I started smoking at 14 as part of a pathetic attempt to be cool. It was a match made in heaven. Marlboros were the brand at my high school. Alas, I didnt achieve coolness, but nicotine was a good friend, making all sorts of social situations easier. Smoking also made me sick. I had head colds that lasted all winter. And every item of clothing smelled awful. By the time I got to college I began trying to quit. Sometimes I’d make it a month and then I’d find myself at a party, bum a smoke and then I’d be back to a pack a day. Once I quit for a year. I transitioned to Camel Lights, telling myself this was an improvement, also I loved the packaging. Finally, when I began to think about having a baby I knew I had to divorce myself from nicotine and I can confirm that it was ibe of the hardest things I’ve done. More than thirty years have passed since my very last smoke. Now —an annoyingly self-righteous ex-smoker—I cant stand the smell and find it suffocating to stand bear smokers. And yet, every so often, at the end of a very hard day, I might get a whiff from down the block…and while I still hate the smell, I wish in that moment that smoking wasnt toxic. And I find myself having to talk myself off the ledge until the weird urge passes. This addiction has taught me compassion for all those struggling with addictions to other substances. And for that I am grateful. I get a chest scan every few years. My only remaining vice is chocolate.
All of this, Julie. And I too can't stand the smell of cigarettes anymore, or to be near smokers. Yet, every now and then, on a certain breeze...it doesn't smell or seem that bad...
So many of us who are going to be addicts - drinking or smoking - start around fourteen, the worst years of self-loathing and social anxiety. Artistic types who'd prefer to be alone with a notebook and pen or pencil are forced into the nightmare of middle school hallways and cafeterias. The first time I quit drinking, at 22, I quit smoking. When I "relapsed' to smoking eight years or so later in graduate school, eventually I "took the first drink" too and immediately put myself into sixty days inpatient rehab. (I was a counselor with good insurance.) I've stayed sober from alcohol, but smoked on and off, usually in secret, using nicotine patches to keep the high without the smell and lung damage. Somehow about fifteen years ago, a beautiful woman half my age in NYC, then a smoking and sobriety companion, stopped smoking and told me I could too. Somehow I did stop. As with (for me) alcohol, just one drink or puff would haul me back. For years now, I soothe myself with writing, nature, awesome locally grown food, my two rescue cats and dog, yoga, piles of library books, and time with healthy loving friends.
Nothing sounds better than "writing, nature, awesome locally grown food, my two rescue cats and dog, yoga, piles of library books, and time with healthy loving friends". You're blessed, Kirie!
this just isn’t true—research suggests (and there is a lot of it) that more attempts portend eventual success. many people decide they do want to while they try and fail, as people here attest. do some people never want to really do it and don’t? sure. but i don’t think that’s the majority pattern.
recent research also suggests that the protocols people are given are not effective, e.g. patch use for about twice as long as mfgs recommend leads to greater success. if people aren’t given the right tools, it sure looks like they “don’t really want to quit.” which happens with other addictions as well—as when people addicted to opioids are denied suboxone in favor of cold turkey rehab strategies.
telling people not to try just produces people not trying … and not succeeding. i was told that and i didn’t listen, and i don’t think you’re helping anyone by saying “don’t even try.”
Interesting. My observation is anecdotal based on watching relapse after relapse or switching to some kind of nicotine substitute. I know in my experience it's easy if you really want to stop. Nicotine is a weak addiction. It's the associations and other behaviours of smoking that are more challenging. Thanks for sharing
it’s weak for you, just as some people experience other addictions as weak while others don’t. i quit successfully after several attempts while in an evidence-based experimental program that gave me more support and more information and it nearly almost killed me. it fucked up my brain chemistry and psych meds for frankly fairly personally and professionally ruinous months. but vicodin, other controlled pain meds, xanax, and adderall—all prescribed— don’t produce addictive responses in me at all, despite being less “weak addictions” and an addiction history in my family. nor does alcohol.
I have been smoking on and off since I was 12 years old and I am 43. I quit for decades, when I had my children. Occasionally I would have one at new years. Then during COVID lockdown I started again and really haven't been able to quit. I've tried all the things..
But I think it's true, I don't really want to quit. Of course I want to quit, for so many reasons. But then every morning around ten am I walk to the community garden and I write and I wander and have an American spirit light, and it feels so good.
I would just like to point out that it is still YOUR body and therefore YOUR choice. I can see an alternate reality where you’d be jailed if pregnant though.
