Smoking appreciation thread for pipes, roll ups, holders and cigars

[ShakyBake]

This is a smoking appreciation thread for traditional tobacco (please no vapes). Pipes, holders, roll ups and cigars.

Anyone still enjoy a good smoke?

I appreciate smoking and want this thread in my "I'm On" list 🤗

Precisely what I’m doing now.

Yorkshire tea, one sugar, golden Virginia with green rizla (as I’m out of blue)

Enough already. We get it you hate smoking and everything to do with it including smokers.
Nobody here wants or needs your lecturing not your superiority complex over your morale objections to smokers.
So why not bore off to one of the many anti smoking threads or start one of your own

In this time of government financial strife, I’m smoking for the country. Every little helps with the baccy tax.

I used to love the smell of pipe smoke - DF smoked a pipe now and then. For his birthday when we were children we used to buy him a tin of Pope’s Escudo tobacco.

To the hater - the smell of pipe smoke is the only thing that's takes me straight back to childhood with my beloved father. Not his picture, not the memory of his voice, just the scent ... and I'm safe again.

My grandad smoked a pipe. I used to be fascinated watching him clean it out and light it. I would bury my nose in his baccy pouch, it was a lovely smell!

I still have his tobacco tin like this one that I now keep dressmaking pins in

I used to ponce about with the odd Gauloise as a young 'un and also Sobranie Black Russians. Love the smell of pipe smoke and cigars. Haven't had a draw for probably 30 years but quite fancy one now!

Love a golden v rollie. I’m one of those annoyingly lucky people who can smoke socially without getting addicted. I’ve never smoked in the house or in the daytime but love a few when I go out or in the garden with a drink in the summer. In between, smoking doesn’t even cross my mind. I don’t think I’ll ever quit, although I appreciate even sporadic smoking isn’t very good for you.

I will try to answer. So, physically, there are two main reactions to smoking, depending on how long it is since you last smoked.

If it's over a long period there is a 'head rush' - a pleasurable feeling of giddiness and 'floating away' - I haven't tried other drugs, but I imagine along the lines of, although possibly not as intense, as popular street drugs. The smoke wisps and curls creamily around you and you sink into a lovely haze for a while.

If it's not over a long period, what happens is you develop a craving - a sort of 'hunger' for the cigarette/tobacco, and so when you smoke, you get the relief of satisfying the craving, a physical and mental sense of satisfaction and relief - an 'aaah' moment. Like a cold drink on a hot day.

But it's not just a physical pleasure. Smoking can give you a moment to yourself in a crowded day, or it can be a social thing - smokers chatting outside the pub. Since it has become so frowned upon, there is a lot of cameraderie amongst smokers.

It can be a useful stress reaction - along the lines of a 'nice cup of tea' or, for some, pouring an alcoholic drink. 'This terrible thing has happened, I'm all over the place - I will have a cigarette'.

I'm not trying to 'sell' smoking - it's terribly expensive, it's bad for your health, in many ways it's inconvenient - always needing to make sure you have enough tobacco, worrying you'll run out at a bad time (I have 'emergency' tobacco at home strictly to be used in life or death situations, the last time I used it was when my dog suddenly died a few years ago). People hate you for it. People tar you with a brush - assuming you'll smoke all over their newborn babies (I don't) drop your cigarette ends everywhere (I don't) and generally be inconsiderate (I try not to be).

But there you are - you asked, I hope that's enlightening.

Virtually every post addressed to me has told me to leave the thread. So why does it bother so many of you so much that someone is not buying into your positive view of smoking?

Why does it matter to anyone what I post?

If you had just ignored my first post on the thread Iwould have left the thread long ago. But you just can't resist haviag a dig at me.

Fair enough.
I'll leave you to your insecurities.

It genuinely doesn't bother me if people express anti-smoking views. I choose to smoke, that's all there is to it - I know there are good reasons not to smoke but for me, they don't outweigh what I get out of it, and no amount of advice to the contrary, however well-intentioned, is going to change that.

