AIBU to not understand why people start smoking?

[Mirrorwriting]

I’m in my 40s. Everyone my age and younger grew up knowing smoking will kill you and probably painfully. So why do people START?

I know they CONTINUE because they are addicted, but WHY start? Omg.

Is it that they watch old ladies aged 115 who say they smoked a cigar every day of their lives and thank, yes that’ll be me, not the 32 year old with smoking related amputations?

I read the previous quit smoking thread here and saw the WhyQuit website and still genuinely can’t understand why one would start.

Teenagers surely don’t think the yellow teeth and smell are ‘cool’, let alone emphysema and cancer. Is it simply rebellion. (Literally sometimes) cutting your nose off to spite your face?

A conscious act of self-harm/slow suicide?

I started smoking aged about 15 because I had cool friends in the year above who smoked at breaktime and it was a way of feeling more like them. Very pathetic, I know! But that never progressed into smoking anything more than about 5 cigarettes per week.

When I moved to uni however, this changed massively. I was in a tiny shoebox of a room, got pretty severely depressed and had lots of friends but felt very isolated. So I started smoking more and more as going for a cig break was like hitting pause on life and was a way of me escaping my own negative thoughts and feeling less crap. So in a way it was kind of a self care method, ironic really. My mental health improved over the course of the next two years and by the time I left uni I was pretty addicted, but was in no rush to stop because smoking was a great way of meeting people on nights out and at my new job.

I stopped when I was 26 because I was starting to think about the impacts on my appearance rather than my health. I was very beautiful in my younger days and knew it, and didn’t want to turn into a yellowed teeth wrinkly old thing like my chain smoker of a mother. So I stopped cold turkey one day, got my teeth whitened, and that was that. Even whilst I smoked I exercised religiously and ate healthily and looked after myself in general, so I was always health conscious but just never saw smoking as something bad as i had grown up watching my mother smoke 40 a day with no ill effects. Me and DH still enjoy the occasional one when out at a wedding or concert or sometimes if we’ve had a stressful week we’ll crouch on the back steps on a Sunday night when the kids are in bed like a pair of naughty teenagers and share one.

The way I see it, every single day we do things which might kill us. Crossing the road,(cars can kills) visiting public crowded places, (never know when a terrorist might strike) leave electronics switched on when we go to bed, (could start a house fire) eat processed food (can lead to loads of nasty stuff like obesity which is one of the biggest killers). It’s estimated that 4million people die from obesity/overweight related health concerns in England each year. It’s estimated that 160,000 people die from smoking related illnesses in England each year.

What I’m trying to say is we’re all going to die one day, and everyone has the right to enjoy different vices, as long as they are aware of the risk. This thread is interesting as a nice way of hearing others stories because it’s interesting to hear why people start things like smoking, but please keep your goady comments to yourself. Every smoker can see the message that smoking does damage on a packet when they see it, if that was enough to stop then they would have done it. So OP, what makes you think that you telling them to stop and linking to web pages will make them want to stop? And why is it any of your business if they smoke or not?

Wtf is wrong with people?! Entitled idiots? Forcing smoking cessation down our throats? Seriously?

creambun I honestly have no idea how smokers are "entitled", I don't expect anyone to stump up for my tobacco, I've never been unwell with anything that can be related to smoking so my care costs are negligible, I don't smoke around people who don't partake in the habit.....so please explain how I'm entitled? Is it because I do something you don't like? If that's the case then surely that makes you entitled as you expect me to conform to your desires?

mirror please bugger off with the righteous shite, I honestly don't need your "advice" on how to quit smoking, contrary to your obvious belief I am pretty intelligent and more than capable of making informed decisions on my own well-being.

My idiot husband decided to start smoking at 32! Suffice it to say I've gone right off him. I reckon he started because he hangs around with younger people who smoke, which just makes him seem pathetic. He also went from being teetotal to drinking regularly, for I assume similar reasons. I hate it! And I resent him, because it seems like a big 'fuck you.' (Although I may be overthinking this.) Nevermind, I'll be out of here by September.

I love it when people say things like "I just CAN'T understand why someone would do something like XYZ" as a way to point out their moral/intellectual superiority, when giving the matter literally one minute's actual thought would provide them with an answer to their conundrum.

I can understand why people do drugs, it feels good. I understand why people become alcoholics, I understand why people are overweight- food tastes good and some use it for comfort. I understand why some people steal, I understand why my house is a mess, I understand why I don’t exercise. It makes sense.

I understand why smokers continue to smoke - they are addicted. I don’t understand why someone would play Russian roulette with their life when the first few cigarettes, before addiction sets in, are not even pleasant and are known killers.

Like if the new thing was eating rat poison pellets. The first few taste shit but then you’ll like them but you might drown in your own mucous or have bits of you cut off.

Would anyone say, yes please, I’ll have some of that. Thank you for sharing the stories. It sounds like it is generally an emotional decision entirely.