I get the beauty of that ritual. When I was in a drum circle in the 80s the tobacco ritual was fragrant to me too.
One of the main things visitors to Italy comment on to me is how much smoking there is here. I have never smoked (aside from trying desperately to look grown-up walking around with a cigarette from the slim sample packs that the tobacco lobby used to give away on the corner of Connecticut & K street in 1980s Washington DC ) My husband smoked for decades. Until his heart attack two years ago. Thankfully the hospital in Venice (we were only visiting then) saved his life.
Glad your husband is okay! I was just in Venice (LOVE LOVE LOVE) and other spots in Italy and felt like there was less smoking than I expected. I guess "much" smoking is relative...
Whew, did this hit at just the right (or wrong) time. I started smoking when I was about 13 when a “cool” girl kind of dated me. I wasn’t really smoking, just puffing in a cigarette, not inhaling, trying to look cool. My mother smoked since I could remember, probably 1-2 packs a day of Kent’s. I stole from her pack. She was a use the final bit of one cigarette to light another, and then would set one freshly lit into an ashtray and let it stay there growing an absurdly long ash, then forget it was there and light another. My dad never smoked and hated it. I began really smoking when I met the man I married who was 9 years my senior when I was 17 and he had been smoking for probably 12 years. The morning coffee + cigarette(s)and after dinner cigarette(s) were my favorite. I never felt the pang of needing the nicotine, it was the physical act of smoking I enjoyed. My mom had a heart attack when I was in my mid 20’s, was told she needed to quit but she never did, she just continued to “sneak” cigarettes. I continued to smoke until near 40 when my mom died of lung cancer. I tried patches, they never worked. Then I went to my doctor, he prescribed Wellbutrin, told me to start taking it and set a quit date for two weeks later. About a week after starting the Wellbutrin I just said “I’m done”, and I was. Didn’t smoke for 15 years, didn’t crave them or desire to smoke at all. Then I retired, moved, then sold everything I owned and moved to a small island in the Caribbean where I spent my days scuba diving. Seemed like everyone smoked there. I kept watching, telling myself if I had one, I was sure I would start again. A year into my Caribbean adventure I bummed a cigarette from someone and that was it, I was right back to smoking, about 3/4 of a pack a day. That was 12 years ago. I’ve been trying to quit, patches again, gum, nicotine toothpicks. None work. Still don’t feel the pang of needing nicotine, I get depressed, lonely, bored and the act of smoking gives me something to do. When I previously quit I gained quite a bit of weight which only made me feel worse about myself. I’ve recently lost most of that added weight and I feel so shameful and mad at myself for ever starting again after I had quit for so long. My plan now is to try acupuncture to try and help me quit. I’m 66 and would like my life back. I don’t need others to shame me I do that to myself in spades. I’m so proud of those who have quit and never gone back.
I'm rooting for you! (I think I spelled that correctly?) and it is so so SO tough. Try not to feel ashamed. I know, easier said than done. Shame is eclipsing your motivation. And your motivation is there. I can read it in your words.
You should be super-proud of your big adventure/ life change! It seems normal to want to have something familiar like smoking when you make big changes. Good luck!
I'm in the UK where I think there is less opprobrium around smoking than in the states - I'm 31 and vividly remember my first cigarette at 17, crossing the road on the way to a party with two girls I thought were cooler than me. They couldn't believe I'd never smoked before and one of them handed me the cigarette she was halfway through. I was drunk enough that it felt quite easy. A boyfriend at that time who was perfomatively into the idea of a post-coital cigarette sealed the deal.
I really like cigarettes and I always say that if I'd been born 20 years earlier I'd have been a chain-smoker. Somehow I've walked the thin line of social smoking for the past 14 years, having one/two/maybe three cadged off someone after several drinks. I'm not drinking at the moment and therefore not smoking, but I like to think smoking will continue to hold this role in my life, an occasional festive indulgence like chocolate cake or oysters or a new lipstick.
Like many of you here, I started smoking at about 17 years old and continued for about the next 15 or so years. At 2 packs plus a day, I eventually started to get chest pains. I knew then it was time to quit or, you know the rest of the story. I will be turning 70 in December and well, I'm sure I wouldn't be around today if I was still puffin away!