I think what's happened here are that anti-smoking views are not what the thread is for. It's a bit like someone coming onto a thread 'show me your beautiful dogs' and talking about why no one should own a dog, or 'what's your favourite Chinese takeaway order' and someone coming on to say how bad takeaways are for you - that kind of thing. Posters who do that usually don't get a welcome on the threads they post on - that's the long and short of it.

Whilst I appreciate some of you smoke or the pipe takes you down memory lane would you be happy if your children were smoking or starting?

The question about children smoking is in no way connected to our memories.

I love the smell of a pipe, a cigar and a good old fashioned tobacconist.
I would not want a child of mine to smoke.

Ok?🤔

Sorry but there is a world of difference between beautiful dogs and eulogising smoking.

Smoking gave me up when I was 30, after a very nasty bout of flu. After excessive smoking at university - 60 Dunhill, Marlborough or Silk Cut in 24 hours if I stayed up for most of the night at a party - I only smoked a few a week and really enjoyed them. I have tried to start again but I just feel sick and dizzy so no point.

Between A levels and university, I worked as an au pair and cook in France. I felt very grown-up when I was offered a filterless Gitane by the mother of one of the families I worked for to accompany my apéritif.

My dad was a dedicated smoker, despite losing a lung to TB. On a trip to London one windy March day, he wrapped his coat around me as we waited for our train at St Pancras, burning my ear with his cigarette as he did so. I can still hear my mother's piercing voice as she shouted for all to hear: 'Perhaps you'll give this ridiculous habit up now that you're burning your own daughter'. He didn't, and died in the pub of a heart attack several years later, a cigarette in one hand and a pint of beer in the other, so I was told.

Here for the nostalgia. I used to love a rolly - Drum light with silver rizlas. Still miss it on a summer’s evening.

Also thank you to the PP who reminded me of the word bifter - not heard that in years!

Childfree here so not something I have to worry about.

There are worse things children could do, though.

I understand they're all vaping now, anyway, if they indulge in any 'inhalations' at all. Smoking is definitely a Boomer/Gen X/older Millennial vice.

Smells are strongly linked to memories and can be used to trigger them as part of cognitive interviews.

Oh, that's my dream! I don't actually want to be a non-smoker; I'd love to be able to smoke only the fags I actively enjoy (maybe 5% of what I do smoke). My brother's done it. I did it with alcohol, after a couple of false starts, but my tobacco addiction's evidently got deeper roots.

Years ago now, I joined a seminar in a building that had been a Gentleman's Club. They'd retained the grandiose décor: thick, velvety carpets, flocked wallpaper and heavily swagged curtains alongside all the polished oak and gilding. The soft materials harboured a ghost of the pipes and cigars that had been smoked there.

When I wandered off up the staircase, where the scent was stronger, a staff member asked what I was looking for. I told him how familiar and comforting I found the tobacco memories leaking gently into the air. He was horrified! Despite my protestations of 'heritage' and 'character', he insisted he'd report my ghastly discovery to management.

I haven't been back, but I hope they haven't sanitised the place.

I'm a dog lover but dog haters tend to mention as their reasons out of control dogs savaging people, and stepping in dog shit. I'd personally rate your chances better of walking past a smoker, than an XL Bully, and I don't know anyone who'd rather step on dog shit than a dog end!

Would you describe the dog that, unprovoked, bit me earlier this year nearly but not quite needing a hospital visit as beautiful? Or my autistic DS who’s dog phobic being really uneasy when passing those with dogs being walked?

They aren’t beautiful to us, or to the hundreds of people that get bitten (or worse) because of some people’s selfish preferences.

We generally prefer cats as they’re far superior in every way and they don’t tend to maim or kill people

But I wouldn’t go thrusting my opinions on others so I’ve learned to live and let live.

I haven’t smoked for a long time, but occasionally find myself thinking about how nice it used to be to have an ice cold glass of white wine and smoke a menthol.

Yes, I was always a social smoker. It was something I only did when I was drinking or with particular friends.