How about my last cigarette?
Which will be in approximately 5 hours time, once I've finished this packet. I've got about 5 left, I think, and then that's it - a serious attempt to give up for good.

Why not just give up now, you may ask? Well, I've paid for the little white fuckers, so I'm not going to waste them. Also, if the next five are every bit as unenjoyable as the last one I had 2 hours ago, it will be the added incentive I need.

This decision has been taken partly as a reaction to the lump of green phlegm I coughed up this morning, which was exactly the same hue as Yoda - I just thought 'Christ that's disgusting'. It is also partly as a result of consulting my bank balance some three weeks before I get paid again, and finding that we have a couple of hundred quid of disposable income left. And there's two family birthdays coming up within the space of a week, and I'll also need to put another fifty quid's worth of diesel in the car. So giving up the fags is going to go some way to ensuring that myself and the sweary one can have at least one more night out this month.

I am not, however, going to turn into one of those insufferable, holier than thou ex smokers. The bunch of fucking pious cunt monkeys. They're even worse than people who have never smoked at all...
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Mon 24 Mar 2008, 16:27, 8 replies)

Parents thought I was chasing the dragon...
When I was 14 my folks found small sheets of tinfoil and matches in my bedroom and instantly leapt to the conclusion that I'd taken up smoking skag like Zammo- they sat me down in grave silence and asked if there was anything I wanted to tell them- well, being a naughty kind of child I could think of ten things to which they would be referring but played mute innocence- until they said "We know you've been using matches and foil. Care to tell us what for?".

Oh shit.

The truth was, I found that if you scraped the heads off the matches into a little pile (about 5-10 was best) and then wrapped them up in tinfoil, then hit the pile with a hammer you actually got a pretty decent sounding bang.

I explained this, ashamed, as their eyes got wider and relief cut in that I wasn't on class A drugs after all. A lengthy silence ensued and then the biggest anti-climax of all time.

"Well- stop it".
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Mon 24 Mar 2008, 15:31, 27 replies)

Actually, not my first, but smoking related.
I ended up on a trip interstate across last weekend, ended up offering a girl a cigarette, and managed to get her contact details.

It's semi related to the topic! She's flying over to this state, so there's something, all to the fact that we're both smokers.
(Grey_Ghost has yet to decide on a sig on, Mon 24 Mar 2008, 15:13, Reply)

why?
Smoking is such a stupid thing to do. First one at 13 made me feel so sick I did not touch one till 15. At school I wanted to hang with the cool kids and smoked with them. Then realized they were complete nobbers. But I still smoked, grrr. I enjoy it with beers and mixed with herbs too, but after the first one of the day its all bullshit. I have had mild asthma too, however it was not enough to put me off smoking and what with me wanting to look cool and rebellious to fit in with punk ethos I carried on regardless. Last year I had to have medical check ups to work abroad, they checked out my lungs and found a bit of emphazimia (sp?). Freaked out, I quit……….for a few months!!! What a twat!? But after reading some of the stories here I am up for giving it another bash!

i should stop watching classic french cinema too, because every time the hero has a ciggy hanging out the corner of their mouth it makes me want to smoke...
(kurious orange, Mon 24 Mar 2008, 13:55, 3 replies)

Faintly on topic
My friend's little brother is, not to put too fine a point on it, something of a pillock. He goes to school with my brother, and it was amongst my proudest moments when my friend informed me that my brother had told his brother that 'you look like a collapsed lung'. It's true, he does.

Anyway, the story I'm about to relate to you was told to me by my friend one raucous lunchtime. Essentially, his brother had come running into his room, shouting his name frantically and clutching a small plastic packet containing something brown.

It's worth noting at this point that my friend's stance on marijuana, whilst not belligerent, is faintly disapproving, a fact of which his brother was no doubt aware.

'[Friend]! [Friend]!' He cried, in a voice not unlike a bullfrog playing the electric saw, 'I bought some weed to try, but it's not doing anything! Am I doing it wrong?' It takes my friend but a few seconds of scrutiny to discover the problem. He tells his fourteen-year-old brother, through barely stifled laughs:


'That, [friend's brother], is because you've just bought a bag of mud.'

He'd paid £15 for it, and everything. And smoked a whole mudarette, although I'm to this day not sure how he managed it.
(WarneMarsh My priority for frivolity begets quality jollity, Mon 24 Mar 2008, 13:25, Reply)

*puff* *puff*
I've been a smoker on and off for over a decade. I'd hate to see my lungs.

