how long did it take you to get addicted to cigarettes?

as a kid they tell you that it only takes two. i've probably smoked close to 100 cigs in my lifetime (mostly chain smoking) and i can usually fend off the next-day pangs and they go away after that. for those of you who smoke, at what point did you become "addicted"?

i can't even picture you with a cigarette.

i would say a couple of months

First time - a month or so. Started with smoking while rolling, then while drinking, then it just started to be a "might as well" thing.
Second time - about a month again - started hanging out at bars again, smoking those nights, and that shifted to smoking the next day.

Quit six weeks ago - I've lapsed three nights when out drinking, but I have no pangs of desire the next day.

I don't remember the transitional period from one or two cigarettes a day to a pack a day, that happened some time in college. I smoked in HS for the last two years, but I'd go a week or so without smoking, so I don't think I was addicted at that point.

15+ years & still not addicted. I am a biological anomaly.

yeah, but how often do you have a cigarette?

Over my first six months or so smoking weed I got slightly addicted to nicotine without noticing. Then I started poncing fags off people in pubs and it grew from there. I no longer smoke weed as it makes me para and withdrawn these days.

xpost: It has varied considerably. I've variously been a: daily casual smoker (5-10 a day); social smoker (only when drinking/out with friends); occasional chain-smoker (usually work-related stress binges - this is how most of my consumption occurs these days); straight up non-smoker (I've gone for months at a time without one); and I also went through a period of around five years in my late-teens/early 20s where I probably smoked about a pack a day.

I haven't ever tried quitting, tbh.

i'm probably just being naive, but i can't see myself ever being addicted to anyhing (then again, i don't see myself ever trying heroin, for example). i'll smoke a few if i'm drinking (depending on the situation) or just smoke casually to relax, though i do this less often. last semester i smoked every night for a couple weeks to relieve finals stress. i can't ever see myself wanting to smoke more than like 3 in a day, though!

yeah exactly. one cig a day can be pretty tight, but more is kinda gross to me.

(disclaimer) the account upthread concerning my freakish imperviousness to nicotine addiction was not meant to inspire otherwise casual smokers to go ahead and be more reckless. Most people I know who have smoked anywhere close to what I have are physical addicts and either drove themselves crazy trying to quit or harbor some degree of self-loathing for not having thus far done so. I only still do it b/c I can take it or leave it. Otherwise, I would generally advocate leaving it.

do cigs really relieve stress if you're not already dependent? i've never really smoked for that reason, personally

The worst thing about being a 3-a-day smoker is how stale the pack is by the time you finish them

The most I've ever had is like 6 cigarettes in a day, at which point I started worrying I was getting addicted and deliberately cut back for a few weeks.

why the fuck would anyone smoke these things tbh

Smoking has been around since the dawn of man. It doesn't really make any rational sense. It is just something that some people like to do.

somethin to do.

"like" not required.

i have this weird thing, i can't smoke during the day anymore

like, it really grosses me out

I was addicted from the first one. This partially because I've got a total addictive personality + oral fixation, partially because my first one was right after really great high school-style fooling around with a smoker who could pretty much get me to do whatever she wanted in those days.

why the fuck would anyone smoke these things tbh

― ian, Sunday, July 26, 2009 10:49 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

kills time waiting for the band to play/lunch break to end/commute to conclude

do cigs really relieve stress if you're not already dependent? i've never really smoked for that reason, personally

― meme-first attitude (J0rdan S.), Sunday, July 26, 2009 6:45 PM (6 minutes ago)

oh yeah

i threw up after my first one

it was a marlboro light

preferred cigarette of girls

i started on virginia slims, actually.

i throw up after smoking hookah, which is why i don't

see the discombobulated dizziness is part of what i enjoy about it

I smoked for a week before some girls at a party taught me how to actually inhale (I had just been holding it in my mouth and then blowing it out). After I started doing it correctly, it didn't take long to become addicted. Especially when driving, because I delivered pizzas at the time and was in my car most of the day every day.

