Cigarette smoking is probably the most disgusting habit that is legal & tolerated. It's repulsivity & unhealthfulness is beyond a shadow of a doubt, and yet many people still do it. Why?
I don't know why my parents started, whether it was peer pressure, something they associated with being "grownup" or because they thought it was something that would alleviate stress.
I can't ask them, either. My mother died of cancer nearly 3 years ago. Even in her last few months, when she knew she was dying, she still smoked.
As for my dad, the reason I can't ask him is because he has dementia and literally doesn't remember most of his own life. The one favor dementia did for him was to stop his craving for nicotine. He was smoking the same day I found him in the garage, completely out of it, not really aware of anything. After he was able to speak coherently again, he said he couldn't remember smoking, and didn't want to smoke. Thank goodness. But I've still given orders at every hospital and nursing home he's been in over the past nearly-10-years, that he is not to be around anyone who is smoking, and is never to be offered anything alcoholic to drink. His mind doesn't remember, and I don't want anything to give it a hint.
My theory is that it's a dominance strategy. By ruining the air quality of anyone within 20 feet of you essentially you are committing a subtle form of assault on them.
My grandfather smoked for most of his life, until one day his doctor told him, "If you don't quit, I'm going to buy you a shovel so you can dig your own grave."
So my grandfather quit. Cold turkey, the same year I was born. But he still died of it 23 years later, partly because my dad never quit smoking. My dad wouldn't stop smoking in the house even when my grandfather had to go on oxygen - and of course you're not supposed to smoke around that.
It wasn't until after my grandfather had died, and my dad was still smoking in the house, that my own allergies were getting much worse. Apparently collapsing and even throwing up from breathing in that crap wasn't making any kind of impression. So finally one day, I asked my dad, "Why are you trying to kill me?"
I guess that's one thing that never occurred to him. He stopped smoking in the house after that. He never quit completely, though, until the day the dementia basically rewired his brain. It hasn't made a bit of difference to his lungs, though. He's been diagnosed with COPD (the same thing that killed Leonard Nimoy a few years ago), and is on oxygen.
The most disgusting habit is actually confusing its and it's
I really dislike your current avatar.
Not if you care about yourself more than caring about fitting in. Anyway, I've never known people to judge me for not smoking, I think of myself as a good influence.
Not even friends or family who smoke? I've been asked "When are you going to grow up? Grownups smoke."
Well, I don't drink, either. Grownups apparently do that. And whatever my faults are, at least I'm not going to be someone poisoning the air of people around me, or killing anyone due to drunk driving.
Well nobody knows how many people are smoking alone in their rooms.
It should be obvious once they leave their rooms and other people smell it on their clothes or hair.
I always knew exactly which of my typing customers were smokers. They didn't smoke in my house (one or two tried, but I told them it's a no-smoking zone), but the paper their stuff was written on just
reeked. In one instance it was so bad that I couldn't even breathe around it. So - and I am not kidding - my grandmother and I attached the papers to the clothesline outside to let them air out for awhile. When I had to buckle down and type the thing, each paper was enclosed in a clear freezer bag and sealed. And I still got coughing fits from it.
...tiny whiffs in an open space will extremely likely not kill you at all, not even slowly, but u know, something else.
Who are you to say how it feels in someone else's body? Depending on the kind of cigarette it is, yes, there have been times when a "tiny whiff" has led to me literally upchucking. For most of my life it's been a necessity to keep alert when I'm in public, to see if the person approaching me on the street or coming up behind is smoking. I need to know when to hold my breath, so I won't have to breath in any secondhand smoke. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had to find somewhere to stand upwind of some smokers while waiting for the bus to take me home. Of course all the seats were downwind of them.
Car fumes, for instance, pose much greater risk. Or sitting around a bonfire.
I try to minimize the amount of car fumes I breathe in, and sitting around a campfire is also out of the question. I used to enjoy wiener roasts. But in my late teens, it got to the point where I couldn't tolerate smoke anymore. Of any kind.