I took it up when I was 14, I think 'twas the peer pressure type thing, too long ago to remember. I quit when I was 16, took it up again at 17. I was up to a pack a day by the time I was 21, then had to go cold turkey when it got to the stage of Cigarettes? Food? Cigarettes? Food? Food won, and I stayed smokefree for 3 years.
I then took it up again when I was 24, think it was stress from early morning starts, and a relationship breakdown. I'm trying to quit again, though I may end up having to go cold turkey, as again, I've run right out of money.

Length. 100mm long, lit and with a filter on the unburned end.
(Grey_Ghost has yet to decide on a sig on, Mon 24 Mar 2008, 13:00, Reply)

Up in smoke
Nothing to do with cigarettes, but lots to do with smoke. I will take you back to the mid nineties, and the heady days of (highly) experimental chemistry sessions.... (academic chemistry, not the mind-altering substance type!)

I had recently finished my PhD and was embarking on my first post-doc contract, and my mate M was doing his PhD with me on the same project. We had to use a bit of benzene in a particular preparation, which was a bit of an issue, as we had to sign out what we needed etc what with it being a bit dangerous.

However, once we'd finished with it we then had a disposal problem. Just what do you do with 100ml of carcinogenic hydrocarbon? Well, the official line is to bottle it up, label it and phone up the safety office to have them collect it. But this was too much hassle and not enough fun, and we were young and stupid.

We reasoned that we could effect our own benzene disposal by pyrolytic means...benzene's a flammable hydrocarbon after all. So we poured some into a shallow vessel in the (new!) fume cupboard which we used in the lab, and set light to it.

The disposal of the benzene was a success, insofar as it burned it all away. What we had failed to take into account though was the very high carbon concentration of the molecule (it's C₆H₆) which results in incomplete combustion. In layman's terms, it produces one hell of a lot of thick, black, sticky, sooty smoke.

Which deposited itself all over the nice white interior of our fume cupboard.

We spent the next hour cleaning it off with solvents and soapy rags, and probably exposed ourselves to more noxious and carcinogenic compounds from the soot than we would have if we'd snorted the benzene.

We didn't try it again.

Apologies for length and whatever else. I'm at work today, and bored because no-one is posting on b3ta! I'd post the one about my sodium/ether fire, but there was no smoke from it....
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Mon 24 Mar 2008, 11:23, 1 reply)

Never had one, never will.
BUT.
MY dad was a chain smoker for a good 40 years. His downfall. He's had cancer three times, Laryngeal Cancer to be precise, he has no vocal cords (so no voice), no sense of smell, he had to have cancerous muscle taken out as well as his thyroid gland, he had to have reconstructive surgery where he had muscle taken from his shoulder to stabilise his throat, and has limited strength in that arm.

On top of that, he has a hole in his throat about a cm in diameter which he breathes through, he can't swim, because that hole (called a stoma) leads directly to his lungs, so swimming is a one way trip to the afterlife.

Go look up Laryngectomy patients in Google.

Here's a good one to get you started:
www.microsurgeon.org/jejenum_preop_small1.jpg
(Poppet some assembly required., Mon 24 Mar 2008, 9:41, 1 reply)

Smoke, pills and passion thwarted
I was very religious until I was 23. That meant no smoking, no drinking, no girlfriend (when I was kissed on the cheek by a girl at university I prayed for about an hour afterwards), but worst of all, no bacon. Imagine that.

When I stopped being religious I knew that my life would be turned upside down if I went on a long-overdue binge of booze, sex and drugs. So, beyond developing a taste for beer, and meeting a lovely girlfriend, I haven't really experimented. So, to this day, I haven't smoked cigarettes and haven't tried drugs.

Apart from one day.

My girlfriend and I were at a beach party. The sun had set, but the glow from the moon and the lights on the ferry pier illuminated the beach with a soft, blue light. We were far enough away from the main stage for the distant thump of bass to blend nicely with the waves lapping on the beach, with the rustling of palm trees singing a whispering song.

I was laying on the sand, chatting with a group of Germans I had met on the ferry. The beers were kicking in beautifully, and all of us in our little group were wrapped in the perfect feeling of contentment that bathes you at that stage in the evening. As we started heading our separate ways one of the Germans offered me a cigarette, and, glowing with bonhomie and a taste for something new, I took it from him, placed it between my lips and pulled the smoke slowly past my throat, trickling it slowly backwards to prevent myself from spluttering. It was a little harsh perhaps, but the dark hit perfectly complemented the beer.

Later my girlfriend and I were standing by the shoreline, watching revellers splashing in the sea by moonlight. At that perfect moment I leaned in to kiss her, but alas, she recoiled at my smoky breath. Frustrated, I stared moodily at the palm trees.