You're being deliberately obtuse now if you say you understand why people engage in behaviours that may endanger their lives on the one hand but you can't understand why someone starts to smoke. Find a less tedious bugbear to be morally superior about, you are boring in the extreme.

People who start smoking are in what my friend calls the 'youth bubble of immortality' with regard to the fact that it can kill you horribly when you're (as far as the kids are concerned ancient.

I've never even tried it - my mother (who died horribly from it) was a heavy smoker and it entirely disgusted me - but I know peer pressure/encouragement tends to be the main factor.

It is as cool as fuck when you're young.

^Hardly. I don’t know anyone who ever held this view

Hell yeah. It was cool. Remember, we were all prob teenagers. I also thought Doc Martins and an obsession with Radiohead were cool.
And yes OP, you are a super saint for resisting and we deserve and crave your superior preachyness.

If you feel morally inferior or whatever deal with it and don’t project onto me.

Most vices make sense. I pointed out clearly logical links.
Drugs = instant euphoria
Alcohol = common in society and some are susceptible to becoming dependent.
Gambling addiction = hope of winning
Cigarette = bitter and poisonous.

Some upthread acknowledge they used it as a form of self harm.

For those who say they were not actively trying to commit slow suicide, the motivations for launching that boat do not make sense.

greendale17 this.
I remember some who thought they were ‘bad boys’ for smoking but it came across as trying too hard.

'If you feel morally inferior or whatever deal with it and don’t project onto me.'

Erm, I don't. Alcohol tastes vile to a lot of people when they first try it. But they keep drinking it. Drugs have terrible side effects and can kill you but people still start taking them. We all die from something! Life is slow suicide.

youth bubble of immortality'
That’s probably the closest to understanding I will come.

I started at 14 because I was quiet at school I stupidly thought it would make me fit in it was either fags or glue sniffing when I was 14 so.. kids are stupid but you get hooked. I quit 15 months ago I am at the tail end of my 40s and getting rid of an addiction is bloody hard.

I started when I was 11, I moved to a new city, to live with my DM, so whole new life. Fitting in at school was hard, pinching my DMs fags gave me a way in with a group of kids that would actually speak to me. My teenage years were a complete fuck up and smoking gave me company in a weird way. I've tried to quit, a few times, but then something happens and reaching for the fags helps. I will give up again, but, as the smoking cessation nurse said, it has to be when I am ready, doing it because I'm told too just won't work.

Yes, but alcohol has the effect of relaxing people and disinhibiting them which some enjoy. Drugs too- there’s a risk/unpleasantness but also a payoff.

Smokers get relief/relaxation from cigarettes because it relieves nicotine withdrawal symptoms, which only a smoker will have.

A non-smoker = no obvious payoff from first cigarette.

We all have vices. That’s not in dispute. We all die. That is true too. Yes, by actively exercising and not eating yummy fried food we have better health but it’s tiring and boring etc. So we don’t.

But using my example of rat pellets or needles, there is no other example I can come up with of human behaviour that is damaging but has no obvious reward. I’m trying to figure out the reward out of curiosity.

Most young people start smoking because they can not comprehend how addictive it is and think they can stop when ever they like. And yes the element of believing its 'cool' or peer pressure is normally what pushes them into having that first one.
I smoked from 14 and it has taken me nearly 20 years to stop. At 14 I was desperate to be liked by the wrong crowd, smoking fags that one of them had stolen from their mum was like an act of rebellion that I went along with.

Day one (again) smokefree today.
REALLY craving a fag. Reading stories of 50 year old women with cancerous mouths and amputed limbs to stop me from caving in!

This has always confused me too. It's unhealthy and expensive.

I smoked from when I was 18 (Am in my fifties now). I knew then it was bad for me. However, many more people smoked then, it was much cheaper, there wasn't the stigma there us now, there were smoking commercials on tv and on billboards, magazines, newspapers. Cool people smoked in films and many smoked in tv dramas. You could smoke in pubs, clubs, most public places, even in the office at work. It was actually being offered and accepting s joint while at sixth form that got me smoking ordinary cigarettes. I stopped ten years later when my first child came along.

These days smoking seems less socially acceptable. Am not completely sure why youngsters would start now. Maybe for the same reasons we did. You felt like you were being grown up or cool or edgy or rebellious. I don't think kids worry about things that may happen 30 or 40 years in the future as it's just so far away for them. Freud had his idea of death instinct as well as life instinct. Maybe that has some element of truth in it.

Thanks Girls blouse. That’s why I understand people who grew up with smoking painted as glamorous. We however have grown up with horrid images, even now on boxes. I will look up death instinct as I hadn’t heard about it before.

I smoked from about 12-16 then stopped, wasn't particularly addicted.

Then every so often I'd fancy one when I had a drink.

Had a breakdown last year and started properly smoking. Yes I kind of view it as socially acceptable self harm, having cut before.
It also has the benefit of stemming my appetite.

BeyondPink I hope things get better and that you get support.

I started smoking as part of a Halloween costume, I was Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction and I was so method with it. 🙄