My drug of choice back in the day. It hooked me immediately. Smoked through high school in the 70s then quit. Began a relationship with a smoker and with newly increased income after college, smoked 3 packs a day. Stress had me lighting cigarettes with cigarettes. Quit once during that time, but started back when stressed again. My pattern is not smoke, or smoke 2 -3 packs a day. Kicked other smoker out of my life. Quit the last time on the day Bill Clinton was elected. No cravings at all after a few months, but crazy hard to quit. The day we see the last comet heading for earth, I will likely light one up.
I smoked from 1987 to 2017, with stretches of not smoking for as long as 14 months, but I always thought of myself as a smoker who wasn't smoking right then but would again. In 2017, I decided to think of myself as someone who didn't smoke. I smoked a few cigarettes from January through May then stopped. That September I freaked out about a coming hurricane in my old town and bought a pack of Marlboro Lights. Smoked one and became violently ill. Never wanted one again and never dream of it like I did before.
The graphic memoir strikes again! To listen to the agents who have turned me down for representation, finding a publisher for a graphic memoir is like finding a veterinarian who treats unicorns. It ain’t gonna happen. Happy for YOU, Alice! You did it! And I’d love to know how. I’m editrmh@gmail.com if you’re willing to discuss. (You can see my Oldster questionnaire here:https://oldster.substack.com/p/this-is-67-cartoonist-peter-moore)
Peter! I absolutely LOVED both your original Oldster questionnaire and your expanded questions too! Those agents are assholes! I'm happy to discuss. Will reach out to you, or feel free to reach out to me also, if you haven't heard from me and you're getting itchy: alice@alicekaltman.com
I love, love, love smoking, and I would still be doing it except for the smell, which is dreadful.
I first started smoking at 13; my "bad girl" neighbor, who was a year older and super tough, would share her Parliaments and her blue eyeliner with me in the junior-high bathroom. I'm surprised that my mother, a former smoker, didn't smell it, and I smoked not infrequently.
At boarding school, there was a SMOKING AREA for students outside the boys' dorm (this was the 80s). I was talking about this with my high-school boyfriend, and we agreed that this was a really questionable practice. Along with cigarettes, kids drank and smoked pot and cigarettes laced with cocaine or even PCP, after classes or after study hall.
In college, I smoked at parties, and boy were there a lot of parties. Camel Lights were preferred. I also smoked while writing papers.
In grad school, I was a healthy young mother, strapping my offspring to my back and charging up and down the hills of my college town, teaching, cooking, growing things. I wouldn't have had the stamina if I had been smoking.
In my late 20s, I succumbed again briefly to the lure of Camels, and I dabbled off and on during the times that I was single (my husband really hated cigarettes, which he called "stink sticks," a term that I just dislike). My last bout was maybe 6-7 years ago, and I would huddle outside in the cold because I didn't want the smell in my house.
I still wish I could smoke; I love smoking and writing, and a cigarette and morning coffee, but I really don't need any self-inflicted problems at this point.
Darling Kelly this is one of the smartest succinct things I have seen in a long time: “ I really don't need any self-inflicted problems at this point”.
Oct 25·edited Oct 25Liked by Alice Kaltman, Sari Botton
I'm 60 and on the run so to speak. I don't smoke, I never did. My dad smoked, we weren't close. His mother smoked. She was blind and what I remember of her was she was a small woman who lived in a very small house alone in the dark and would light a new cigarette off the one she was smoking when she could feel the heat. I was paralyzed with guillain-barré syndrome in the 80's with total paralysis and respiratory failure so I was intubated nasal gastric and felt like I was breathing through a straw. My dad would come to see me in this state and I could smell him before he entered the room. My remaining senses were heightened with the failure of others. HIs smoking increased in the strain of it all, but I couldn't stand the smell of smoke on his breath, hands and clothes as he came close to talk to me. He died of cancer. My respiratory therapist said I would never have come off the ventilator if I had smoked. I don't know if that's actually true but I suspect all of that and more informed my non smoking status.
I smoked off and on for, if I'm honest about it, 25 years. Some times it was social smoking, other times, straight up chain smoking. I had a few brands, depending. When I started, Marlboro Lights. Then it was Galoises in the blue box. Then Parliament. Then American Spirit yellows. My mother and grandmother, who lived with us when I was growing up, both smoked constantly. I thought it was disgusting and hated smelling like that. I still don't quite understand how I fell into it. It was mostly an anxiety coping mechanism--something to do with my hands when I was out when you could still smoke at bars and at parties--and a way to slow down for a minute when I was working at ad agencies in Manhattan and could go outside for a bit and breathe, albeit, while poisoning my lungs. I finally shook it, after many tries, about 15 years ago. Sometimes I miss it, but not enough to start it again.
