A lot of people are explaining why they ARE smoking; very few address why they STARTED smoking.
For me, and every single other smoker I've ever talked to about it, it was to be cool. It was a shortcut into a group of people you wanted to hang out with. Even before the stricter smoking rules you were almost always sent to a certain area to smoke and sitting there with all the "cool" people smoking not only made you feel like one of them but it actually gave you the change to talk to them, get to know them better and be accepted by them.
The specifics varies from person to person but I've never heard a description of why someone started to smoke that didn't essentially come down to him/her wanting to be cool, either by standing out from a specific group or by becoming a part of one.
Obviously there is a lot of people that's unwilling or unable to admit that but over time most people learn to look at their own reasons from a slightly more mature angle.
PS: I smoked 3 packs (not those pansy American 10-packs; real 20-packs) a day for around 12 years. I quit. Not because it was expensive, unhealthy, frowned upon or any of that bullshit but because I got tired of being all twitchy if I didn't have my smokes around. I quit. And even with my amount of cigarettes per day the physical addiction was negligible. It's not a popular fact since all these phoney "you can only stop smoking if you use OUR drug instead!!!"-products makes millions on people that believe the lie about how addictive smoking is, but it's the truth none the less. The only physical sensation when you quit is a slight sucking empty feeling in your stomach that feels quite a bit like being a little hungry. That's it. All the rest is psychological.
Deep-rooted psychological shit, mind you, but still psychological. We've been raised with how addictive and dangerous smoking is but everyone was smoking anyways (at least they used to be) so we silently learned that the addiction was VERY severe! Why else would people keep smoking? This idea of an almost heroin-like addiction them makes for the perfect excuse to fend off the idiots nagging you about quitting: "I've tried but it's JUST SO HARD!!!". No it's not. It's hard because you don't really WANT to quit. And FAIR GAME TO THAT! The problem is not gicing people an excuse to get rid of the pesky motherlovers that badger us all the time, the problem is when the smoker start to believe the lie themselves.
/wall-of-text off
For me, and every single other smoker I've ever talked to about it, it was to be cool. It was a shortcut into a group of people you wanted to hang out with. Even before the stricter smoking rules you were almost always sent to a certain area to smoke and sitting there with all the "cool" people smoking not only made you feel like one of them but it actually gave you the change to talk to them, get to know them better and be accepted by them.
The specifics varies from person to person but I've never heard a description of why someone started to smoke that didn't essentially come down to him/her wanting to be cool, either by standing out from a specific group or by becoming a part of one.
Obviously there is a lot of people that's unwilling or unable to admit that but over time most people learn to look at their own reasons from a slightly more mature angle.
PS: I smoked 3 packs (not those pansy American 10-packs; real 20-packs) a day for around 12 years. I quit. Not because it was expensive, unhealthy, frowned upon or any of that bullshit but because I got tired of being all twitchy if I didn't have my smokes around. I quit. And even with my amount of cigarettes per day the physical addiction was negligible. It's not a popular fact since all these phoney "you can only stop smoking if you use OUR drug instead!!!"-products makes millions on people that believe the lie about how addictive smoking is, but it's the truth none the less. The only physical sensation when you quit is a slight sucking empty feeling in your stomach that feels quite a bit like being a little hungry. That's it. All the rest is psychological.
Deep-rooted psychological shit, mind you, but still psychological. We've been raised with how addictive and dangerous smoking is but everyone was smoking anyways (at least they used to be) so we silently learned that the addiction was VERY severe! Why else would people keep smoking? This idea of an almost heroin-like addiction them makes for the perfect excuse to fend off the idiots nagging you about quitting: "I've tried but it's JUST SO HARD!!!". No it's not. It's hard because you don't really WANT to quit. And FAIR GAME TO THAT! The problem is not gicing people an excuse to get rid of the pesky motherlovers that badger us all the time, the problem is when the smoker start to believe the lie themselves.
/wall-of-text off