I started caging cigarettes from my mother when I was around 12, and they were disgusting and made me want to vomit/pass out. I persevered, though, through the physical unpleasantness and the difficulty of being a high-school aged crypto-smoker who lived with her parents. By the time I got to college and could smoke PRN, I was pretty addicted. My nicotine addiction was always largely situational; I would only really have insurmountable cravings when driving, studying, or partaking in other substances. Other substances besides alcohol anyway, since after a certain point, smoking while drunk always pushed me over the edge into Pukeville.

kills time waiting for the band to play/lunch break to end/commute to conclude - Ciggie breaks also give you something small (tho admittedly mundane) to look forward to/reward yourself with during monotonous stretches. For example, during a recent trip to NYC, I would smoke at 30 mile intervals - this process helped immensely w/ the E-W slog thru Pennsylvania.

see the discombobulated dizziness is part of what i enjoy about it

― BIG HOOS's wacky crack variety hour (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Sunday, July 26, 2009 5:58 PM (2 seconds ago) Bookmark

yeah me too until i throw up

couple of years.

First drag. Hopelessly addicted from then on, until I eventually quit after (seriously) attempting four or five times. Don't smoke now, in fact I can't, or I'm right back on the wagon careening out of control all over again.

do cigs really relieve stress if you're not already dependent? i've never really smoked for that reason, personally

No. This is one of the things I picked up in the first pages of The Easy Way to Quit Smoking (I had already quit, and I haven't really felt any signs of relapse so I put it to the side). The enjoyment and relaxation smokers feel is easing withdrawal - non-smokers don't feel a constant stress from not having had a cigarette. It's very simple, something that should be obvious to smokers, but it's also pretty key. Once you get past "cigarettes make me feel good" quitting is much easier. Cigarettes don't make you feel good, they make you feel less bad - until you've finished that one and the process starts over.

Jordan remembers all the stuff they told him about smoking cigarettes as a kid except "smoking is bad for you" apparently

i also remembered the part where they tell you that smoking looks cool

milo, is that the Alan Carr (sp) book? I remember reading that and it definitely helped me quit, to get over that idea that cigs were helping my mental health somehow, which is stupid when you think about it.

Actually, I take that back - "stupid" is too extreme, and a case can be made for cigarettes being a form of self-medication.

Yeah, Alan Carr. I saw it mentioned on one of the older smoking threads here.

Unless I get hammered, I limit myself to two cigarettes a day; when I started smoking 11 years ago I noticed that more than two would seriously affect my voice before teaching. I only jones for the morning smoke, and even that one I prevent myself from having long after I've opened the office, checked email, answered phone calls, dealt with students, etc. The evening cigarette requires a full meal and a quarter bottle of wine.

That book is gold. I never really thought I'd do it, but I give that book about 90% of the credit, fucking magical almost. It's the biblical Jesus of anti-smoking aids, and I am the Lazarus!

same experience as pillbox here, for me, though i never smoked as much as a pack a day. maybe a pack every 3-4 days. all my friends smoked in college. was very briefly almost addicted from smoking about a half a pack to a pack a day in france, during the time when i was writing a bunch of term papers, but quit entirely for a couple months after that. so for me, really it's been situational - social smoking, or using cigs/coffee when trying (failing) to fight awful ADD tendencies when i had term papers to write. of course studying philosophy & french that was a LOT of term papers. i don't know why the hell i didn't figure out earlier that my brain just wasn't wired to write them, despite.. whatever i used to try and make it focus.

now i *might* bum one or two a month, but they're gross.

reading Derrida would make just about anyone think they had ADD tendencies ...

i don't know why the hell i didn't figure out earlier that my brain just wasn't wired to write them, despite.. whatever i used to try and make it focus.

reading Derrida would make just about anyone think they had ADD tendencies ...
― actually a decent question y'all fucked up with ironic bullshit answer (sarahel), Monday, July 27, 2009 1:29 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol this pretty much sums up why I ultimately decided against a career in academia

agamben, ricoeur, kristeva, 17th century memoirs and religious texts. in the original. then writing 15-20 pages about them. also in francais. goddamn. i guess this is not a thing many people can do. and there's that lucrative, glamorous career i'm missing out on by virtue of not being able to do it.. oh wait

there must be something in the work world to do, where pretty much hopeless ADD tendencies are actually useful?

anyway i've noticed among the ppl i still know from college.. like 5% of them ever smoke any more. smoking bans make a difference, also everyone getting older & deciding ok, finally time to quit for good, even the ones who didn't actually have a habit. also seems like a lot of professional worlds, it's a little looked down on, though my observation has been that for those who work in politics (the actual policy people, not as much).. LOTS of smokers

there must be something in the work world to do, where pretty much hopeless ADD tendencies are actually useful? - Yeah, I'm an actual ADD basket-case & research-related career fields seemed impractical b/c of the constant re-reading which would inevitably be necessary. I am a graphic designer & info. architect for a small firm, work from home, & am generally chipping away at a constantly rotating series of tasks at my own discretion, so I think I've found a pretty good niche.

