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08 October 2009
Ask Mecha: When's the last time you smoked a cigarette?
I played at smoking a bit when I was 19 or 20. All told, I might have smoked a pack or 2. I still remember the aftertaste. That would have been 30+ years ago. Oddly, I still dream about it once in a while, worrying I'm getting the habit.
I smoked half a cigarette yesterday at about 5pm EST while talking on the phone to a good friend. I only ever smoke if I am talking on the phone or drinking (or both), which isn't often, so don't smoke very much. I probably won't smoke again until Sunday night, when said friend is coming over to share a nice bottle of red with me, but I sure am looking forward to it. This is one nasty habit that I haven't been able to drop, nor do I care to at this point, because I like it, and I do it so infrequently, that I don't see that it does me much harm. At least, that is how I justify it in my little pea brain.
Never done. I vaguely recall in college one of my friends acquired a pipe, and I have always liked the smell of pipe tobacco, so I did give that a try once. I would describe it as very much like sucking on a burning thing. I decided, altruistically, to leave as much tobacco as possible for other people to have.
My parents both smoked, their brand of choice was Park Drive Plain (untipped) which I think was 3rd in the ranking of highest tar cigarettes behind Capstan Full Strength and Senior Service. My mother was on 60 a day, my dad on about 20-30.
I grew up hearing my mother coughing her guts up every morning and the sound of her clearing the phlegm from her lungs used to make me heave. We lived in a tiny two-up, two-down house and in the 60s and 70s nobody had ever heard of passive smoking. I must have been absolutely kippered, living in that environment. I'm sure it did me some damage, because I've had various lung-related illnesses throughout my life - bronchitis (several times), pneumonia, pleurisy.
For the last few years of her life my mother needed an oxygen tank beside her, but she would risk blowing herself up to light another cigarette. She died, aged 56, of bronchial pneumonia.
September 18th or 19th, I think. I am a social smoker (I smoke when I drink), and lucky to never have become addicted. I tell myself that I am not doing my body much harm by smoking a few every couple of weeks, but I don't know if that's true or not.
No idea, but it's been a while. I recently discovered, in the back of my office desk drawer, an extraordinarily stale pack of Camels, with one missing.
I tried one once somewhere around '83 and promptly threw up, which may have had as much to do with the tequila as the tobacco but never tried it again.
About five years ago. I was a social smoker - a pack would last me a week or so - but I'm so glad I quit. I never was seriously addicted so it was just a matter of setting my mind to it. I still enjoy the whiff of fresh second hand smoke drifting in the air now and then, but hate smoke-filled bars or the smell of stale smoke on someone's clothes or breath.
My husband quit his pack a day habit exactly one year ago this Saturday. I'm super proud of him. We are going to a super fancy dinner to celebrate our one-year wedding anniversary but I'm glad it also coincides with what he calls "quit day".
Over five years ago (end of May) at Grumpy's in NLR. Three beers, polished off my last few smokes, went home, showered, went to bed, woke up, slapped on my first patch.
Oh and I grew up in exactly the same household as Jan except that my much older sisters and my grandmother smoked too. Add in my sister's friends, who all smoked and I was often the only non-smoker in the room full of 7 or 8 smokers. My grandmother died of lung cancer, my dad died of congestive heart failure largely caused by his smoking and my mom has dementia caused by the loss of one lung and a series of strokes caused by smoking. I'm not a big fan of tobacco.
I smoked a cigarette on one of the worst days of my life, back in college. I did so in order to make it something other than "the worst day of my life". Now it's "the day I drove around with my friend Tim in his truck trying to smoke a cigarette". Bless him.
I can't even remember. I was a light smoker (2-3 cigarettes a day) for about six months who became a social smoker (2-3 cigarettes a month) for about a year who became an occasional smoker (2-3 cigarettes a year) for I don't even know how long until I just kind of dropped the habit. I think it was probably about four years ago?
Never, but I don't consider myself abstemious. My parents both smoked at one time, mum gave it up before she got pregnant with me, dad did as well but took it up again later. I remember him smoking but it was nothing like essexjan's house. He later gave up using hypnotherapy and is one of the most rabid anti-smokers I know :)
I have probably been offered a cigarette a few times but it was never a problem to say no and I never felt under any pressure. Now with the smoking ban in UK buildings, I'm never likely to start.
If I gave up wine, I would consider that abstemious! Can't miss what you've never been addicted to...
Tried it a few times as a teenager as an attempt to look cool. (25 years ago.) Tried inhaling exactly once, that was more than enough for me, the rest of the time I just puffed away and hoped it looked cool anyway.
11 years ago. I was a pack a day smoker for 6 years. I'll never smoke a cigarette again but every so often I'll smoke a cigar (new years I think was the last time) and every now and again smoke a pipe since I have a nice pipe.
High school musical cast party, sophomore year, one of those "let the kids do as they like as long as they're 'safely' under our roof" affairs thrown by invisible parents. I was fourteen and decided I'd better give it a try while I had the opportunity and people willing to show me how. It tasted like shit and my mildly asthmatic lungs asked me wtf I was thinking I was doing, but just to be sure, I asked for a second cigarette. I've never had a third.
Only tobacco: 18 years ago in Boston mixed with a bit of hash.
Cannabis: a few years ago in Amsterdam....which confirmed that I should only indulge with those I'm 100% comfortable. My cousin has a coffee shop there but we're not close and I don't know the name.
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