I think you can definitely get enough through secondhand smoke to establish a budding dependency.
I was interning as an arborist in my 30s and needed a night job. BF was a bartender/actor (never again!) so I did that too. I started feeling cravings on days off! I wasn’t smoking either. It made me angry that other peoples habits were affecting me! The $ was the only good part and I moved on pretty soon.
I'm 65, and I also never smoked a cigarette in my life, probably because I was constantly enveloped in a cloud of smoke while around my mom. She didn't discourage smoking, in fact, she borderline encouraged it, saying that the people at her work who smoked had WAY better personalities than the people who didn't. I have two brothers, and one never smoked, either; the other one smoked for about one year, rolling his own. (It was a down time in his life.)
Anyway, fast forward to two years ago, and I'm a health coach, coaching people to get off cigs, cigars, vapes, and chew. (My mom died of lung cancer.) What an eye-opener!! Talking with these addicts, it really made me wish I would have tried smoking. They made it sound like the best possible thing anyone could be doing at any given time. However, they were ultra miserable trying to quit. It sounded like the most grueling thing anyone could ever attempt to do.
Talking with hundreds of people a week, every single person who was also ever addicted to any type of drug, including heroin, said that quitting drugs was far easier. Of course it is. Drugs aren't available at every gas station or convenience store like cigarettes are. It takes much more effort - and money - to keep up the drug habit.
In the end, I got sick of hearing, "I hope I can quit." I couldn't tell people what I really wanted them to hear, but if I could, I might have said something like: "Hoping is not a quitting strategy. It's a weak, passive thought process that, basically, allows you to give in to your cravings." Wow! That felt so good just typing that! And if you really want to quit, as Nike says, "Just do it." You totally can.
"Hoping is not a quitting strategy. It's a weak, passive thought process that, basically, allows you to give in to your cravings." SO TRUE! In my early years as a psychotherapist I worked a lot with eating disorder patients. If you view eating disorders as addictions (which I do) it's a similar brutal conundrum to cigarettes, possibly even harder. Food is everywhere and you have to have at least enough of it to survive.
Oh, wow! Never thought of eating disorders as addictions because I feel like they are all about being in control, which seems like the opposite of an addiction. But I guess the end result for both is a feeling of relief, right? Please feel free to explain more about this!
But yes, food addictions have to be much harder since it's something that keeps one alive.
i started smoking in college and quit at 30–though my mom smoked my entire life and most of her own—and part of the reason it stuck (11 years) was because withdrawal was so hard on my brain and i was so miserable that i never wanted to go through it again.
It really is, because believe it or not, it is the mental addiction that is worse than the physical addiction. Then it is also a good idea to quit drinking things like alcohol and coffee which of course go hand in hand with a cigarette. I'm sure most of you ex or current smokers also know how good a cigarette is after sex. That was of course one thing I refused to give up!
I started smoking at 14 as part of a pathetic attempt to be cool. It was a match made in heaven. Marlboros were the brand at my high school. Alas, I didnt achieve coolness, but nicotine was a good friend, making all sorts of social situations easier. Smoking also made me sick. I had head colds that lasted all winter. And every item of clothing smelled awful. By the time I got to college I began trying to quit. Sometimes I’d make it a month and then I’d find myself at a party, bum a smoke and then I’d be back to a pack a day. Once I quit for a year. I transitioned to Camel Lights, telling myself this was an improvement, also I loved the packaging. Finally, when I began to think about having a baby I knew I had to divorce myself from nicotine and I can confirm that it was ibe of the hardest things I’ve done. More than thirty years have passed since my very last smoke. Now —an annoyingly self-righteous ex-smoker—I cant stand the smell and find it suffocating to stand bear smokers. And yet, every so often, at the end of a very hard day, I might get a whiff from down the block…and while I still hate the smell, I wish in that moment that smoking wasnt toxic. And I find myself having to talk myself off the ledge until the weird urge passes. This addiction has taught me compassion for all those struggling with addictions to other substances. And for that I am grateful. I get a chest scan every few years. My only remaining vice is chocolate.
I like to think of chocolate as medicine. :)
Me too. I love chocolate.
