I started at 11. Newports. Ugh. I can't even smoke a Newport now. I never did to to be "cool" or fit in, it was just something I was always around with my mother so it was kind of second nature.
Spin-Off of the 'When did You Start Smoking' Thread, WHY did You Start Smoking?
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For me it was the dumb boy who I thought looked so cool with a cigarette, and I wanted him to think I, this 13 yr old zit-speckled girl, was cool too. 
He and I were off and on throughout most of high school, but it was the 70s, most people smoked, pretty much everywhere. We even had a smoking area at school. So even after he was gone and my family moved to another town, I still smoked, and the new school had a smoking area too; I was a senior in HS by then, and smoking was just "part" of me, and most of my friends smoked too.
Andria
He and I were off and on throughout most of high school, but it was the 70s, most people smoked, pretty much everywhere. We even had a smoking area at school. So even after he was gone and my family moved to another town, I still smoked, and the new school had a smoking area too; I was a senior in HS by then, and smoking was just "part" of me, and most of my friends smoked too.Andria
Thanks for sharing guys, feels good to know that there isn't a "stupid" reason for picking up smoking.
As for me, i tried my first cigarette at 16. I used to chill at my grandparents place, and had an uncle that was still living with em. Whenever he was out i'd be at his room watching movies. Eventually i found an open pack and curiosity got the better of me. Tried it a few times, got headaches and then never touched cigs till i was 18 at college. For someone like who was not good with socializing, smoking helped me make friends. I felt more comfortable and at ease when i had a cigarette. Irony is my dad quit smoking because he and my mom had me. Funny how i kept telling myself i'd quit when it was my turn to start a family.
As for me, i tried my first cigarette at 16. I used to chill at my grandparents place, and had an uncle that was still living with em. Whenever he was out i'd be at his room watching movies. Eventually i found an open pack and curiosity got the better of me. Tried it a few times, got headaches and then never touched cigs till i was 18 at college. For someone like who was not good with socializing, smoking helped me make friends. I felt more comfortable and at ease when i had a cigarette. Irony is my dad quit smoking because he and my mom had me. Funny how i kept telling myself i'd quit when it was my turn to start a family.
I tried cigarettes to see how they are - like most kids do.
But I took up smoking for real when I found out that smoking deadens hunger pangs. You see, I wanted to be fashionably thin, the way all those allegedly beautiful women are portrayed in the media.
That was in the 1970s, it has got much worse in the meantime, look at all those emaciated skeletons being portrayed as "models". Models for what? For developing a serious eating disorder? To get girls to buy diet crap? To get girls to start a career of yoyo diets, ruining their metabolism to a point where they can hardly eat anything without gaining weight immediately? Until their bellies are so stretched out that they can never be slim again without a "tummy tuck" operation?
- Been there, done that. With the exception of the "tummy tuck". Forget it. I "just quit" my 16 years of starvation diets when I turned 30. Gained 40 pounds in 20 years - and I feel great. Yeah, I went from an emaciated, starvation-diet size 5 to a size 14. So what?
All my younger life, I used to smoke instead of eating - and when I stepped out of that vicious circle of dieting - gaining weight - dieting etc etc , I used to smoke instead of snacking on unhealthy stuff like chips and chocolate. I used to smoke to pick me up, to calm me down, to collect my thoughts, to busy my hands, to reward myself (with a nice smoke break) ... to do anything.
You see, that cigarette had been the only thing to sustain me for the 16 years of my eating disorder. And once you have had a serious eating disorder... you will never be completely free when it comes to food. Never. You can live without touching alcohol or illegal drugs. But you cannot live without touching food.
Well, at 51 I bought an e-cig - to cut down on smoking too much in the evenings, as I had really been overdoing it. - Started up that 1st e-cig, thought "wow, this rocks" and made the transition to vaping immediately, effortlessly and with great pleasure.
Now I use my PV the way I used cigarettes (see above).
And I am very happy with it indeed. Harms me a lot less, does not harm or bother others at all. What is there not to like?
This is my story.
And if you ever see any postings by me, if you ever see my cold fury at those so-called "public health" so-called "experts" who want to take this healthier alternative away from me - for the sole reason that my smoking filled their pockets and my vaping does not - then you know why.
But I took up smoking for real when I found out that smoking deadens hunger pangs. You see, I wanted to be fashionably thin, the way all those allegedly beautiful women are portrayed in the media.
That was in the 1970s, it has got much worse in the meantime, look at all those emaciated skeletons being portrayed as "models". Models for what? For developing a serious eating disorder? To get girls to buy diet crap? To get girls to start a career of yoyo diets, ruining their metabolism to a point where they can hardly eat anything without gaining weight immediately? Until their bellies are so stretched out that they can never be slim again without a "tummy tuck" operation?
- Been there, done that. With the exception of the "tummy tuck". Forget it. I "just quit" my 16 years of starvation diets when I turned 30. Gained 40 pounds in 20 years - and I feel great. Yeah, I went from an emaciated, starvation-diet size 5 to a size 14. So what?
