Any smokers?

[JanneE]

When I did write, I would just about chain smoke. I don't care if you quit/are addicted/work in a tobacco plantation it's just not a question you would typically ask.

 

[NotWise]

When I did write, I would just about chain smoke. I don't care if you quit/are addicted/work in a tobacco plantation it's just not a question you would typically ask.

I smoked tobacco for 20+ years, and pretty much chain smoked (2 1/2 or more packs a day) through the last decade of it. I quit over the course of the 4th of July weekend in 1995 without telling anyone.

It took a week or so before one of my daughters (9 at the time) confronted me with "Did you quit smoking?" She was elated by my answer.

She was always an energetic girl, but a little frail and with a chronic cough. I quit smoking (and my wife quit smoking indoors) and the daughter lost her cough and gained weight. I felt (and still do feel) horribly guilty about what my second hand smoke did to her.

It turned out eleven years later that she had a congenital defect in her aorta, which I'm sure contributed to the effect of the second hand smoke. Hopefully that is all fixed now. She has a scar from the surgery that wraps half of her body, from near he spine in back, around her body and under her breasts, ending near her sternum. She's also an artist. She featured that scar in a couple self portraits, more of a matter of defining herself than anything.

 

[Saxon_Hart]

Thanks to Chantix I haven't even had a craving in eight years. Best thing I ever did.

 

[sr71plt]

Nope, other than on stage, and then they usually weren't lit. I have to remind myself to include smoking in period piece short stories.

 

[MrRandyWatson]

I have the odd cigar if the weather is warm enough. I have a cigar waiting for me when I pass the bar exam.

I'm always hesitant to include smoking in my stories because it's hit-or-miss whether readers are into it.

 

[JanneE]

Best thing I ever did.

I heard that stuff can make you hallucinate? Crazy dreams?

 

[TamLin01]

Nope, other than on stage, and then they usually weren't lit. I have to remind myself to include smoking in period piece short stories.

I have the same problem. I usually end up mentioning it in passing, just enough that it's not conspicuously absent. I do notice people don't seem to mind cigar references as much, which is probably a double-standard, but one I've taken advantage of a few times.

These days even Hollywood films only barely reference it in period, and frankly the absence doesn't bother me much there either. I suppose anachronisms for the sake of taste aren't necessarily a bad thing; if your story is set in the '30s, your characters would smoke like chimneys and have highly specific opinions about Jewish immigrants, but it's not necessarily to your benefit to reference either.

 

[Hypoxia]

I smoked tobacco between ages 15-25. I was pretty poor much of that time so I mostly rolled my own. I quit often. Finally I grew tired of awaking with my mouth tasting like the bottom of a birdcage. That was, let's see, four decades ago. Since then I've puffed the occasional cigar or cigarillo but nothing regular.

Smoking in period pieces -- damn, I forgot all about that! [/me scribbles notes] Not to mention driving drunk, and buying rubbers for a nickel in gas-station restroom dispensers, and using "Spanish fly" as an aphrodisiac, and the rhythm method of birth control, and crossing state lines for immoral purposes, and Post Office censorship of mailed pr0n, and honky-tonk juke boxes. But yeah, earlier-days USAnians consumed LOTS of tobacco and alcohol in private and public. That's easy to forget.

 

[sr71plt]

I don't "current PC" period stories, and anal retentive readers be damned. I'll use references like the smoking (don't use that much at all, mainly because I forget to) and references to other things of the period, like a high roller having a '64 Cadillac Fleetwood, so you know the story isn't set in 2002, rather than baldly saying, "Sadie was walking down the street in 1965." If you put in several period references, the reader should get the idea. I did do the smoking (Camels) in the current e-book I'm working on to help set the story in 1965. One of the characters becomes the "Camels Man" for an ad agency, much the same as the Marlboro Man. Doing period pieces, though, does require a lot of fact checking to ensure that references you make are to things that were there then.

I'll sometimes set GM stories before 1980 just so that I can have the pleasure of letting them have unprotected sex--as I remembered it myself.

 

[Handley_Page]

When I was in senior school. smoking was tolerated, if somewhat frowned upon in the wrong places. So when I left school and joined the Air Force, I, naturally, smoked. Not a lot and them mostly at weekends.
Then one day about 35 years later, I got a cough.
The 'tamiflu' pills were almost as bad as having the cough, so I gave it all up.
It took three weeks to clear.
Thirteen months later I was diagnosed with throat cancer.
I loved it when this very superior Nurse yelled across the room at me:
"Do you smoke" ?
I looked up at her and yelled back "No I bloody don't".

It seemed to shut her up, for some reason.

 

[loquere]

No I don't smoke, but sometimes my characters are smokers if that counts.

 

[PattiJolene]

l threw my pack away 26yrs ago, l think key is you have to be ready, tired of the taste and smell and totally be turned off them. That was it for me, and it was pretty easy to my surprise. l have never craved a cigarette since.