You’re not wrong
All of this, Julie. And I too can't stand the smell of cigarettes anymore, or to be near smokers. Yet, every now and then, on a certain breeze...it doesn't smell or seem that bad...
So many of us who are going to be addicts - drinking or smoking - start around fourteen, the worst years of self-loathing and social anxiety. Artistic types who'd prefer to be alone with a notebook and pen or pencil are forced into the nightmare of middle school hallways and cafeterias. The first time I quit drinking, at 22, I quit smoking. When I "relapsed' to smoking eight years or so later in graduate school, eventually I "took the first drink" too and immediately put myself into sixty days inpatient rehab. (I was a counselor with good insurance.) I've stayed sober from alcohol, but smoked on and off, usually in secret, using nicotine patches to keep the high without the smell and lung damage. Somehow about fifteen years ago, a beautiful woman half my age in NYC, then a smoking and sobriety companion, stopped smoking and told me I could too. Somehow I did stop. As with (for me) alcohol, just one drink or puff would haul me back. For years now, I soothe myself with writing, nature, awesome locally grown food, my two rescue cats and dog, yoga, piles of library books, and time with healthy loving friends.
Nothing sounds better than "writing, nature, awesome locally grown food, my two rescue cats and dog, yoga, piles of library books, and time with healthy loving friends". You're blessed, Kirie!
You're so right about age 14..."...the worst years of self-loathing and social anxiety..." You describe it well.
Glad you got a handle on it (both), Kirie.
I have one observation about smoking. Unless you really want to stop, don't even try. It's doomed to failure long term.
When you really want to stop, it could well be the easiest thing you've ever done, certainly easier than starting.
Check out Allen Carr's Easyway to Stop Smoking
I've heard Carr's book is very helpful. (I used his Easyway to Stop Drinking to bolster myself when I quit that.)
Allen Carr sounds super interesting, in all ways!
I agree and it is hard to quit. I found that going cold turkey (that phrase seems so weird now)
was the best way.
this just isn’t true—research suggests (and there is a lot of it) that more attempts portend eventual success. many people decide they do want to while they try and fail, as people here attest. do some people never want to really do it and don’t? sure. but i don’t think that’s the majority pattern.
recent research also suggests that the protocols people are given are not effective, e.g. patch use for about twice as long as mfgs recommend leads to greater success. if people aren’t given the right tools, it sure looks like they “don’t really want to quit.” which happens with other addictions as well—as when people addicted to opioids are denied suboxone in favor of cold turkey rehab strategies.
telling people not to try just produces people not trying … and not succeeding. i was told that and i didn’t listen, and i don’t think you’re helping anyone by saying “don’t even try.”
Good, important point. Thank you.
Interesting. My observation is anecdotal based on watching relapse after relapse or switching to some kind of nicotine substitute. I know in my experience it's easy if you really want to stop. Nicotine is a weak addiction. It's the associations and other behaviours of smoking that are more challenging. Thanks for sharing
it’s weak for you, just as some people experience other addictions as weak while others don’t. i quit successfully after several attempts while in an evidence-based experimental program that gave me more support and more information and it nearly almost killed me. it fucked up my brain chemistry and psych meds for frankly fairly personally and professionally ruinous months. but vicodin, other controlled pain meds, xanax, and adderall—all prescribed— don’t produce addictive responses in me at all, despite being less “weak addictions” and an addiction history in my family. nor does alcohol.
Apparently the chemical addiction to nicotine is comparatively weak, but I defer to the knowledge and wisdom of A Carr on that point
you are clearly not interested in what i’m saying here about your body not being an index for anyone else’s.
regardless, stop telling people they shouldn’t bother to try to quit smoking. it’s arrogant and dangerous.
😭
I have been smoking on and off since I was 12 years old and I am 43. I quit for decades, when I had my children. Occasionally I would have one at new years. Then during COVID lockdown I started again and really haven't been able to quit. I've tried all the things..
But I think it's true, I don't really want to quit. Of course I want to quit, for so many reasons. But then every morning around ten am I walk to the community garden and I write and I wander and have an American spirit light, and it feels so good.
Ah...this is a weirdly lovely image! the wandering through the garden and writing and smoking... lucky (or unlucky?) you that it still feels good!
<3
I would just like to point out that it is still YOUR body and therefore YOUR choice. I can see an alternate reality where you’d be jailed if pregnant though.
I get the beauty of that ritual. When I was in a drum circle in the 80s the tobacco ritual was fragrant to me too.
