Once upon a time you could smoke everywhere. Hell, high schools had smoking lounges. Everybody smoked. I actually remain a bit puzzled about why people start smoking these days. I’m not being judgmental, I’m just genuinely curious. When being a smoker involves always having to find a moment to duck out of wherever you are to light up outside, it just doesn’t seem that fun anymore.
People who are genuinely curious first conduct an online search or two before publishing stupid and meaningless posts. There are addictions that are a lot more inconvenient than smoking, yet people still practice them. Sometimes, inconvenience is precisely what makes an addiction attractive.
The reasons why people get addicted to smoking (and as we all know, out of those who start, many never become addicted. There are people who smoke for years and are not addicted and there are people who smoke once and acquire a strong addiction immediately) are as follows:
– oral stage traumas (which also make for generally addictive personalities);
– a need for identity formation (“a cigarette is a small white axis around which I gather the pieces of my identity every time I smoke,” one smoker told me);
– a compensatory mechanism.
Of course, when all three come together, you get an addiction that is very hard to break.
Clarissa's Blog 
Personally, I started smoking because I thought that smoking would help with my social skills, since smokers seemed to be automatically more sociable with each other than nonsmokers, and tobacco smoke evokes a mixture of calm and nostalgia in me, since the smell reminds me of my father.
I’m trying to quit now, for several reasons, and I’m down to two cigarettes a day on average (Four on a Saturday). I’m trying to invest in an e-cigarette so that I can have the excuse to go out and socialize with my smoker friends, but not have to smoke tobacco.
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“I’m trying to quit now, for several reasons, and I’m down to two cigarettes a day on average (Four on a Saturday). ”
– Good for you! I know you can do it.
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Thanks! 🙂 I look forward to having my full sense of smell and taste back. Why oh why did I ever think I could give up my love of food and perfume for smoking?
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“Why oh why did I ever think I could give up my love of food and perfume for smoking?”
– Don’t blame yourself because that will only make you want to smoke even more. This is what you needed to do to cope. And now you don’t need it to cope as much. That’s all. 🙂
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Gambling and alcoholism are ia pretty serious addictions when there are certain personalities involved.
I have no desire to put any of that crap in my lungs, that’s for sure. As smart as Aaron Clarey is, I still don’t think there’s any added benefit to people like him smoking just because you’re trying to live a minimalistic lifestyle!
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Some cigars smell so nice. . . There is the kind that smells of coffee because they are kept in coffee bean vats. And there is the kind that has a natural smell of chocolate. (N smokes them).
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I even saw a disgusting video on how these doctors were pumping air into a normal lung and an emphysema inflicted lung and it wasn’t pretty either.
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Definitely do not start smoking. That’s a very good decision. One of the best you can make, I think.
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Thank heavens for propoganda! When i was in….. 5th(?) grade my school spent a month or more showing us pictures of smokers’ lungs and people smoking through their tracheotomy holes and the like. Even at the time I sort of recognized it as pretty crude manipulation but damn if it didn’t work – I was never tempted.
And I might have been. few family members I spent a lot of time around as a child smoked a lot (though two of them quit, in different circumstances, from one day to the next with no withdrawal or relapses). But once residual smoke was out of my system I tended to find the smell of tobacco rather unpleasant, kind of… fecal. I have no idea how much that’s my natural reaction versus indoctrination but I don’t really care.
Similarly the famous crying Indian ad made it impossible for me to litter. I realize now how hokey and fraudulent the ad was but I hate, hate HATE litter (and people who litter).
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People either have oral stage traumas or they don’t. Everything else is a rationalization.
But you are right, if you don’t have this problem, there is no need for you to analyze why you don’t have it. 🙂
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Related. Out of curiosity (after seeing more and more of them on the street) I did some reading on e-cigarettes and what surprised me was, apart from the nicotine supply, how psychologically important the physical aspects of smoking are for users.
This is especially manifested by
– the vapor being really important (maybe psychologically the nicotine doesn’t seem to be ‘take’ without the vapor being produced) I never would have guessed this so it’s interesting to know.
– something called “throat hit” (which is apparently a good thing) it’s the irritation felt in the throat when inhaling. I’m assuming that it assures addicts that the drug is being delivered.
All things considered I’m all in favor of many/most smokers switching to electronic since the vapor doesn’t seem to have any odor (it doesn’t carry the way tobacco odor does at any rate).
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I don’t think this alternative will work for many people, although I agree it would be a great thing.
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