How I got Hooked on Cigarettes

I was first exposed to cigarettes when I was in the womb. Mom was a smoker at the age of 16. She quit school and went to work in the shoe shop like many of her peers did at that time. You didn't need an education to work, jobs were everywhere. Cigarettes were cheap and a large percentage of the population smoked. It seemed that the worst health hazard from smoking at a young age back in that era was that perhaps it would 'stunt your growth'. Mom never grew more than 5 feet tall. (Probably just a coincidence). Mom and Dad got married in Feb of 54, shortly after I was "on the way". Folks back then were not aware of the dangers and risks associated with smoking while pregnant. So many of us smokers got our first dose of nicotine thru the umbilical cord.

From my birth in Dec of 1954 my odyssey with cigarettes began with exposure to second hand smoke. Every where you went there was someone smoking. No one gave it a thought that perhaps the smoke filled rooms and automobiles might harm the ones that didn't smoke. Smoking just seemed to me as a normal thing for grown-ups to do. I fully expected to become a smoker myself someday. Thanks to some candy manufacturer's, I was able to simulate smoking by buying some candy cigarettes. I was very careful to hold it between my fingers like a real one and put the filter end in my mouth. The end you would light, if it was a real one, was dyed red to simulate the lit end. Candy cigarettes even came in the popular brands and similar styles that the real ones came in. This helped in establishing a loyalty to a particular brand at a young age I suppose. Now that I reflect back, I seem to recall a toy cigarette that would emit simulated smoke when a kid blew through it. I guess it made me feel good to emulate something that adults did.

I recall getting my first feeling of comfort from cigarette smoke when I was a toddler of perhaps 4 or 5 years of age. I suffered from horrendously painful earaches. I would wake up in the middle of the night with my inner ear throbbing with pain. I remember the sound of drumming, snapping and crackling inside my ears as the drainage from the ear infection would flow and the tissues were swelling. Inevitably I would cry out to Mom. Mom would take me in her arms and bring me to her rocking chair in the living room. She would light up a cigarette, inhale, then very gently blow the warm smoke into my hurting little ear. This always seemed to help relieve the pain, or at least make it bearable. After the cigarette treatment Mom would put a few warm drops of baby oil in my ear, insert a wad of cotton and rock me until I fell asleep. An act of love and compassion from mother to child that meant a lot to me back then, but would probably not be considered a good thing to do in case of earache now.

I got my first actual puff on a real cigarette at around age 10. I recall a real boring afternoon visiting some relatives with my folks. The relatives didn't have any children at home. They had all grown up and moved on. So there I was bored out of my gourd, when I decided I would take a nap in the car while my folks finished their visit. that's when I noticed an ashtray with some partially smoked butts and a cigarette lighter, right there in front of me. Curiosity got the better of me. I chose one of the longest stubs I could find, straightened out the kinks where it had been crushed out, and put it to my lips. I pushed in the cigarette lighter handle , like I had seen mom do many times, and waited for the familiar click that signaled when the lighter was hot enough to light a cig. I took the cherry red tip of the lighter and placed it on the end of the cigarette butt and sucked. I got a mouthful of the foul hot smoke, blew it out, and wondered what the attraction of cigarettes was supposed to be. They tasted awful. I don't think I tried them again for several more years.

Smoking Regularly at Age 12

When I was around 12, I started delivering TV Guides to homes around town to earn some money. I would always be on the look out for bottles to cash in for the deposit. I also got an allowance from my folks for doing chores around the house. It was great having some coin in my pocket to buy Slim Jims, popsicles and Beatle trading cards. One summer afternoon I was out delivering my TV Guides. One of my customers had a boy a year older than I was, Jim was his name. His parents were not home, but Jim invited me in to hang out with him and his buddies. They were playing cribbage for cigarettes. I didn't know how to play cribbage but Jim offered to teach me and even gave me a few cigarettes to get started. Well I must of had one massive case of beginners luck, because an hour or so later I was the owner of a pile of cigarettes. I was also the owner of a brand new habit that would haunt me for many years. I was well on my way to becoming addicted to cigarettes.

I didn't inhale at first, just sucked in the smoke and blew it out. One day another of my smoking buddies asked me If I inhaled. I said no, I really didn't realize that was part of smoking. He said to take a puff on the cig and then just breath it back into the lungs. I tried it and choked and coughed and got dizzy like every one does when they first inhale. But I was determined to keep it up until I could smoke with the best of them. Why didn't I take that strong hint that my body was trying to give me, that CIGARETTES ARE BAD FOR YOU. Lets face it the choke, cough and gag reflex is a part of our bodies for a good reason. It is a bodies natural defense mechanism shouting NASTY STUFF, FOUL AIR, UNNATURAL THING TO DO........ Yet peer pressure, wanting to be cool and do grown up things gave me the incentive to keep on inhaling till I got it right and became thoroughly addicted to the proverbial cancer stick.

Winstons were my cigarette of choice. I remember a childhood version of the Winston song. "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. No flavor , no taste, just a 30 cent waste". I used to buy Winstons for my Mom at the neighborhood stores. So naturally I bought the same brand so as not to arise suspicion that I was the one I was buying cigarettes for. Even back in the mid 60s it was not considered good form for a 12 or 13 year old kid to be smoking. So we would find places around town that were out of site and a kid could smoke away from the disapproving eyes of adults. Under the bridge in the center of town or up on the railroad trestle were good spots to smoke. At any given time there was always someone there you could smoke and joke with. Sharing a cigarette was kind of a social thing. You could always "bum a cig" if you needed one or you would give one to some one else who needed one. I very seldom had to bum, as I had my own TV Guide route, and eventually went on to sell newspapers as well. Some of the guys used to steal their cigs, either from a store or from their parents. Of course I never did, being the darling little angel that I was.....

By the time I was 16 I had permission to smoke, as was common back then. I am sure my folks knew I had been smoking for quite some time, but now I could smoke in the house. I didn't have to hide it, except at school. I remember sharing a cigarette with buddies in the bathroom. Some one would stand guard at the door scanning for teachers. While the other ones would huff down a quick cigarette. You had to be quick and make every hit count, especially if your next class was way on the other end of school. I was smoking over a pack of cigs a day.

The tobacco industry loses close to 5,000 customers every day in the US alone-- including 3,500 who manage to quit and about 1,200 who die. The most promising "replacement smokers" are young people: 90% of smokers begin before they're 21, and 60% before they're 14!