All my younger life, I used to smoke instead of eating - and when I stepped out of that vicious circle of dieting - gaining weight - dieting etc etc , I used to smoke instead of snacking on unhealthy stuff like chips and chocolate. I used to smoke to pick me up, to calm me down, to collect my thoughts, to busy my hands, to reward myself (with a nice smoke break) ... to do anything.
You see, that cigarette had been the only thing to sustain me for the 16 years of my eating disorder. And once you have had a serious eating disorder... you will never be completely free when it comes to food. Never. You can live without touching alcohol or illegal drugs. But you cannot live without touching food.
Well, at 51 I bought an e-cig - to cut down on smoking too much in the evenings, as I had really been overdoing it. - Started up that 1st e-cig, thought "wow, this rocks" and made the transition to vaping immediately, effortlessly and with great pleasure.
Now I use my PV the way I used cigarettes (see above).
And I am very happy with it indeed. Harms me a lot less, does not harm or bother others at all. What is there not to like?
This is my story.
And if you ever see any postings by me, if you ever see my cold fury at those so-called "public health" so-called "experts" who want to take this healthier alternative away from me - for the sole reason that my smoking filled their pockets and my vaping does not - then you know why.
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I started when I was 14 because it was the cool thing to do. Both my parents were smokers. I smoked until my 50th birthday. I used good cigalikes to get off the stinkies and used my first vaporizer a couple of months after that. I have never looked back.
I started way to young but it wasn't to be cool or anything like that I just wanted to blow smoke rings!!! I would steal cigs from my parents and hide on the side of my house smoking and trying to learn those damn smoke rings!! I think it was a few years before any of my friends even knew.....lol!! Good topic funny to go back down memory lane.... what's left of it ....hahaha
My story is the classic misspent youth, I started hanging with the (un)cool kids who smoked and was all "yeh of course I smoke"! That was probably at about 14, but I didn't start regularly smoking until like 15-16 though but it was easy to get them here as it was legal to smoke at 16 until recently over here.
Realistically I was probably influenced by my parents who both smoked heavily, my dad quit the hard way a few years ago and my mum recently started vaping with me! I remember being really young and pretending a pen/crayon was a cig or buying candy cigs (still think its shocking they sell these!).
I just hope I've changed early enough to not influence my 7 year old son into smoking. His dad quit a few years ago but the sight of me and his gran out in the garden smoking cigs was something he saw regularly. So I'm trying to be open with him about my vaping but still telling him that he should never do either, or I'll kick his ....! [emoji14]
Realistically I was probably influenced by my parents who both smoked heavily, my dad quit the hard way a few years ago and my mum recently started vaping with me! I remember being really young and pretending a pen/crayon was a cig or buying candy cigs (still think its shocking they sell these!).
I just hope I've changed early enough to not influence my 7 year old son into smoking. His dad quit a few years ago but the sight of me and his gran out in the garden smoking cigs was something he saw regularly. So I'm trying to be open with him about my vaping but still telling him that he should never do either, or I'll kick his ....! [emoji14]
It was 6 months or more after the smokers in my high school peer group stopped offering and trying to get me to smoke. I was at a party and had split my lip badly after rolling down a hill in a tractor inner tube. There was just one big rock on that hill and the half dozen or so riders before me had no problems avoiding it. After having the goody goody sub-group asking me if I was okay every 10 min or over a two hour period I wandered down to a jetty where the smokers were hanging out. After chatting for about 15 minutes I asked a friend for a cigarette. I have no idea why.
I've just remembered it was a farewell party for a friend (well liked by all social cliques in the school), my sub group went to trouble of giving him a gift to remind him of home - his street sign.
I've just remembered it was a farewell party for a friend (well liked by all social cliques in the school), my sub group went to trouble of giving him a gift to remind him of home - his street sign.
I started inhaling burning substances when I was 15 or 16 and it wasn't tobacco. I stopped that in my early 20's.
I then had a sore throat and someone gave me some cultsfoot mixed with spearmint. When I ran out of that, and I was at a party having a few drinks, I smoked my first menthol cigarette. I was 25 or so at that time. About 3-4 years later I quit smoking cigarettes until I was 34 or 35. I was in a traffic jamb on I 95 traveling from New London Connecticut to NY and the person that was riding with me wasn't upset at all and enjoying his cigarettes. I asked for one and until 95 days ago continued smoke those nasty things. I am now in my 63 year of life soon to start my 64 year.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Hopefully I will never lite up another analog as long as I'm on this earth.
I then had a sore throat and someone gave me some cultsfoot mixed with spearmint. When I ran out of that, and I was at a party having a few drinks, I smoked my first menthol cigarette. I was 25 or so at that time. About 3-4 years later I quit smoking cigarettes until I was 34 or 35. I was in a traffic jamb on I 95 traveling from New London Connecticut to NY and the person that was riding with me wasn't upset at all and enjoying his cigarettes. I asked for one and until 95 days ago continued smoke those nasty things. I am now in my 63 year of life soon to start my 64 year.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Hopefully I will never lite up another analog as long as I'm on this earth.