One of the main things visitors to Italy comment on to me is how much smoking there is here. I have never smoked (aside from trying desperately to look grown-up walking around with a cigarette from the slim sample packs that the tobacco lobby used to give away on the corner of Connecticut & K street in 1980s Washington DC ) My husband smoked for decades. Until his heart attack two years ago. Thankfully the hospital in Venice (we were only visiting then) saved his life.
Glad to hear. Whew.
Glad your husband is okay! I was just in Venice (LOVE LOVE LOVE) and other spots in Italy and felt like there was less smoking than I expected. I guess "much" smoking is relative...
I do find the same! But. it may be that there are less Venetians in Venice than Romans in Rome.
Whew, did this hit at just the right (or wrong) time. I started smoking when I was about 13 when a “cool” girl kind of dated me. I wasn’t really smoking, just puffing in a cigarette, not inhaling, trying to look cool. My mother smoked since I could remember, probably 1-2 packs a day of Kent’s. I stole from her pack. She was a use the final bit of one cigarette to light another, and then would set one freshly lit into an ashtray and let it stay there growing an absurdly long ash, then forget it was there and light another. My dad never smoked and hated it. I began really smoking when I met the man I married who was 9 years my senior when I was 17 and he had been smoking for probably 12 years. The morning coffee + cigarette(s)and after dinner cigarette(s) were my favorite. I never felt the pang of needing the nicotine, it was the physical act of smoking I enjoyed. My mom had a heart attack when I was in my mid 20’s, was told she needed to quit but she never did, she just continued to “sneak” cigarettes. I continued to smoke until near 40 when my mom died of lung cancer. I tried patches, they never worked. Then I went to my doctor, he prescribed Wellbutrin, told me to start taking it and set a quit date for two weeks later. About a week after starting the Wellbutrin I just said “I’m done”, and I was. Didn’t smoke for 15 years, didn’t crave them or desire to smoke at all. Then I retired, moved, then sold everything I owned and moved to a small island in the Caribbean where I spent my days scuba diving. Seemed like everyone smoked there. I kept watching, telling myself if I had one, I was sure I would start again. A year into my Caribbean adventure I bummed a cigarette from someone and that was it, I was right back to smoking, about 3/4 of a pack a day. That was 12 years ago. I’ve been trying to quit, patches again, gum, nicotine toothpicks. None work. Still don’t feel the pang of needing nicotine, I get depressed, lonely, bored and the act of smoking gives me something to do. When I previously quit I gained quite a bit of weight which only made me feel worse about myself. I’ve recently lost most of that added weight and I feel so shameful and mad at myself for ever starting again after I had quit for so long. My plan now is to try acupuncture to try and help me quit. I’m 66 and would like my life back. I don’t need others to shame me I do that to myself in spades. I’m so proud of those who have quit and never gone back.
I'm rooting for you! (I think I spelled that correctly?) and it is so so SO tough. Try not to feel ashamed. I know, easier said than done. Shame is eclipsing your motivation. And your motivation is there. I can read it in your words.
Thank you Alice, I’ll take all the rooting for me I can get!! Your words are so very kind and appreciated.
You should be super-proud of your big adventure/ life change! It seems normal to want to have something familiar like smoking when you make big changes. Good luck!
I'm in the UK where I think there is less opprobrium around smoking than in the states - I'm 31 and vividly remember my first cigarette at 17, crossing the road on the way to a party with two girls I thought were cooler than me. They couldn't believe I'd never smoked before and one of them handed me the cigarette she was halfway through. I was drunk enough that it felt quite easy. A boyfriend at that time who was perfomatively into the idea of a post-coital cigarette sealed the deal.
I really like cigarettes and I always say that if I'd been born 20 years earlier I'd have been a chain-smoker. Somehow I've walked the thin line of social smoking for the past 14 years, having one/two/maybe three cadged off someone after several drinks. I'm not drinking at the moment and therefore not smoking, but I like to think smoking will continue to hold this role in my life, an occasional festive indulgence like chocolate cake or oysters or a new lipstick.
My husband enjoys the very occasional cigarette, like 2 or 3 a year. Amazing when people area able to not get too hooked.
That's my dream. I fantasize that it would be so fun to have one on the very rare occasion. But that's what it has to remain. A fantasy!
