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On cigarettes

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Re: On cigarettes

#61

Post by catapart »

IAmBroom wrote: post #52
catapart wrote: post #36

In college, I wanted to test my resolve for addiction, so I started smoking a pack a day for six months. The idea was to see how hard it is to quit so that I could better understand what people go through. Never took, though. Every cigarette was gross to me from the first one down to my last day. I threw away the box on the last day and never had a single moment where I wanted another one. Instead of learning about a…

You... are deeply weird and driven by attempts to think utterly logically. I like you.

Hey, thanks!

Re: On cigarettes

#62

Post by jjkaczor »

In a country far from home, on my own I was out late on a Saturday night in the bar district. Decided on a whim to buy a pack of cigarettes and have a smoke - a few minutes later a group of guys approached me and asked for a couple. Of course I obliged, when they found out I was there alone and Canadian, they invited me to join in their raucous bar-hopping bachelor party for the rest of night, we went until the sun rose.

In another place, far to the north, above the arctic tree line I heard so many stories and met so many indigenous people when braving the frigid temperatures to participate in smoke breaks.

So - while horrible for health, my "anecdata" does seem to indicate that it does help break down social barriers, remove my self-imposed "shyness" regarding talking to "strangers" and strengthens community and social bonds.

(Thankfully, outside of a 6-week period where a relative was in hospice care and I was up to a "pack a day", I was able to quit easily)

Re: On cigarettes

#63

Post by chriscrisby »

zabzonk wrote: post #25
chriscrisby wrote: post #19

I smoked for 20 years, loved every minute of it and looked cool as hell

I did about the same, until my GF said "it's them or me". Haven't touched one in over 30 years, thank god. To anyone out there that does smoke - stop. You will improve your health, your finances, and you won't smell (well, no more than you would otherwise). And you probably don't look much like James Dean anyway.

I don’t get two worked up over it, I met my wife when she needed a cigarette. Young people can get away with a lot health wise.

But no doubt, your 30s are for getting your life together and discarding any habits that don’t agree with old age.

Re: On cigarettes

#64

Post by kbelder »

throw0101a wrote: post #55

> On the whole, society is better off with fewer people smoking. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t lost a little something along the way. Cigars can fuck right off, though. What about pipe smoking?

I've always liked both pipe and cigar smoking far better than cigarettes. I don't do either, because I'm not stupid, but I'd have a small desire to do both. Cigarettes just seem lowest-level commodity trash, like becoming addicted to Big Macs.

Re: On cigarettes

#66

Post by kridsdale1 »

kaizenite wrote: post #60

I'm a contractor but often ride on US Navy ships. Before my first ship, I was told to buy a few cannisters of Zyns as that would help me earn rapport with the sailors. Nicotine makes me sick but having some on me certainly helped getting the enlisted trust me. They would take me to parts of the ship other contractors wouldn't really know to go to and even watched movies with them in the movie room. They ended up buyi…

Now you also know how to thrive in prison.

Re: On cigarettes

#68

Post by bigstrat2003 »

OptionOfT wrote: post #13
garciansmith wrote: post #9

My grad school supervisor (requiescat in pace) lamented the decline for a similar, very minor reason: he always thought that getting up, going outside, smoking a cigarette, and coming back in was the perfect amount of time for a class break. Ten minutes was too long, five too short.

My mom (who smoked, and quit) explained to me that when she was growing up, the teachers would still smoke in class! That was in the 1959..=1964 timeframe.

One of my college profs said that when he was doing his undergrad in the 80s, he used to bum smokes off his professor in class. It definitely lasted for quite a while.

Re: On cigarettes

#70

Post by [deleted] »

vlian2088 wrote: post #44
Waterluvian wrote: post #16

Despite having never smoked a single cigarette in my life, I have an intensely strong reaction to a very specific brand. Early in high school I met my first crush, and one summer learned that she liked me back. She was my first everything. And the scent of a lot of that teenage exploration was the awful but sweet smell of her parents’ basement, stained with that brand of cigarette. I have no clue what brand it is. Bu…

I don't think I ever saw anyone identify a brand just by the smell. it's impossible. most brands from the same parent company are made at the same factory from the same batch of the same chemical-soaked tobacco pulp. it's just the filters and packages that are different. when I smoked, chesterfields, l&ms, pall malls, winstons, parliaments, etc, all tasted and smelled the same to me. only the cheapest godawful local…

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