I saw someone smoking today and it looked really strange to me, since hardly anyone I know smokes anymore. But in the 50's and 60's almost everyone did. I remember the doctors on TV telling us it was good for us.
I started smoking with the approval of my parents when I was 14. My first brand was Pall Mall (unfiltered). I later switched to Benson & Hedges Menthol, then Salem, and finally Newport. It's been almost 50 years since I had my last cigarette in May, 1977. Quitting was very difficult, but I was pregnant, and determined to stop for the health of my baby.
How many of you are former smokers, and did you find it hard to quit?
A disproportionate number of women on dating sites are smokers. I even see "trying to quit". As desperate as I am, I never select those.
Not only did most people smoke, they could smoke almost anywhere.
I NEVER smoked, except for the G-D second hand smoke. Hated the smell.
Both my parents smoked constantly, at the dinner table and in the family car on long road trips... My nostrils would burn with that second hand smoke. The inside of the cae windshield would be yellow with smoke, which we had to clean weekly, and the walls of our home, when we cleaned it to sell after my parents' death, had brown gunk all over the paneling in the family room. Yuck! That's what was in our lungs.
I started around 13. When I turned 16 my parents gifted me an ashtray (most likely to avoid whatever flammable receptacles I'd been using in my bedroom) with a note that they disapproved but wouldn't be hypocrites about it, so I was permitted to smoke around them after that.
I was pretty consistent at a pack a day until my late 30s when my husband and I decided to quit before having a baby. I'd always said I wouldn't smoke while pregnant but I hadn't realized I already was on the day we quit, so I'm not sure which symptoms were withdrawal and which were pregnancy, but I never went back, in part because it was the hardest thing I'd ever done and I didn't want to go through it again. I still miss the feeling, but not the smell.
@Lauren Congratulations to you.!!!! I completely agree with how difficult it was. A year after I quit, I remember asking someone if the craving EVER goes away. Eventually though it did dwindle down.
@TheoryNumber3 Congratulations to you, too! I agree, it took forever for the cravings to go away. After my husband died, I actually DREAMED I was smoking and it felt so good! lol But thankfully I never did it in real life.
Apparently actors Loved cigarettes because it gave them something to do with their hands and their loss was a major problem for them.
I go to karaoke at this one place (VFW) where everybody smokes inside and I REEK after 5 minutes in there....in fact 2-3 days later I can still smell it on the inside of my car...great people, great DJ, great acoustics, but they're losing me over it.
Yes! If you don't smoke, it is very difficult to take. When I quit, I was living in Berkeley California, and while we could still smoke at our desks the California natives would come up to talk to me, waving their hands around and complaining about the cloud of smoke surrounding me. Lots of social pressure that really helped me stick to my decision.
I quit 10 years ago. I was never a heavy smoker and smoked 'clean' tobacco; I rolled my own using tobacco that did not have additives.
I'd just bought a new tin of loose tobacco and I was about to roll a smoke when I just went, 'I don't feel like doing this any more'. An that was that.
Now I find I am very allergic to cigarette smoke, I break with hives, have an asthma attack and it triggers my IBS.
I quit in 1993 when my wife was pregnant with my second son, prior to that I smoked 20 cigs a day, one pack of Senator Cigars and a pipe on an evening.
Thinking back I must have been trying to commit subconscious slow suicide.
I started smoking at 14 years old.
I smoked from the time I was about 15 off and on and full time after I turned 16. I was in Belgium at the time, but Marlboros were readily available. Smoke some Gitanes too! Quit once for 11 years, then started again. Quit the second time probably 30 or more years ago.
Funny watching the old serial TV shows from the 60's where everyone was smoking everywhere. Doctors and nurses in the hospitals, cops and rescue workers, in restaurants, houses, buses, planes... seems so weird seeing them now. Johnny Carson on the Tonight show had one in his hand almost the entire show.
Nope not a smoker, but I watch old reruns on TV sometimes and am shocked at how everyone has a cigarette in their hand in every scene. I guess the shows were sponsored by the tobacco industry back then.
Now, very few people I hang around with smoke, but visitors come from all over the world and want to smoke here in Hawaii. Smoking is not allowed on the beaches or within 20 feet of doors and windows, so they all go out to the exercise path and smoke. I have to hold my breath when walking by the smokers, sitting underneath the "no smoking" signs.
I do have some friends who smoke, they try and try to quit, but just can't. There's one fellow I see as I'm walking every evening. We pass by each other going different directions, me toward the log I like to sit on, and him to the log he sits on to smoke his evening cigarette (since it's not allowed where he lives.) He always asks me, "still single?" and I reply "yes, still smoking?" he says yes, and we go on our ways, haha, kind of a harmless little ritual we do, harking back to our first conversation some time ago.
I am a NEVER smoking and hated that for a long period people could smoke almost anywhere. I hated the smell.