Like many of you here, I started smoking at about 17 years old and continued for about the next 15 or so years. At 2 packs plus a day, I eventually started to get chest pains. I knew then it was time to quit or, you know the rest of the story. I will be turning 70 in December and well, I'm sure I wouldn't be around today if I was still puffin away!
Good thing you did. :)
Bravo for you Maria!!!
My drug of choice back in the day. It hooked me immediately. Smoked through high school in the 70s then quit. Began a relationship with a smoker and with newly increased income after college, smoked 3 packs a day. Stress had me lighting cigarettes with cigarettes. Quit once during that time, but started back when stressed again. My pattern is not smoke, or smoke 2 -3 packs a day. Kicked other smoker out of my life. Quit the last time on the day Bill Clinton was elected. No cravings at all after a few months, but crazy hard to quit. The day we see the last comet heading for earth, I will likely light one up.
I have a friend who says that if she lives to a certain old age, she is taking up smoking again. Lol.
I hear you Susan. I also think of smoking one last one when that comet is heading this way. I wonder if it will taste/feel good.
That is a wildly intriguing question! What else would I be doing if I saw it coming too? Much to ponder!
I smoked from 1987 to 2017, with stretches of not smoking for as long as 14 months, but I always thought of myself as a smoker who wasn't smoking right then but would again. In 2017, I decided to think of myself as someone who didn't smoke. I smoked a few cigarettes from January through May then stopped. That September I freaked out about a coming hurricane in my old town and bought a pack of Marlboro Lights. Smoked one and became violently ill. Never wanted one again and never dream of it like I did before.
I've heard of that happening! Glad you had that one cig that put you off it.
Glad for you Tracy! I guess sometimes violent illnesses serve a valiant purpose.
The graphic memoir strikes again! To listen to the agents who have turned me down for representation, finding a publisher for a graphic memoir is like finding a veterinarian who treats unicorns. It ain’t gonna happen. Happy for YOU, Alice! You did it! And I’d love to know how. I’m editrmh@gmail.com if you’re willing to discuss. (You can see my Oldster questionnaire here:https://oldster.substack.com/p/this-is-67-cartoonist-peter-moore)
Peter! I absolutely LOVED both your original Oldster questionnaire and your expanded questions too! Those agents are assholes! I'm happy to discuss. Will reach out to you, or feel free to reach out to me also, if you haven't heard from me and you're getting itchy: alice@alicekaltman.com
I love, love, love smoking, and I would still be doing it except for the smell, which is dreadful.
I first started smoking at 13; my "bad girl" neighbor, who was a year older and super tough, would share her Parliaments and her blue eyeliner with me in the junior-high bathroom. I'm surprised that my mother, a former smoker, didn't smell it, and I smoked not infrequently.
At boarding school, there was a SMOKING AREA for students outside the boys' dorm (this was the 80s). I was talking about this with my high-school boyfriend, and we agreed that this was a really questionable practice. Along with cigarettes, kids drank and smoked pot and cigarettes laced with cocaine or even PCP, after classes or after study hall.
In college, I smoked at parties, and boy were there a lot of parties. Camel Lights were preferred. I also smoked while writing papers.
In grad school, I was a healthy young mother, strapping my offspring to my back and charging up and down the hills of my college town, teaching, cooking, growing things. I wouldn't have had the stamina if I had been smoking.
In my late 20s, I succumbed again briefly to the lure of Camels, and I dabbled off and on during the times that I was single (my husband really hated cigarettes, which he called "stink sticks," a term that I just dislike). My last bout was maybe 6-7 years ago, and I would huddle outside in the cold because I didn't want the smell in my house.
I still wish I could smoke; I love smoking and writing, and a cigarette and morning coffee, but I really don't need any self-inflicted problems at this point.
Darling Kelly this is one of the smartest succinct things I have seen in a long time: “ I really don't need any self-inflicted problems at this point”.
Words to live by! Thanks!
If only it didn’t take such a toll…and didn’t smell. Thanks for chiming in, Kelly. Hope things are good! 💕
I'm 60 and on the run so to speak. I don't smoke, I never did. My dad smoked, we weren't close. His mother smoked. She was blind and what I remember of her was she was a small woman who lived in a very small house alone in the dark and would light a new cigarette off the one she was smoking when she could feel the heat. I was paralyzed with guillain-barré syndrome in the 80's with total paralysis and respiratory failure so I was intubated nasal gastric and felt like I was breathing through a straw. My dad would come to see me in this state and I could smell him before he entered the room. My remaining senses were heightened with the failure of others. HIs smoking increased in the strain of it all, but I couldn't stand the smell of smoke on his breath, hands and clothes as he came close to talk to me. He died of cancer. My respiratory therapist said I would never have come off the ventilator if I had smoked. I don't know if that's actually true but I suspect all of that and more informed my non smoking status.
