| I love smoke and smoking. The nicotine fix is really the addictive part that keeps you coming back for more, but I've smoked marijuana as a substitute for nicotine, and tried other alternative smokes. Aside from that, I will start a campfire or burn incense just to see the smoke... But when I'm thinking or drinking, there's nothing that satisfies me more than inhaling, then exhaling, a nice large puff of smoke and watching it as my lungs expel it, and the hundreds of tiny air currents flowing around the vicinity break apart it's initial form and cause it to go spinning in all sorts of curves and spirals. It lets me see the shape of the air, which spawns many a philosophical thought about things in motion that affect us, but we never see.
I initially started smoking cigarettes when I was 16. I had just moved to Vancouver, the "big city" near my hometown, was looking for work, and spending many hours walking in the drizzly spring rain, getting cold and wet, learning my way around. Most of the people I met (and i didn't meet many, since I'm shy) were smokers, and after trying a few here and there since they were offered to me, I found that they made these long walks and bouts of boredom a lot more tolerable. That, and it was a lot cheaper than weed, which, being jobless, I couldnt afford... but as mentioned above, I love the smoke itself... and I guess I needed something to satisfy that need.
I've noticed that I tended to smoke more when I was depressed. Sort of a subconcious self-destructive reaction, I guess, since smoking more wouldn't make me feel better.
Full agreement with jes04; you never stop being a smoker, even if you quit. Whenever I am around people smoking, I still feel the desire to light up. I haven't been a "smoker" for over a year now, but in the past few months, I have had a couple, while under the influence of alcohol. I have purchased cigars since you don't inhale those, therefore you aren't killing your lungs - at least, not as much. They are also so much more flavourful and last a long, long time.
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