As a smoker, I'm kind of torn on the whole smoking thing. I've been a smoker for about 3 years, and my health hasn't really noticeably declined. If anything, I'm in the best shape of my life. And I realize that it may not be the same story 10, 20, whatever years down the road, but I can always attempt to quit then.
There's upsides to it though. Smoking is just a really pleasant time filler and enhances a lot of things that are already pretty great (pot, sex, food, coffee). I started smoking because I had a really annoying job and my amount of stress noticeably declines when I filled breaks with cigarette smoking instead of just sitting around hating my life and counting the minutes until I got out of work.
The worst thing by far to me is the cost. I view smoking as more of a luxury thing you get to experience if you're financial able. The problem is that if you lose your job or something you can't just say "well I guess I'll quit smoking." I can do that with pot, but not having money for cigarettes is the worst thing in the world and makes me feel like a heroin fiend. Not only are cigarettes themselves expensive, but I also spend extra money to always keep gum and body spray on me so I don't smell like an ashtray all the time.
But there are certain situations that I'm really glad I experienced as a smoker. One of these is anytime I'm at a bar. "I'm going to go have a smoke" is a perfect get-out-of-any-shitty-situation free card. The outside smoking areas are the perfect place to socially interact with people. I also can't even really say the amount of women I've had sexual & romantic encounters with just though meeting them at smoking areas. There's always that cute chick awkwardly smoking in the corner just waiting for someone to strike up a conversation. This is true at many other places like colleges, work, outside random places on the street, etc. On the contrary, being a smoker has never really prevented me from hooking up with non-smokers either. If anything, those pure-but-curious type christian girls who are everywhere are probably more attracted to smokers.
Don't really know where I'm going with this, but yeah. I'm not defending being a smoker at all but it's definitely not all bad. If they were free I'd essentially be smoking without regret.
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