As I was staring, a young man skipped past, beaming from ear to ear. He reminded me of Puck from a Midsummer Night's Dream. He met my eye, broadened his grin and traipsed towards me.

"Hey there! You don't look terribly chirpy! Have one of these," he says, dropping a white pill into my hand. He skipped away before I could respond.

I was at a crossroads. Should I consume a pill from a strange man at a party? Am I ready for this? What direction will my life take if I put it into my mouth?

After wrestling with my conscience for a second or two, I popped it onto my tongue, not knowing what to expect.

It was a Mentos. I got my kiss in the end.
(I grew it myself, Mon 24 Mar 2008, 4:58, Reply)

Nicotine patches
If you want to quit, nicotine patches really do work. Stick them over your eyes so you cant find your fags!
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Mon 24 Mar 2008, 3:41, Reply)

I started on Cigars
I half inched one of my Dad's Romeo Y Julietta which made me puke something rotten.

Personal "best" was 164 Lucky Strikes in a 24 hr period.

16 years later I wake up and feel like I'm drowning and will probably die of lung cancer before I'm 35. Woohoo!

Smoking isn't cool kids.


Although I am a bit partial to some Snus after my time in Sweden
(Speshal, Mon 24 Mar 2008, 3:11, 1 reply)

Bindun?
2 dyslexics.
One says 'Hey, can you smell smoke?'
Other says 'Mate, I can't even smell me own name'

/really sorry
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Mon 24 Mar 2008, 2:54, Reply)

my first cigarette
Well my smoker friends know I don't smoke and I never have. So one day while I was outside they offered me one. I was like sure why not. I just wanted to know what it tastes like. My friend tells me has he is lighting my cigarette "when you inhale swallow the smoke" Not knowing better I did just that. Next thing you know I am coughing wheezing and then when you least expect it I throw up on my Health Science professor's shoes. He just looks at me and says "you fucktard no wonder you are failing my class." My friends just shake their heads saying "Oh Rizzi, Oh Rizzi"
(rizzivision, Mon 24 Mar 2008, 2:47, Reply)

Smoking is cool...
The first time I held a lit cigarette to my lips was somewhat of a one sideddedededed (sorry drunk spelling, please use initiative) happening.

I was about the age of a 12 year old, and at my best friends house. His sister had conviently left her pack of lambert on the step so obviously we half inched one...

Now, as one knows, when you're 12 there is of course a hieracy, in this instance I was the surf. we smuggled the illicit contraband to the side of the house, tucked away from all seeing eyes... where my friend decided to break the fag in half...

I was given the non filter section.

I lit it.. inhaled... coughed.. we heard a noise.. and lobbed them away. It was somewhar of a hard shock...

any way...

2 years later, I was buying 20 menthols, smoking them out my brothers window and having a great time.

I then went on to smoke shed loads of pot, and I think I have the lung capicity of a ashmatic hamster, with lung issues...

smoking never got me the coolness I needed...

or a blow job...

length... just over an inch of a super king...
(feedingtimeatthezoo day 1 of his bikini diet started, Mon 24 Mar 2008, 2:13, Reply)

I was made to smoke a cigar
to prove my manliness after making out for a laugh with another guy on my corridor. One guy was completely freaked by it.

_{I'm not even gay or bi, just persuadable when i'm drunk}
(emcake putting a donk on it since, Mon 24 Mar 2008, 0:10, 2 replies)

Berlin
Went to Berlin on a school trip at the age of around 14 which was pretty fun. By the second night myself and a couple of mates had realised we could sneak out of the hotel at night, so we went down to the nearest garage and despite us all being blatently underage the woman served us vodka and smokes!

There was a lake about 5 minutes from the hotel so we went there and drank the vodka, which tasted rank as we had nothing to mix it with and smoked cigarettes. As it was my first one, I thought I was doing rather well in not coughing until I actually inhaled the smoke. I was then roundly mocked as I said I wasn't taking it down and just holding it in my mouth.

Obviously I couldn't face being mocked, so by the end of the trip I had forced myself to smoke so much that I could smoke a whole cig properly.

This was the start of nearly 10 years of smoking which ended 2 weeks ago on my birthday. Went completely cold turkey with no patches or the like and haven't had one since, even when completely pissed.

Giving up is easy!
(Jimmy Large Is huffing Jenkem on, Sun 23 Mar 2008, 23:51, Reply)

Being the practical sort
I've never understood why us smokers are dumb enough to huddle in doorways. Don't complain that you're cold... just wrap up warm! Oh, and wear a waterproof hat for the rain.

