Quote:
Originally Posted by Fastolfe
Yes, but the difference with my still young, but apparently older self is that when I picked up smoking, I forced myself to enjoy it because it was the cool thing to be seen doing.
Don't think for a second my first cigarettes were enjoyable. I clearly remember retching all the way to school when my mates and I decided to become cool. I spent my first week as a smoker being seasick, and my last 25 years addicted or fidgety because I was trying to quit.
You escaped my fate because, smoking being uncool now, you could see it - or rather smell it - for what it really is, not through the lens of advertisement and fashion. Good for you, and good for me too, because now that I've stopped, I'm not all that keen to smell it and be tempted to pick it up again.
Still, I think the intellectual cost of implanting the anti-tobacco reflex into people's minds is rather high, probably as high as letting the tobacco industry spread the idea that smoking was cool years ago.
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You're slightly overestimating the "anti-cool" factor, when I was in High School, not so long ago, it was still
very cool/popular to smoke. Maybe it's because I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere, I don't know. Mostly with the popular girls, though I'm sure I just noticed them more because they smoked in the toilets and there was only two sets of those so I was bound to run into them everyday, versus the boys loo's, which I didn't go near.
While I had the "Ew! Smokes." reflex, a great deal of my classmates didn't. Including one of my best friends apparently, who smokes.
Of course I did go to school with a frightening amount of idiots....