I wanted to rebel and I knew smoking cigs would make my parents mad. Fast forward 16 years and I'm a 31 year old who can no longer breathe without rattling. Thank goodness for vaping. Three times I had quit for more than a year and always went back in times of stress and anger. A couple puffs on my vape, I am a cool cucumber again in those times now.
I started smoking for a completely different reason than most I suppose.
I was about 9 when when I figured out that if I swiped one of my dads cigarettes I could make the throat ticks go away (Tourette's Syndrome). That was in 1949 or 50. So by the time I outgrew the Tourette's as a teenager I was already hooked. Then I found that deep down inside, I liked smoking and didn't want to quit. So any attempt to try to quit was doomed before I ever tried.
I was about 9 when when I figured out that if I swiped one of my dads cigarettes I could make the throat ticks go away (Tourette's Syndrome). That was in 1949 or 50. So by the time I outgrew the Tourette's as a teenager I was already hooked. Then I found that deep down inside, I liked smoking and didn't want to quit. So any attempt to try to quit was doomed before I ever tried.
I was sixteen and trying to fit in with yet another school system (Army Brat here).
I was nineteen and away at college for the first time. A group of girls took me in and tried to teach me their sophisticated ways.
I started smoking aged 13 when a friend of mine took me over the fields to ride an old BSA Bantam for the first time. Loved it so much, especially powering up hill! Then he lit a cigarette by dipping some paper in the fuel tank and taking off the spark plug lead, kicking the bike over and making a spark. It was so cool I had to give it a go. Loved the dizziness and the rush of the nicotine. Took me 41 years to stop, and it was vaping that succeeded where EVERYTHING else failed.
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That's exactly what they're models for, eating disorders! And also to give all of us who really were that skinny but not nearly that beautiful inferiority complexes.
But I see nothing wrong with a size 14; that's one of the sizes of clothes I have in my closet -- I have clothes from size 12 to size 16, because it really just depends on the season -- after Halloween, I gradually start to need larger and larger sizes, till by New Year, I'm firmly a size 16 -- then spend 3-4 months returning to my 12/14s. To me that's the sanest way to live, because the fast, "crash" diets are so ungodly unhealthy, and cause a much more severe "yoyo" effect.I've heard that about eating disorders, and it fills me with utter horror -- it's easy for me to avoid drugs and alcohol, but eating? It's kinda required!!
A friend of mine told me that the happiest day of her life was when she figured out that her body was just not meant to be slim -- she said it was like walking out of prison, to embrace her true weight, which was significantly more than most women -- but at that weight, she's happy and fun to be around; she said when she was down to a size 8/10, she was wretched every minute, always hungry but not daring to eat anything but "rabbit food," she called it. Andria
I was 17 and went to jail, plus most my buddys smoked and I went from (OTHER STUFF) to tobaccoo. But now I cant smoke (OTHER STUFF) and I want my lungs back so the Vape is the way to go
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May I ask why you started vaping if you never smoked?
Personally, smoking for me started when I got locked out of my house at 12. I was stuck on the porch waiting for my mom to get home, it was slightly pre-smartphone era (I'm 24 now lol), nothing better to do but pilfer one of her smokes. Kinda off and on for the next year or so, I'd snag a few when I had the opportunity, didn't get my first pack of my own until I was 14, and it was pretty much all over from there.
All of my friends did (and still do) smoke. They always took many smoke breaks and I didn't want to feel excluded...
That's exactly what they're models for, eating disorders! And also to give all of us who really were that skinny but not nearly that beautiful inferiority complexes.
Nothing wrong with having different sizes, dear. And I fully agree that this is the sanest way to live.
It is normal to eat more in the winter when it is cold and to eat less (or different things) in the summer, when it is warm. The body is not stupid. But I was, when I tried to starve my body in the winter time until I felt so cold from the inside that my teeth started hurting with the cold. (no energy to burn = no warmth produced by the body)
I've heard that about eating disorders, and it fills me with utter horror -- it's easy for me to avoid drugs and alcohol, but eating? It's kinda required!!
Andria
Precisely. Especially the bolded part.
Give my love to your friend, please, and I know the feeling. It is hell.
(And I dare say that all those who complain about the "addiction" to cigarettes have never gone through the hell of an eating disorder. You cannot "just quit" food. And when you stop starving yourself when your ribs show through the skin of your chest - because that does not look nice - that one apple, that one bowl of soup.. that opens the floodgates. Like a "dry" alcoholic having just one little glass of beer.... )
Well, that hell is over for me. Thankfully. Although I still have to watch what I eat. Snack on veggies and dip, for example.
But I have precisely the body now that my entire family on my mother's side has. The body that nature meant for me.
And there is one thing that I read the other day - " An emaciated cow will never look like a graceful doe"
(Kind of tough worded, but very true indeed )- Status
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