JillUser

Join Date 11/2003

+17

What Makes a Person Take up Smoking?

I am truly intrigued about what makes a person take up smoking. I don't know any person that liked it right off the bat. So why work at learning a habit you know is so bad for you? What is the appeal.

People deny that it had anything to do with peer pressure. If it isn't peer pressure, what is it? Please, if you have an explaination, share it. I am not being judgemental and won't rip on you for commenting. I am just simply trying to understand because people I care about are so totally addicted.

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I really don't know why I started as it's been years and years ago. I did quit in 1998 however and here's a couple of blogs on the subject

Link

Link

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I really don't know what it was for me. I've always been able to put it down and pick it up whenever I felt like it. I started when I was 18 and working in a bar (in England). I bummed one off a customer one night, decided I liked it, and bought some of my own. I didn't smoke between 1992 and 1997 (pregnancies), and it's never been a regular thing since then. I am the envy of my smoking friends - I don't have withdrawls, I don't have cravings, and it doesn't bother me to see someone else smoke.

I just stopped again recently, actually. I don't smoke in the house, or the vehicles, and it was getting to be a pain in the rear to get up and go out for a smoke....so i stopped.

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I don't think there is an exact answer Jill. I just wish I could drop them like dharma. I don't smoke in the house
but even when it's cold or hot, i don't just put them down. Soon though.

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Always wanted to smoke, ever since I was young, I have no idea why. No one in my immediate family smoked and when I took it up, neither did my friends. Agreed SSG, I wish I could just drop them too, but I can't put the bastards down. I guess subconciously I don't really want to...yet.

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I was brought up in a household where my father smoked constantly.. I remember hiding them from him and him going psycho on me until I would give them back to him. I started smoking then when I was about 14, I used to pinch my mums alpines..(yukko) then gave it up and then on my 16th birthday brought a packet of my own and went to the park and smoked them until I was sick. Then stopped again and then started again about a year ago after trying to give up pot smoking from smoking pot because of the severe nausea I was experiencing from the drugs, so I stopped pot and kept on the tobacco that was in the mix. Actually gave up smoking when I was in hospital recently for 16 days and started again last week when I was having withdrawals and it made my head feel a little better with the nicotine, but I have cut down from one packet a day to 2 cigarettes a day. Hopefully down to zero soon.

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I don't smoke. Never have, never will. But I always felt that it had something to do with the fact that smoking was something that kids weren't supposed to do, and so they did - to flaunt the rules or to spite their parents.

Everyone that I know who smoked started before they were legally allowed to. None of them ever dared let their parents know that they did it. One of my friends went for years before his parents found out - well into his late 20's!

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Well, I don't smoke and I don't like it. Besides the occasional rare cigar.

However, with most things that I have learnt to really, really like, I rarely liked them at the beginning. Coffee, whisky, beer and wine all took some time to get used to and additional time to appreciate. Nowadays, they are the pillars of life.

Perhaps smoking is the same way. I don't feel like trying smoking, though, the health risks are just too unappealing.

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In my case, it was my older sister who started me.

I was about 10 or 12 years old, and busted her smoking at the rear of our back garden, in the cubby house. **(ps... where did that word come from? Whats a cubby?)

I told her I was going straight upstairs to tell mum, but she convinced me to have a "puff." .... As soon as I took the puff she said "Ha! ...now you can't say anything, coz I'll put you in too!"

We split the cost of a packet for years afterwards, and I've smoked on and off ever since.

Gave up for three years once, but was pickled to the eyeballs in a nightclub one night, and looked down at my hand to se a half gone cigarette there. My buddies told me it was about the tenth one for the night. I had no idea I'd smoked at all that night, ....till I saw that one in my hand.

Cigarette companies had free reign on advertising back then, and they produced all kinds of ad's featuring young folks, and preaching how cool it was if you smoked.

....Come to where the cancer is, .....come to Marlboro Country! (Funny how that guy in the ad's departed the land of the living eh?....NOT!)

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JillUser

Join Date 11/2003

+17

Coffee, whisky, beer and wine all took some time

I liked coffee and wine right off the bat. Never did and still don't like beer or whiskey.

Looks like family has the most influence on whether or not a person smokes. My parents never smoked but didn't say they would kill us if we did. They just pointed out how nasty it is and smoking is the reason my grandma had a heart attack at age 42. I also had plenty of great aunts and uncles with yellowed teeth and nails, knarly breath and emphysema or lung cancer. Never found that appealing.

I can see if my parents smoked why I might think it was okay. I love my parents dearly and have always thought they really had it together. So if they smoked, what could be so bad about it?

I was never really the rebellious type. My sister, on the other hand, whoa! Telling her she couldn't do something was basically demanding she go out and do it. I saw her turn green trying to smoke and that really sealed the deal for me. I'm not a big fan of throwing up so I tend to stay clear of things that cause it.

I really appreciate the input and think I am learning from it.

