Well, I don't see my option here on the poll but I'd be happy to share
I never touched a cigarette to my lips until I was 19. I grew up thinking smoking was just about one of the most foolish things you could do. My mom smoked and smoked often and I would try to throw her packs in the garbage (until she would threaten or scream at me enough that I would fish them out). Through middle and high school I spent time with plenty of people smoking cigarettes but I considered it chump-stuff. Now, I started smoking
........ at 14 after seeking it out myself but I never understood why someone would willfully smoke cigarettes. It was a strange relationship with my friends; I would smoke mine and they would smoke theirs and neither of us cared that we weren't smoking the same thing.
Fast forward four years and I was in College. Where I went to school (for the first two years) there was an astonishingly pervading tattle-tale society and alcohol consumption seemed to be the top target. I had several groups of friends that all smoked (except for me) and never really had a thought to join in. There was a problem, though: I like to drink. I grew up drinking with my family, binge drinking at family parties starting at 13 or 14. Interestingly enough, I never had a sip of alcohol without my family before college. So it was a common thing that if someone smelt alcohol on you in the hallways of the dorms they might call the cops. And at this school the cops weren't just campus police but they carried guns and turned you over to the city jail for misdemeanor minor consumption (there was no simple ticket). And so I came to realize that
smoking is a relatively easy way to mask the smell of that Carlo Rossi
So I walked a few blocks to the local tobacconist and bought me a big ol tin of American Spirit. I already knew how to roll cigarettes and so the first cigarette I
ever touched to my lips was one I hand-made. Soon enough I was out there on the hour as I was before with my smoking friends but now actually smoking myself.
It was born through the hands of prohibition
This phenomena spread through my group of still-close high school friends who before had never smoked, simply to cover up the smell of prohibited things. Fast forward 8 years and
all of my friends smoke - none of which touched a cigarette through high school. I went a few years, though, before I had a concept of being
addicted to cigarettes. I didn't really want my parents to know that I'd taken up smoking cigarettes so when I was home on break or for the summer I never considered smoking. It wasn't until I turned 21 (now at a different school and with my own place) and decided that I wouldn't smoke unless I was at the bar. Well . . . I may not have felt addicted to tobacco at the time but I have a hell of a big spot for harvesting stories from old men at dive bars and for gin, too. Before I knew it, I had this new anxious urge associated with walking to the bar. And I'm smoking cigarettes on the
way to the bar. And on the way
back from the bar. Soon I'm having Johnny Walker in the morning so I can award myself a cigarette because - hey - it's
kinda like I'm at the bar
And as of a week or so from now I'm 1 year vaping! Since I took up vaping I've really forgotten my alcohol addiction. I drink maybe two bottles of wine a week instead of two bottles of gin plus hundreds of dollars at the bar. And my tobacco consumption has gone down from a pouch of Redman and 8-10 American Spirits a day to no chew and 1 smoke on a
bad day (when I leave the last client of the day and get in my car my favorite thing to do was light a cigarette). Now that I have a couple VISION 3.5ml Clearomizers and my PV is really working the way I wish it would I don't think I'll smoke cigarettes again! These past few days with the Visions I get in my car and though I have two packs in the center console I know they really can't satisfy me the way my PV does