 

[R. Richard]

I would like to point out that smoking is the only vice that forces those around the smoker to share in the experience. If that's not enough, I would urge anyone who thinks that smoking is just an individual habit to join in the cleaning of a motel room that was just inhabited by a chain smoker.

 

[oggbashan]

I would like to point out that smoking is the only vice that forces those around the smoker to share in the experience. If that's not enough, I would urge anyone who thinks that smoking is just an individual habit to join in the cleaning of a motel room that was just inhabited by a chain smoker.

In the UK, smoking in public buildings, including hotels and motels, is prohibited.

 

[49greg]

I tried several times to smoke as a teen. but just couldn't take the harsh bitter smoke, my lungs protested. The first time was when I swiped a pack of my dad's cigs and smoked them all in a few hours, made me sick, very sick, also dizzy.

I tried in the Army, at least in training, i felt left out when the drill sergeant would let us stop running and put us at 'rest' with the comment "smoke 'em if you've got 'em."

In college I tried a pipe, but it still left my mouth tasting bad. What really stopped all attempts to smoke was dating a girl who was a smoker. She didn't smoke on the date, but that didn't matter. Her mouth tasted horrid, her hair and clothes stank. I never asked her out again. As a buddy who was a non-smoker once said, a girl who smokes may be ok to fuck, but not to kiss.

Oddly even though I couldn't stand the taste of a cig, my parents were long time smokers, several packs a day each. One of my early memories of my mom is of her tapping her Lucky Strike against her fingernail, lighting up and then picking tobacco shreds from her teeth. One of my memories of my dad is the sound of his zippo opening and closing. He quit after a heart attack, and my mom a year or so later.

I can smell smokers, in stores, on the street, their clothes hold the smell, whether they are actively smoking or not. Thank goodness this state bans smoking in public buildings. At least smokers from the US. I worked with some Canadians on a project once. I had no idea some of them smoked until they took a smoke break. Their cigarettes didn't leave their clothes smelly, nor did the smoke choke me out.

So far I haven't had a character in a story smoke either. I'll leave it up to the imagination of the reader as to whether they do or not.

 

[Hypoxia]

I used to have Tuli Kupferberg's classic history of tobacco (published by bandmate Ed Saunders FUCK YOU PRESS) lying around but that's long gone, alas. I recall some details. The Spanish who first saw Native Americans puffing leaves called it "drinking smoke". King James I (the bible guy) banned smoking as a hanging offense but that didn't last. The New World was colonized to benefit druglords, the producers of tobacco and rum and sugar -- one Caribbean sugar island was worth more than all the mainland North American colonies. Et cetera.

'Smoking' as shorthand usually refers to puffing ready-made cigarettes. But all sorts of stuff can be burnt and inhaled. The 'what' and 'how' of smoking can inform narratives, showing sub-cultural nuances. Very different peoples may be associated with:

* cannabis in varied forms, from bog-hemp to medical pot to fine hash to synthetic THC
* cigars from cheap stogies (and found butts) to exquisite hand-tailored masterpieces
* American Indian herbal kinnickinnick or East Indian herbal bidis -- tobacco plus herbs
* Wild American plants: Indian tobacco, Jimson weed (Daturas), Lobelia, Coleus, et al
* crack (methedrine), smack (heroin), and almost any chemical powders that will burn

Those are substances. Methods are also indicative:

* pipes: straight or carburetor; dry or waterpipe / hookah
* hand-rolled vs ready-made cigarettes, with or without holders
* burning material on open fire and leaning over to inhale smoke
* various inhalers, ventilators, smoke pumps, and e-smokes
* How about skin patches? And snuffing instead of smoking?

This is not a simple subject.

 

[Handley_Page]

I used to have Tuli Kupferberg's classic history of tobacco (published by bandmate Ed Saunders FUCK YOU PRESS) lying around but that's long gone, alas. I recall some details. The Spanish who first saw Native Americans puffing leaves called it "drinking smoke". King James I (the bible guy) banned smoking as a hanging offense but that didn't last. The New World was colonized to benefit druglords, the producers of tobacco and rum and sugar -- one Caribbean sugar island was worth more than all the mainland North American colonies. Et cetera.

* How about skin patches? And snuffing instead of smoking?
This is not a simple subject.

Ah, snuff.
Historically very significant, but not seen too often these days.
It was used down the pit (sorry - the mine) since smoking was banned.

 

[lovecraft68]

I have characters that do I think it adds some realism.

Personally never, not so much as a puff on a regular smoke or a cigar or a joint. Too much of a health nut-although I'm sure there's some who'd say I drank far too much when I was younger.

But my lungs are perfect

 

[SamScribble]

Many, many years ago, I was at a party of some kind when I overheard a woman asking my mother: 'Does your son smoke?' (Goodness knows why.)