Regarding the subject at hand, my most compulsive smoking usually occurs in direct correspondence w/ my intake of ADD medication.

re: smoking as way to de-stress - the first thing i did after suffering a minor bike accident a couple months back was to buy a pack of cigarettes. i hadn't bought one in several months before that so i'm not sure why it decided to flare up like that, i guess i just needed something to calm me down and i didn't think the usual routes (tv/music/lol bike riding) would've helped

yeah i've done some combination of design/development/info architecture in the past (one of those small offices where they have one or two web people, basically), might try and find something like that for a full time gig. i'm only freelancing now. i should really work at a newsdesk, though there are no jobs at the moment.. my experience with cigs + coffee + ADD medication was, sure, it gets you through finals but it might make your writing a little bit weird/might make you a little bit crazy!

Smoking is a minor component in my process, a dalliance to make the physicality of my work a little less mundane, perhaps? Adderall, though.. Adderall transforms me into an engine of productivity.

I have discovered I can pretty much leave it if I don't officially stop smoking. It's much harder to put out the "last cigarette" and then proclaim to be a nonsmoker. I should add that I was/am never much of a smoker. I did smoke about half a pack for just under a year. But the whole routine of having to smoke every hour is too much of a hassle cause we do not smoke inside the house (well, except the attic and a little room which is designated for smoking).

These days I will smoke zero to four cigs a day. Of course when my blood pressure sinks to the bottom; I prefer to go without. But smoking is soooooo much fun after dinner, with some coffee or you're in a pub with friends.

To be honest I find smoking still cool. Somehow most people I love/admire or call my friends are (ex)smokers. I utterly abhor anti-smokers. Especially the ones who glare at you from a distance as though our smoke is some chemical warfare to render them unconscious. Yes, we know it's unhealthy, no need to point that out.

Never knew that back in the day candy cigarettes were straight-up adverts for the real thing.

Candy Cigarettes of the 1950s and 1960s

Damn, that's nuts.

I had my first cigarette the summer before 9th grade. I would have them occasionally over the beginning of the school year. I remember the day that February when I felt the first physical and mental cravings of addiction and realized what was happening. I needed a cigarette so badly that I stole change out of my dad's change drawer and went to the gas station to buy a pack. I was hopelessly addicted for about 10 years after that. I was a full-blown cigarette junkie and it had enormous impacts on my money, health, and hygiene. I don't remember when I graduated to a pack a day though.

We just learned that our 18-year-old son smokes cigarettes a couple weeks ago. He's had issues with drugs and alcohol already, so it's not the biggest surprise. But at the same time it's like, "You are starting smoking in 2022? Really? How does that even happen?" I definitely went out of my way when he was younger to communicate to him what a fucking waste cigarettes are, but he has already shown in so many ways that he doesn't care anything about what I think. At nearly $10 a pack, I hope he's just keeping it occasional. I'm not even going to bother him about it, as long as he doesn't smoke them in my house.

I took up smoking at 24 watching my other friends. I never smoked more than two a day unless I drank.

I'm down to one a day after dinner + wine. Ain't never giving it up.

i started dabbling in my late teens and I for many years had a good thing going where I would only smoke a few when out drinking and then could go weeks without even thinking about it until the next night out. but things started getting dicey in my early 30s when my friends discovered a local dive that still allowed indoor smoking, and the novelty of smoking indoors combined w/other factors meant i was there puffing like a chimney for hours on end several times a week and i could feel myself heading down a slippery slope. i stopped for good out of solidarity when my 2-packs-a-day partner quit a few years ago. i miss it sometimes on lazy summer evenings, but most of the time i'm glad to be done with it. it helps that everyone else i know who smoked has quit by now, too.

Had my first at 11. Had my last a couple hours ago

After avoiding them as a waste of time and money my whole life in favor of fairly regular boozing and occasional drug use, I started smoking just while drinking at like 42. It’s been a couple of years now and “heavy” use for me might be about 3 packs in a month. but it’s still a needless expense and I feel 3x worse when I wake up from a night of smoking & boozing vs just the booze. fortunately the like 4-5 bars that still allowed smoking indoors (coincidentally my favorite places, smoking or not) stopped doing so on January 1, 2020. of course the weather has been really nice and most of our ‘going out’ involves places with outdoor spaces and wouldn’t you know it plenty of smoking

I smoke cigars fairly regularly. Cigarettes don't seem worth the effort.