells me where the lighter is and I pick it up. I was terribley nervous and she told me not to do it because she could tell.
Needless to say I had to prove her wrong, so in my mouth went the cig, the flame touched it and i got a huge lungful of smoke. I had managed to inhale without coughing and took 4 drags of that cig before putting it out.
Since than Ive taken a the last few drags of one of my other aunts marlboro lights, a drag of the first ones medium, one of my friends misty menthol ultra lights. That was the first time i ever smoked a whole cigarette. I enjoyed that one alot more than the other times.
Since than ive smoked a whole marlboro light with my aunt who smokes those regularly, and ive taken a few drags of a full flavor USA Gold menthol. Just to see if i could handle it.
Ive been thinking about asking my aunt for a cig, ive been wanting to have one latley, to experience it again.
Bob {floydalpha9@yahoo.com}
andrew |
smoking how I started what it was like how I quit