Luckily, I can carry this look off with aplomb.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Sun 23 Mar 2008, 21:19, Reply)

I
used to pinch fags during the week and smoke them one after another when my mum went out on a Friday and I'd be watching shooting stars and Eurotrash getting dizzy.
(xwoody01, Sun 23 Mar 2008, 21:14, Reply)

First Fag
My first fag was to impress my girlfriend. I'm now gay and sometimes wonder what made nicotine more addictive than pussy.
(badfox1 wonders who he's played by this episode on, Sun 23 Mar 2008, 20:06, 1 reply)

Ending The Smoking Debate
If, like me, you're a staunch non-smoker tired of hearing the (unprompted) rantings of smokers over their right to smoke, do what I do -- repeat their own arguements back to them, but replacing the words "smoke" and "smoking" with "wank" or "wanking". As in...

"It's my legal right to wank in public."
"The government shouldn't be able to tell us where or when we can wank."
"I should be allowed to wank on the bus/train/plane."
"If non-wankers don't like me wanking they can stand somewhere else."
"Who says wanking sections in restaurants put people off their food?"

Now, inevitably these people will point out, probably in a self-righteous or disgusted fashion, that smoking and wanking are two entirely different things. In response you can tell them you agree, because --

1. No-one ever died from second-hand wanking.
2. Wanking never gave anyone a terminal disease.
3. Except in extreme cases, and every human being between the ages of roughly 12 - 16, wanking isn't addictive.
4. Millions of pounds of our tax money doesn't get wasted each year helping adults that should know better to quit their wanking habit.
5. Very few people wank around their children and claim it doesn't do them any harm.
6. The government can't levy a tax on wanking.
7. When enjoyed responsibly, wanking doesn't make your hair, clothes or breath smell, and any stains are machine-washable.

Now, I actually don't have anything particularly against smokers, but it's always amusing watching the more self-righteous amongst them struggling with the undeniable fact that my filthy habit is no worse than theirs when you get down to brass tacks...
(Orin delurked to post this gibberish on, Sun 23 Mar 2008, 19:56, 10 replies)

Finally
Here's a story from an ex-smoker which will probably make you cross.

After 25 years (ages 15-40) of enjoying a pack of Marlboro reds each day (two packs a day with the beer), time finally caught up with me.

I think it was the realisation that to smoke required my personality to exhibit the heady characteristics of stupidity, denial and weakness in varying degrees. It DOES cost a fortune, it IS appallingly bad for you, and you DO only do it because you are addicted and are not strong enough to stop. There's no way of putting a cynical smirk on it to recover dignity. To quote the Diet Tango ad: "You need it because you're weak".

So I set out to stop. It took three years to accomplish fully, with relapses, and it was SHIT. Giving up smoking is such a lonely experience, being parted from one's best friend, and being tempted every minute of the conscious day (and then subsequently dreaming about smoking).

I read in a book "each craving only lasts about three minutes". Maybe, but the next craving starts immediately afterwards. I also used to desparately crave one while I was wanking, which is not in any of the books, and made me lose my train of thought about Japanese ladies cosplaying as maids.

One day recently it dawned on me, after a busy week's work and a heavy weekend on the booze, that cigarettes had just not occurred to me all week. Three years of pain and tension is worth it for it for that feeling of joyous liberation and the reward of accomplishment, I promise you...

And to the girl who says she only smokes because she looks fucking cool: I don't agree. When I see people huddled in doorways dragging away in the lovely British winter, I think they look pretty damn pathetic really, and I am glad I am finally free of the cunting things. Choice? Pah! The choice of whether to be addicted or not is all they offer. Ban the bastards altogether!
(Super Jet Shoes, Sun 23 Mar 2008, 18:56, 1 reply)

You know when...
You know when you start smoking pot, and it's all great and giggly so you smoke more and more, it becomes a way of life you might say, and as such you become more aware of the "droughts" - periods where you can't score - so you fill these droughts with cigarettes, despite being acutely aware that at least pot DOES something, not like fags that merely make you smell, but you just need to be smoking something, and it's fine cos you're not a smoker, merely a pot smoker, 'cept suddenly being able to smoke something without being stoned is an attractive idea, due to work/girlfriend commitments, then you're 8 years down the line with day-glo teeth, see through skin, and you can sell the gunk you pull up from your lungs in the morning to the local dairy?

