Personal question: got smokes?

[Jack Spencer Jr]

It just struck me that one thing that we know exceptionally well about the people we know in real life we rarely talk about online. At least I don't. No judgement here. Just want to know who to imagine that strangely pleasant musty smell when talking and stuff.

So, smoker or non-smoker?

If you'd quit, for how long. Brag, baby, brag.

Me? Non-smoker.

[joshua neff]

I've never been a smoker (er...of tobacco). I've taken a drag or two from a cigarette, but I've never smoked an entire one myself, I've rarely inhaled, & it's never really appealed to me. (It may have something to do with growing up with a father that smoked at least 2 packs a day. He now has COPD. My grandmother, his mother, died from complications related to COPD.)

[Sean]

Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it dozens of times.

[clehrich]

Me too, Sean.  Right now I'm a smoker; maybe this summer I'm going to try again (before my wife kills me, I mean).  But I haven't been a pack-a-day smoker in about 5 years.

And I drink, too.  Ah, vices.

[Matt Wilson]

I grew up viciously anti-smoker.

It just meant that I started late. I stopped mooching and actually bought a pack late in my college years.

Then I quit when I turned 29, and went a year without having one, after which I figured one once in a while wasn't a big deal, if I actually wanted to.

I got into a routine of bumming one off a certain someone every week at game night. Now that he's moved away, I haven't had one in a loooong long time. It's probably healthier, but it still sucks that the bastard moved away. Yeah, you know who you are.

[Lxndr]

Not smoker.  Not sure why, although mom's excessive habit probably had something to do with it.  Also, just the idea of purposefully inhaling smoke just sorta gives me the willies (give me some trustworthy LSD and I'd probably drop it, but I won't touch a joint).  Don't mind other people smoking around me, though, assuming I don't have a cold.

[Walt Freitag]

I've smoked an occasional cigar. Maybe one or two a year since the early 90s.

(Of course, they're not just cigars. I see them as symbolic penises, a substitute for forbidden homoerotic pleasures that my basically hetero nature denies me. This may seem far-fetched, but note that cigars are elongated, cylindrical, and some are of the approximate length and the very approximate thickness of a human penis. They are varying shades of brown, often approximating flesh-tones. Note also that consuming cigars involves putting them in one's mouth, much like one would do with a man's penis when fellating him. Smoking a cigar also involves cutting the tip off one end and lighting the other end on fire, just as... wait, never mind.)

Mmmm. Nicotine.

Interestingly, nothing I've smoked apart from tobacco has ever succeeded in making me high. The munchies part seems to work OK, but the THC is just wasted on my already-warped little brain, apparently.

- Walt

[Clinton R. Nixon]

I know exactly who you're talking about, Matt, and it's probably good for your health I moved away.

I'm an avid smoker. I mean to use the word avid there - I enjoy it tremendously. It's a constant friend: have one to cheer myself up, have one in celebration, have one when I'm stressed to calm down, have one when I'm relaxed to savor the moment.

It's a rite of giving the finger to every instinct to preserve one's self and say, "You know what? Self-destruction is fucking nice. It feels good. Might as well die from something you like, as opposed to something you don't."

But that's just me, and otherwise, I'm pretty cheerful.

[taalyn]

Smoker.

Raised by anti-smokers, I was pretty non-smoking (not in a nasty way, just sure I didn't want to). Then I joined the Navy, and met a guy who always asked if I wanted one. "No Bob, I do not want a f'ing cigarette. Stop asking already!"

One night, drunk of our gourds, watching The wall, he asked again. " Fine, give me the damn thing and shut up".

Been smoking since.

Except of course, for when I quit, which is every time I put my butt out.

A.

[Gordon C. Landis]

Dad's lung collapsed when I was 5 or so (combination of smoking and early-era scuba dives).  He and Mom quit smoking after that . . .

I started smoking at 18, in college.  Stopped at . . . 26? 27? Late '88, early '89.  Around when I moved out to California.

Don't ever plan on starting again.  The experience has paid off at every American Indian ceremony I've ever attended though - no turning green or coughing my lungs out.  Man, those folks can grow tobacco[/i]!

Gordon

[Jason Lee]

I don't smoke.  

Smoking ups your risk of getting about everything you don't want, plus adding several things that wouldn't otherwise be options, for every little gain.  It ain't the dying early part that one should worry about.  It's the living miserable and slowly deteriorating that one should worry about.  Emphysema and lung cancer don't kill you like a violent car crash - bang and it's over.  It's not romantically dying young or anything.  They kill you slowly, weakening you and physically disfiguring you along the way (I don't just mean disfiguring your teeth; chest shape, swelling, skin coloration, weight, etc).

Well, that's my little lecture.  Fortunately, a lot of people nowadays seem to quit around 27 - 29, when chronic bronchitis really starts to get them down.

Oh, and it smells awful.

[Ben Terry]

Well, about 80% of my posts on the Forge have been in the birthday forum, so its not like anybody really knows me, but I do not smoke.  Never have taken a drag.  In principle I am oppossed to addiction, and so I thought it best to avoid it, but I am kind of a sedentary sugar junkie...

[Christopher Weeks]

I don't know how much I should reveal...probably not this much.  

I irrationally hate smoking.  I mean, the smoke bothers me and all, but I hate it more than that should account for.  I would rather be spit on than have to suffer your fucking airborn filth.  At least then I could kick your ass and no one would fault me.  This guy three cubes down from me at work smokes and I have to endure his disgusting stench all day.

I shouldn't have read this thread.  I wish you had all admitted to being something more sensible...like pedophiles or cannibals or something.  :-)

Chris

[clehrich]

Chris, you live in New Jersey and you object to tobacco's smell?  ;-p

No, actually I am quite torn.  Like Clinton, I like smoking.  I enjoy it.  So long as I don't go crazy and start smoking a pack a day, my doctor keeps finding my health excellent.  He'd like me to get a little more exercise, but I have no health problems whatever and so he doesn't worry about the smoking much.  Really!

At the same time, it makes my clothing and my room smell -- I like the smell of burning tobacco, but stale cigarettes are nasty.  It costs me far too much money (because states keep on blaming the tobacco companies for the huge hikes in price which are in fact subsidies to the pockets of politicians and for programs having nothing to do with smoking or its effects -- rant off).  And when I can't have one for a long time -- like about 10 hours or so, not including sleeping -- I get quite cranky and have a headache.  So I'd like to quit on that score.

But it sure helps me write and think.  "It is a puzzlement."

[C. Edwards]

I like to hike, I like to run, I like to breathe. I don't like to smell like ass.

So no, I don't smoke.

-Chris