Smoking – Our Stories  I started smoking because I thought it was really, really cool, no seriously I did, I thought it was the be all and end all of being cool. I mean look at all the evidence, we have all my favourite film stars, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson who wouldn’t be seen dead on screen without a cig in one had. Plus if you’re in any band then smoking comes with the territory, any rock star with pride and dignity must have a fag smouldering when they’re on stage. I was lead singer in a band so I thought I really should smoke and oh yeah there was a girl I fancied at the time, she smoked and I thought I would as well to impress her.
My first fag was off the girl I fancied in a club, she offered it to me and I wasn’t gonna make the mistake of looking seriously sad by refusing it. It tasted like shit, I couldn’t even drag it down, I just held it in my mouth and blew it out, however I stood there in the classic smokers stance and I felt like the ‘dog’s’. This led to other cigs and  other nights but the girl never seemed to fancy more, not even bonding over a crafty fag at break at school got me any closer. What was I doing wrong? ‘I know, I was nicking all hers’, I needed my own, that way I could offer them to her and look less like a skinflint. I remember the first pack I bought, 20 B&H’s…bit ambitious, as I’d never smoked more than the occasional fag at parties, pubs and clubs. I was 16 and was pretty drunk, I offered one to her and then to all my other mates who smoked. In the end I probably only ended smoking 5 of them, but none the less in the morning, when dragging my sorry body out of bed, I found they were all gone. However I also found in addition to my hangover that, I had a throat and mouth that had been run-over by a steamroller and then covered with hot tar. Yeah…I started to get used to it and smoked more and more, however I was lucky I never got hooked. I would say the culmination was smoking 200 on a two week lad’s piss up in Corfu but there was a turning point and I never when back.  University stopped me… why? Well I had all the freedom in the world but I had lost the girl, my band and I began to realise that if I kept it up my own room would smell like the smoking carriage of a train and so would I. I was also getting a horrible cough, which would only attract weird animals and not any of the beautiful women around me. So I stopped…just like that and I haven’t smoke since.
 Do you wanna know the best thing about it? It’s the respect I get off smokers and particularly my best friends. They all smoke and at first it was hard, I got all the usual jibes…’fancy a fag mate’…’oh sorry I forgot’ but now they really think that I’m the clever one for giving up and they all wish they could but its gotten a lot harder the longer they’ve smoked. Turns peer pressure on its head, doesn’t it? Think about that the next time someone takes the piss out of you for not wanting to smoke.
If you or anybody you know are having problems with smoking try the following places for help and support @ the Addictions Links Page. Read: By Steve
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