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wow Kelley. That sounds incredibly intense.
Yes, I suspect it is. Thank you
I smoked off and on for, if I'm honest about it, 25 years. Some times it was social smoking, other times, straight up chain smoking. I had a few brands, depending. When I started, Marlboro Lights. Then it was Galoises in the blue box. Then Parliament. Then American Spirit yellows. My mother and grandmother, who lived with us when I was growing up, both smoked constantly. I thought it was disgusting and hated smelling like that. I still don't quite understand how I fell into it. It was mostly an anxiety coping mechanism--something to do with my hands when I was out when you could still smoke at bars and at parties--and a way to slow down for a minute when I was working at ad agencies in Manhattan and could go outside for a bit and breathe, albeit, while poisoning my lungs. I finally shook it, after many tries, about 15 years ago. Sometimes I miss it, but not enough to start it again.
I think you can definitely get enough through secondhand smoke to establish a budding dependency.
I was interning as an arborist in my 30s and needed a night job. BF was a bartender/actor (never again!) so I did that too. I started feeling cravings on days off! I wasn’t smoking either. It made me angry that other peoples habits were affecting me! The $ was the only good part and I moved on pretty soon.
I'm 65, and I also never smoked a cigarette in my life, probably because I was constantly enveloped in a cloud of smoke while around my mom. She didn't discourage smoking, in fact, she borderline encouraged it, saying that the people at her work who smoked had WAY better personalities than the people who didn't. I have two brothers, and one never smoked, either; the other one smoked for about one year, rolling his own. (It was a down time in his life.)
Anyway, fast forward to two years ago, and I'm a health coach, coaching people to get off cigs, cigars, vapes, and chew. (My mom died of lung cancer.) What an eye-opener!! Talking with these addicts, it really made me wish I would have tried smoking. They made it sound like the best possible thing anyone could be doing at any given time. However, they were ultra miserable trying to quit. It sounded like the most grueling thing anyone could ever attempt to do.
Talking with hundreds of people a week, every single person who was also ever addicted to any type of drug, including heroin, said that quitting drugs was far easier. Of course it is. Drugs aren't available at every gas station or convenience store like cigarettes are. It takes much more effort - and money - to keep up the drug habit.
In the end, I got sick of hearing, "I hope I can quit." I couldn't tell people what I really wanted them to hear, but if I could, I might have said something like: "Hoping is not a quitting strategy. It's a weak, passive thought process that, basically, allows you to give in to your cravings." Wow! That felt so good just typing that! And if you really want to quit, as Nike says, "Just do it." You totally can.
"Hoping is not a quitting strategy. It's a weak, passive thought process that, basically, allows you to give in to your cravings." SO TRUE! In my early years as a psychotherapist I worked a lot with eating disorder patients. If you view eating disorders as addictions (which I do) it's a similar brutal conundrum to cigarettes, possibly even harder. Food is everywhere and you have to have at least enough of it to survive.
Oh, wow! Never thought of eating disorders as addictions because I feel like they are all about being in control, which seems like the opposite of an addiction. But I guess the end result for both is a feeling of relief, right? Please feel free to explain more about this!
But yes, food addictions have to be much harder since it's something that keeps one alive.
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i started smoking in college and quit at 30–though my mom smoked my entire life and most of her own—and part of the reason it stuck (11 years) was because withdrawal was so hard on my brain and i was so miserable that i never wanted to go through it again.
Oh, the stories friends have told me about the difficult withdrawal from cigs... <3
It really is, because believe it or not, it is the mental addiction that is worse than the physical addiction. Then it is also a good idea to quit drinking things like alcohol and coffee which of course go hand in hand with a cigarette. I'm sure most of you ex or current smokers also know how good a cigarette is after sex. That was of course one thing I refused to give up!
i got fired lol. it was neurological and psychiatric and took MONTHS to recover.
whoa. that is intense. you really have a good reason to never EVER smoke again!
i could not control my emotional reactions and they said they understood it but they … did not
OMG. That's intense. And I can see how that would be an added deterrent to starting again. Sorry it cost you so much, Jacqui.
11 years! Good for you!