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.

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.)

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

Gordon

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.

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...

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

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."

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

I don't smoke. No real reason, nothing against smoking... just don't.

Chris (Lehrich),

It's not really a puzzlement. The body uses all sorts of toxins in great and bizarre ways. It's been pretty much proven than nicotine sharpens the mind and works as a mild anti-psychotic. (Studies of Wellbutrin and decrease in smoking cravings nailed this one.)

The smoke-haters: trust me, I didn't mean to offend. You guys are definitely the ones on the attack, though. I'm probably the most courteous smoker you'll ever meet: I won't smoke anywhere near anyone who objects, and refuse to smoke where children can even see me, and will berate others for doing so.

My favorite smoking moment: after kicking back 10 consecutive six-minute miles at a charity run for the American Lung Association, lighting up as I stepped off the track and seeing the looks of horror. Even with my courteousness, out-running all the health nuts and then seeing their outrage at knowing I was a smoker was as funny as it gets.

Brilliant! I love it! God, I wish I'd done that!

I knew I liked Clinton. :)

Non-smoker. Never have, never, never, never will. Killed my grandfather shortly after I was born, so I never had the chance to meet him.

My wife smokes, however. She keeps "quitting" half-assed. It's the only issue besides money we regularly argue (viciously) over. I hate -- let me capitalize that -- HATE smoking. However, she does smoke outside, including in 40 below Minnesota winters. I have no sympathy.

As for smokers...persuant to the big controversy in this area recently about public smoking. I say fuck 'em. Engage in filthy habit in dark holes and the privacy of your own home. Beyond that, your choice to do it, and I don't care whether or not you do.

Interestingly, I never pegged Clinton as a smoker. Not a big deal, really. And you get a golf clap for your conscientiousness.

I'm a heavy smoker, ... and I blame my oral fixation on my mom ;)

btw:

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: It's been pretty much proven than nicotine sharpens the mind and works as a mild anti-psychotic. (Studies of Wellbutrin and decrease in smoking cravings nailed this one.)

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: I'm probably the most courteous smoker you'll ever meet: I won't smoke anywhere near anyone who objects, and refuse to smoke where children can even see me, and will berate others for doing so.

montag wrote:

Clinton R. Nixon wrote: It's been pretty much proven than nicotine sharpens the mind and works as a mild anti-psychotic. (Studies of Wellbutrin and decrease in smoking cravings nailed this one.)

Interesting. I knew about the benefits to concentration (same as any mild stimulant AFAIK) and I know that psychiatric patients smoke a lot and that it reduces the effects of medication (smokers need higher doses on average). Admittedly the latter is based on experience and annecdotes only, never bothered to look up a study on that. Could you share some info on that anti-psychotic effect (which would run counter to what I'd expect)?

For the record, as much as I think you guys are filthy animals, I do not feel that I have the right to legislate your activity out of your hands. Clinton, I am not on the attack. I will continue to vote against smoking bans, while enjoying their success. I will not frequent stores, restaurants or bars where smoking is allowed, but I fully support the right of those establishments choose not to have me. And it appears that there are enough of you to keep them in business, so it seems like an equitable arrangement.

But I wonder why I can't piss on the sidewalk.

Chris

When I was 14, my brother sat me down and said "Ben, I've been smoking for the last 4 years. At first, it feels really good, but now it doesn't feel good at all, and I can't stop. Don't start."

And so I didn't.

I did get into Magic: the Gathering in High School, which is more healthy for the body but less healthy for the social life and pocketbook.

yrs--
--Ben

I quit smoking almost two years ago, and for the last couple of months there have actually been days that I have not thought about it.

This:

http://www.simplephrase.com/formerglory/journal/011024.html

And this:

http://www.simplephrase.com/formerglory/journal/011204.html

Non-Smoker. I guess, occasionally in a party-type atmosphere, but that's about it.

Sometimes I think that, Jesus Christ, I oughta know what smoking a cigarette is even like. What kind of an insulated freak am I, that if somebody says to me "y'know, kind of like taking one single puff on a cigarette -" I have to say "no, no I don't know." There's not a food I won't try, I'VE EATEN BUGS and I haven't ever smoked anything. I kind of pride myself on trying things, just to see.

Sometimes I dream that I'm smoking a cigarette. In my dream, it's just like breathing in incense, and I go "this is just like breathing in incense ... which means I must be dreaming. But everything seems so real!"

Then I get obsessed and start to make plans about, y'know, how casually I'll try it, and how I won't feel weird about it, it's just a thing, right, not weird at all, I mean come on, and my plans get more and more pre-planned, and whether I'll gag and cough or not, or what. And pretty soon I'm playing this whole scenario out in my head over and over, until finally I go - dude, this is lame, if you're going to try a cigarette just TRY A DAMN CIGARETTE. But by then it's too late to "just" anything, it's a huge production, so I go - yeah, yeah, you're right, that's what I'll do sometime after this huge production thing has worn off.

Sad but true.

-Vincent

A single puff for a non-smoker is mildly nauseating, for a smoker is a taste of paradise. In order to fully appreciate the experience you have feed the addiction for a couple of years.

I was a practically a smoker for the first 18 years of my life. I was a smoker in-utero, in-2000km-car-trips, at-the-dinner-table and on-the-way-to-the-hospital-with-asthma-attacks...and yet i've never lit up.

I'm 29 now and despite not living in a house of smokers fo 11 years, being on asthma medication and a good deal of exercise I apparently still have the lungs of a 70 year old.

I'm thinking of suing my parents for the loss in IQ for smoking in-utero plus all the other possible problems and increase in risks for lung cancer etc... but hey...its a smoker's right ...right?

I smoke and enjoy smoking, but I would'nt say I'm a heavy smoker. Tend to be a 20 a week man. 40 if it's a holiday or if I'm drinking a lot. Y'see, I really can't be arsed to smoke at work, and can't smoke at home because of a clause in my contract. So really I smoke on my way to the shops to get milk, or at the pub. When i had to stop drinking for a month, I pretty much stopped smoking too. But then I could drink again and it was all OK.

Often I just don't get in the mood for a fag for ages. Sometimes 3-4 weeks. I've never "quit" as such, just lost interest in smoking. I appear to be one of the rare non-addicted smokers. Or maybe I just think I am...

I'm not so much a smoker as, occasionally, I attempt to try that stuff you people call "air".

I that bastard that smokes everywhere (in elevators, San Fransisco, New York, movies). I figure the world exists to correct me, so I usually put my cigarette out when someone says I can't smoke. However, I usually do ask where it is shown that I can't smoke. If there isn't a sign, fuck 'em.

I also tend to leave a "hey kids, smoking's cool!" note somewhere in a lot of my games.

And I mean it. Smoking gets you laid. So does drinking... I drink myself handsome whenever given the opportunity.

Dav

I quit and quit and quit and quit. All my friends are smokers, making my social life very difficult. Like big Al likes to say, "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

Keith

I smoked for ten years. I quit, um, Summer 2002. Just after Origins.

Smoking is amazing. It's fantastic. Clinton's right. It's pulmonary sex, baby. Oh my god. I miss it terribly.

But it made me feel like shit and was ruining my health--rapidly and drastically. Also, my wife doesn't smoke and neither does my baby daughter and I don't want to be the asshole who chuds their lungs cuz "I have rights" or whatever the hell excuse people throw out.

I don't smoke. The only person in my family that does is my brother and he's plagued with lung problems. He'll probably die of Lung problems.

I ain't judgin. It's his decision. Just don't smoke near me.