Experiences

If you're a smoker: why did you start smoking?

[my_mayberry]

well, i WAS a smoker...and i loved it too. i'm still not even sure how i managed to quit....but i know for sure the reason i started. i was around 8 or 9 and watched the movie 'the firm'...brad renfro played the kid in the movie and he smoked in it and i thought it looked cool so from then on i wanted to be the cool kid who smoked....and thats exactly what i became....at least, in my own mind.

to be honest, a lot of the reason i started was because of what i saw on tv and being a  kid, the consequences of smoking didn't even enter my mind.

you know, truth be told smoking wasn't so much fun once i hit 18. i guess you could say at the age of 8, it was my 'choice' to start smoking....but it wasn't really a choice for me. the cool people on TV were doing it and so i was gonna do it too! and i did! haha

luckily, somehow i was able to quit 2 years ago. still haven't figured out how.

[Mangee]

I started when some friends and I found a package of Turret cigarettes, went behind the woodworking shop at a school yard and decided to try them. Of the five of us only one never took it up from there. From then on it was a vice that was done in dark corners, alleyways , behind garages etc... Wherever our parents might not look.   At thirteen my dad bought me my first package of cigs because I had run away from home along with about nine other kids. No special reason for running away, just kids following a dare by one of us. We got as far as the Rainbow Bridge between Canada and the USA. After he brought me back he decided if I was going to do silly things it was better if I stopped sneaking around and did it out in the open, he then bought me a package of cigs to prove his point . My mother never forgave him for that. Twenty years ago I walked away from smoking and never looked back.