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I didn't start smoking cigarettes after I had started smoking pot regularly. I learned from an Englishman how to roll "spliffs" which are a cigarette with marijuana and tobacco with a little cardboard crutch where the filter went. Then, when I started to work in an office environment and I couldn't really step outside to smoke a spliff, I started smoking cigarettes on my breaks. When we had Caleb (my first son) I stopped smoking both shortly thereafter. I didn't smoke anything for three years, then started a job where I started smoking again on my breaks. Now that I've moved from California to Colorado, I've kept my promise to myself to be smoke-free. Seven months...so far so good. No gum. No patch. I just stopped.

The thing is, I enjoy smoking. Even though you get ash-tray breath, I liked the flavour of the smoke (I smoked roll-your-own filterless cigarettes). I'll have a cigar every now and again, and I like those too for the flavour. All of my friends and my sister-in-law (who's up to a pack a day) don't know how I can just up and quit on a dime. Chalk it up to willpower, I guess.

-- B

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It's been 4 years since I started smoking, and I regret ever starting. When you're a teenager there is a higher emphasis on your social peers, consequently, all my peers smoked. The old cliched everyone's doing it bit.

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I smoked for 14 years (started at 13) then quit for 6. Everything was going well, untill i was on a business trip and got real stressed out and started again. There are a lot of reasons why people start, many of which have already been listed here. It's a vile habit. When you start, it tastes horrible, and you get light headed. Gradually you start to enjoy the buzz and your body gets conditioned to it. Thats where the addiction starts.

Speaking of which.....time for a smoke!

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The worst habit I ever started. Still have it today. Damn!

I started when I was 15 because it was very cool back then. Got sick, but kept working at it until it no longer made me sick.
How "sick' is that?

I've tried quitting many times. Went 6 months one time. But in a weak moment, I ended up pulling into a convenience store, and was in heaven again. Got a little bit dizzy, but it was a welcome dizziness. My friend was back.

I remember sneaking out in back of the gym to have a smoke when I was in high school. Last year, when I went to one of my kids games, I found myself, out in the back of the gym, having a smoke.
Talk about going the full circle.

When I do quit, I'm miserable. I don't wish to live to be 80 and be miserable getting there.

I had a friend that quit for two years. He died in a helicopter crash.
Boy, would I be pissed.

The worst habit I ever took up.

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KarmaGirl

Join Date 03/2001

+118

Looks like family has the most influence on whether or not a person smokes.

I don't know if that is it or not. I think it's more of a personality flaw than anything, maybe a weakness, or a desire to be like other people. I am like Dharma and pick it up and leave it at will. The first time that I ever smoked I was probably under 13 and tried when one of my "friends" at the roller skating rink was smoking. I got sick a couple times from it, but it got better after awhile. I don't think that anyone can explain why you would want to inhale deadly agents, but it obviously has an allure for many. I then "socially" smoked in high school with other friends who did it, but I never had the strong desire like some do to keep smoking. (Guess I just have never become "addicted" to it). I never really gave a thought to what family members did. Of course, when I was a teen, I don't think that I gave a thought to much at all

My husbands parents both smoke, and smoke a lot. Both him and his brother absolutely hate it and can't even stand the smell of it- his sister smokes, though. Of course, she also smokes other things, but that is a totally different topic

I am addicted to caffeine, though, and you can't make me stop!!!!!! <insert evil laughter>

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I myself, can honestly say it was "peer pressure". Never really tried to quit, even though I want to, I just can't seem to kick the habbit.

well, got to go smoke now,

:0)~

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I think it's generally peer pressure that gets people to try smoking. Family may have something to do with it, but perhaps there's more of a genetic disposition fueling that angle.

I'm pretty sure that smoking makes you look cool. It's silly, and we all know about the hacking cough, premature wrinkles yellowed skin, teeth and nails that result, but picture that mysterious woman sitting alone at the end of the bar lighting her cigarette, or the guy flipping closed his zippo lighter, cigarette dangling from lips.
Not to mention, it seems that, at least up until recently, everyone in the movies smoked, making the habit seem more acceptable, if not "cool."

Kudos to my dad and mom who've each quit after smoking full time for 20 and 40 years, respectively. Because of them, I'll never buy the excuse that it's "too hard" to quit.

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I never understood it, either; if you're sitting around a campfire, and the wind changes, blowing the smoke into your face, you cough and move, right? Then why inhale the shit directly into your lungs?
My mom was almost a chainsmoker who died from renal complications of a stroke at 42. My dad was a three-pack-a-day man until he died of brain cancer at the age of 61. The cancer that killed him started in his lungs; they found it after he'd had a heart attack. To the end, he argued that it wasn't the 52 years of smoking, or the years and years of hanging out in beer joints, inhaling concentrated second-hand smoke. He maintain resolutely that it was the 4 or 5 years he spent working in a brake shop, making asbestos brake shoes. No sign of asbestosis was found in his lungs, I might add.
I don't smoke, never even tried it, honestly, and my dad never understood how that was, with my having two chimneys for parents. Guess I just dodged the bullet.

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If that's true, why not just stop forever?

Because I like it, that's why. It's like a person who enjoys a beer every so often...they're not addicted, they're not an alcoholic, they just like the occasional drink. That's how I feel about smoking.

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