'Not any more,' my mother said. 'He gave up when he was twelve.'

I guess she must have seen me sneaking a cigarette down the bottom of the garden and almost coughing myself to death after just a couple of puffs.

 

[Saxon_Hart]

I heard that stuff can make you hallucinate? Crazy dreams?

Not really crazy, but very vivid dreams.

 

[JKendallDane]

Yes, I do. Been at it since 1977 (thank you very much, college! ) Even a diagnosis of stage two COPD five years ago hasn't got me to stop even though my PCP and pulmonologist both bitch at me at every appointment.

I don't quite chain smoke when I write, but I do burn up more than a couple when the Muse has me working.

My main character in the Pizza Boy series was a smoker and it was referenced regularly in the first dozen chapters. But after falling in love with his future husband - a first-year med school student - he managed to quit. I've brought up smoking in several other of my stories but almost always make it a "Trying to quit" or "Used to but quit" theme. Probably my subconscious poking me in the ass.

.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Yep. Quitters never win. I smoke, started out on the real Djarums(oh how I wish I could get a hold of a carton of Supers), until they went to cigarellos here in the usa, then Kools, then Pall Malls- Pall Mall Blacks, and now Marlboro Blacks back when they were still Marlboror Special Blend menthols, is when I picked them up. I buy a pack of Djarum Blacks every now and then. I wish I could get an actual carton of the cigarettes, but it's so hard to get them imported here because niether USPS, DHL, or FedEx will not ship tobacco from out of the country- knowingly. The cigarettes are sssoooo much better than the cigarellos. Damn Obama, damn you. I would pay somebody to buy and ship me some in some undescript packaging, like with a few packs of insence with it, or something, or sealed up real good.

Many of my characters smoke...perhaps way too many, but many people I know smoke, and I don't like the anti-smoking propeganda crap in this country, so it's also probably over-compensation for the hatred of something I love, just like how no one owns a front wheel drive car in any of my stories either.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Smoked dope my last year of high school and through uni. On the whole, cheaper than booze.

Then NSW had a Royal Commission into drug use, so the police started busting all the dope dealers, and prices sky rocketed. They forgot about the hard drugs though - in my home town, population 22,000, there used to be one junky. A year later, ten...

Ice is the scourge here, it's ripping through rural communities, just terrible terrible stuff.

 

[Hypoxia]

Smoked dope my last year of high school and through uni. On the whole, cheaper than booze.

I have a few stories involving a fantasy pot called Candyland or Wonderland with hypnotic-euphoric-telepathic-aphrodisiac effects. Otherwise, folks may puff Humboldt Gold weed or Ukiah hash in my tales. That's happy-happy. Hard drug users don't fare so well in my writings. They're hardly erotic, hey?

Ice is the scourge here, it's ripping through rural communities, just terrible terrible stuff.

Ice aka Euphoria aka 4MAX doesn't seem to be the poison of choice in my neck of the woods yet -- the next county south is reputedly riddled with meth labs and the local rehab centers focus on opiates, meth, and alcohol. But who knows what really happens in our remote hamlets?

Should this thread derail to discuss drug policy? Basic quandary: People like getting fucked up. Banning substances of abuse doesn't reduce supply, only boosts prices. Punishing abusers doesn't deter abuse. Folks use and abuse legal drugs like sugar, caffeine, and OTC meds, semi-legal drugs like alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, and prescription meds, and totally illegal stuff.

We're quite used to self-medicating. That's reality. The LIT authorship angle: how to erotically deal with substance (ab)use?

 

[JaxRhapsody]

I have a few stories involving a fantasy pot called Candyland or Wonderland with hypnotic-euphoric-telepathic-aphrodisiac effects. Otherwise, folks may puff Humboldt Gold weed or Ukiah hash in my tales. That's happy-happy. Hard drug users don't fare so well in my writings. They're hardly erotic, hey?

Ice aka Euphoria aka 4MAX doesn't seem to be the poison of choice in my neck of the woods yet -- the next county south is reputedly riddled with meth labs and the local rehab centers focus on opiates, meth, and alcohol. But who knows what really happens in our remote hamlets?

Should this thread derail to discuss drug policy? Basic quandary: People like getting fucked up. Banning substances of abuse doesn't reduce supply, only boosts prices. Punishing abusers doesn't deter abuse. Folks use and abuse legal drugs like sugar, caffeine, and OTC meds, semi-legal drugs like alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, and prescription meds, and totally illegal stuff.

We're quite used to self-medicating. That's reality. The LIT authorship angle: how to erotically deal with substance (ab)use?

Yeah ice(meth, tina, blah) is big here, it seems as though heroin is as well. On par to what you said, here in Kentucky(and Indiana) they seem to be more focused on needle exchange programs, than real policing.