Yeah.
(bacontrout got ska, Sun 23 Mar 2008, 18:30, 1 reply)

My nan has a slight obession with defending her smoking habit
She's 70-odd so not going to change, she says. And she doesn't understand why anyone else should, she's been smoking about 15 a day since she was 15 or something. Quite impressive.

If an establishment allows smoking (which in Austria they usually do) she will leap at the chance, especially if it's a cafe or bar. Coffe or beer and cigarettes just belong together!

As does a digestive fag. And a breakfast fag.
( morrybyte made a subtle namechange at, Sun 23 Mar 2008, 17:23, Reply)

Jonathan Kane
Jonathan Kane was a cool guy in school. All the girls wanted to touch him and all the guys wanted to be like him; or however the saying goes. We were best friends for a time and it was he who gave me my first cigarette, my first joint, and my first taste of liquor on the street. He never did pressure me into doing any of these things but I did them anyway because I was a tall white and pasty, awkward, elbowy, geeky young adolescent and remaining cool was a constant battle for me.

I still count myself lucky to this day that when Jonathan Kane first got hold of a bag of smack (heroin) that I was on holiday with my family in Wales.

I sometimes see him at Swindon bus station when I go home to see my parents, hastleing the good folk there for 20p's (for the phone he says) and recently he made the local paper for a string of crimes one morning which culminated in GTA of a postmans bike.

I keep trying to help him out on occasion but that's just stupidity on my part really as each time I do he just ends up robbing my house or something.
(poprocksandcoke, Sun 23 Mar 2008, 12:45, Reply)

A non-smoker myself, when I did care work I looked after lots of smokers.
Many were dying of tobacco-related conditions, in varying degrees of pain. Most accepted their fate and it was no business of mine.

Some had to be taken outside for a fag. Carers who smoked would volunteer for this job so they could have an extra break but I sometimes did it.

I didn't mind as it entailed sitting in a garden or on a patio, enjoying an extra brew and 'supervising' one-legged or stroke-paralysed smokers from a comfortable distance.

One time, though, it all went wrong. I was at a place I'd never worked at before and when I was asked to take Mr X for a smoke, I agreed as usual.

However, this time the 'smoking area' was a small windowless room with a noisy fan, two chairs and a table, and Mr X was about 28, wheelchair-bound with a wasting illness. And a nasty temper.

He couldn't use his hands, in fact he was completely paralysed except for his face.

I had to get the fag out of the box, put it in his mouth, light it, let him take a puff and then remove it, hold it, put it back in his mouth, take it out, put it back and relight it as it had gone out...

It took me two goes to light it properly, not being a smoker myself, and I was no good at the rhythym of it - when to put it in, take it out, put it in the ashtray, put it back in...

All the while he kept up a stream of abuse about how useless I was and how he'd report me for deliberately sbotaging his only remaining pleasure.

I eventually pointed out that I could have refused to take him, not being a smoker myself, and I could leave at any time. And that anyway, I didn't give a shit about his threats and quite pitied him, really, if that was how he treated people who were trying to help him.

So that's the only fag I've ever 'smoked', if it counts, and the only witness is probably long dead, God bless him.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Sun 23 Mar 2008, 9:42, 1 reply)

On Smoking.
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=w9ySCcnoo3c

Just because I think Bill Hicks should be involved in everything, and to raise some awareness about the theivery going on in some answers. Plaigarists!

I smoke, also, yeah, sure. It's erm, cool. I'm cool.
(sorry., Sun 23 Mar 2008, 7:39, Reply)

Insomnia cure
I find that one page is enough to put me sound asleep for eight hours.

My contribution on topic: Started, stopped, started, stopped, started again and to this very day.
(barrycounty, Sun 23 Mar 2008, 3:19, Reply)

I started smoking at 16
I love smoking, but don't do it too much. My first was at 16, but a few of my mates was at 13. They decided to collect butts at the park and light them up. This disgusted me, as we'd been taught not to smoke and it is bad, and you shouldn't do it! I went home, and in my frustration and anger, I got one of my mate's borrowed tapes (Genesis, the one with the hand on), and recorded a pretend witch voice which stated that he would die if he ever smoked again, so he would hear it and heed said witch's advise!
(Nibi, Sat 22 Mar 2008, 23:33, Reply)

my first snout
It was i recall waiting for a bus on way home from school swimming sesh,fellow reprobate handed me a lit ciggie and i had a lug-i tasted foul.

That was at age of 14

I took me a few more years to take up the filthy habit properly,now im trying hard to give up as Mrs Shug is chewing my ear about quiting which is perhaps only fair on her if nothing else.
(shug, Sat 22 Mar 2008, 22:29, Reply)