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Comment by Veen | Hacker News Reader

> Leave aside the rush of nicotine. Forget the ritual of opening a pack of unfiltered Luckies, Camels, Chesterfields, Pall Malls, tamping them down, pulling one out, lighting it, discarding the match, taking the first, satisfying long drag.

This left me sorely tempted to get in my car and drive to the nearest shop for a pack of smokes. I started smoking when I was 15 and quit a few years ago after two decades. I still miss it and it only takes a whiff of someone else's cigarette to bring back the desire.

As the writer says, one of nicest things about smoking is the social aspect. I met many friends (and girlfriends) standing outside clubs and pubs for a smoke. I'm just old enough to remember dancing in clubs with a bottle of beer in one hand and a Marlboro in the other (before smoking inside was banned). Happy times.

It's a terrible, smelly, health-destroying habit, and I was right to give it up, but I think I'll always be a smoker at heart.

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I greatly enjoy my ability to indulge the occasional cigarette. It's truly an experience, and nothing feels quite as cool as leaning against the wall outside a venue and lighting up under the mercury lights.

It's amazing how romantic (not just romanticized) smoking is.

Isn’t this perception a result of falling under the influence of carefully crafted marketing and not an objective observation?

I just know how it feels, and if marketing created that entire experience, that marketing team is the best on the planet. Obviously not an objective perspective :)

Great answer.

The psychoactive effects of the nicotine surely will help too

Nicotine is an absolutely amazing chemical, and on its own is relatively innocuous, even beneficial. It's only part of the smoking experience, though. Vapes are pleasant, but not the same effect by any stretch.

A lot of people are aware of how jaywalking was pushed by newspapers to favor cars at the request of automobile manufacturers.

Your probably know about wedding rings, valentine's day, mother/fathers day, etc getting pumped up by De Beers and the greeting card companies.

Those of course aren't the only times this has happened. Huge swaths of human behavior is driven by advertising campaigns that finished a century ago and have become a meme traveling down the ages.

I was a (hand-rolled) cigarette and pipe tobacco smoker during my university days, and there was definitely a feeling of romanticism that's quite hard to explain.

Sitting outside alone, late at night, watching your cigarette smoke drift up to the stars, listening to Bob Dylan with a glass of whiskey in hand: it feels like you're the star of your own indie film.

How much of that feeling was a byproduct of marketing? It's hard to say. Smoking tobacco (1) gives you a rush of dopamine, and (2) was viewed as edgy/counterculture by my 20-year-old-self, and I think those two alone are enough to explain the 'romanticism' I felt back then.

However, in hindsight, that 'counterculture' vibe I got was from two aspects:

1. I was big into 1960s counterculture & beatnik culture in my early 20s, and all of my 'heroes' smoked cigarettes or pipes: Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Alan Watts, etc. That's definitely marketing, or at least marketing-adjacent.

2. Smoking is a nasty habit that people (including myself, now) rightfully are grossed-out by. My younger self interpreted "people find smoking gross" as "smoking is counterculture".

My thought is that going out for a smoke is a socially acceptable way of stopping whatever you're doing and letting down your guard. Working hard? Stop everything, stand up, walk somewhere, think about whatever, and also have a cigarette. Partying hard? Stop dancing, go outside, get some fresh air, talk to people without pretenses, and also have a cigarette. Marketing certainly influenced the appeal, but they also found a release valve that humans need while we're playing one of our characters.

People still need a break, what replaced this today?

Also "getting some fresh air while having a cigarette" is a funny selection of words.

I quit smoking earlier this year. I still haven't found something to replace those breaks. I can go out and sit in the same spot for 10 minutes, and look around outside... but it's not the same. I just get anxious sitting there doing nothing, and want to go do something else. The end of the cigarette was the natural conclusion to my break. Without that, I just don't sit there very long. It's a gap in my life that I have yet to figure out how fill.

You fill it with tiktok. It's just as bad for you and also comes in short blocks of time.

And the non-smokers perspective of watching smokers outside (especially in wet or cold weather) just looks like an addict getting their fix.

It made me understand how 'smoking the peace pipe' is a thing. Standing outside the office building with a few colleagues from different departments. That small brotherhood of "meh, fuck it". Just enjoying your smoke together. I'm also long past my smoking days but I do miss it at times.

Oh man. Same here. It’s just such a social activity. I stopped smoking when I moved to the US since it’s just difficult to smoke here and nobody else smokes. However, whenever I go back to the Balkans I revert back to my old habits quickly. I can’t resist it when I’m having a coffee or a drink with someone else who smokes.

When I went to school in France, I started smoking for the social aspects. When I came back to the states, I just chucked the cigarettes in the bin when I got home and never bought another one.

Nonsmokers will never know the satisfaction of cigarettes and beer. Or cigarettes and coffee.

When I got Covid and couldn't taste my morning coffee and smoke, I thought, if this doesn't come back, I'm not sure I can cope.

Drinking and smoking is actually what I miss most about smoking, it's a truly wonderful combination.

Wake and bake, coffee, cigarette. Puts me in a great mood all day long.

I'm trying so hard not to get in my car and go to the store right now...

I’ve been trying to switch to vaping recently as a lot of people I know said it helped them and god it so hard to get used to.

everything from the draw, to the sharpness is very different and the person who sold it to me was trying to sell it on “cloud size”. And charging/refilling are even more obnoxious than running out of cigarettes. I will say it’s helped me cut back on cigarettes at least, though I’m probably hooked on nicotine more than ever.

The vape that managed to get me off cigarettes was the Juul2, I'm still tempted by the real thing occasionally and Juul has its share of issues regarding cartridge disposal and advertising to kids. But the experience is significantly better then the other ones I tried over a 2-3 year period

As someone who quit smoking using vapes, and has recently kicked vapes after a good five years – it's all in the vape. If someone was selling you based on "cloud-size", they were the wrong person to be talking to. They were a vape enthusiast. You're not looking for the "best" vape experience, you're looking for the vape experience that is closest to smoking.

For this, you'll actually want to go with one of the Big Tobacco-backed vapes, because it's also what they want – the closest thing to smoking. I suggest Juul or Vuse, both of which are backed by Big Tobacco, contain nicotine salts (fast acting like smoking), and have a similar draw and lung hit to cigarettes with smaller vapour than other devices.

You'll also completely avoid refilling and everything, as they're "closed pod" systems.

For five years, I considered (ritual aside, as you can do it discretely essentially anywhere) vaping to be superior to smoking in every way. Good luck.

my biggest issue has been battery life. I mean I suppose the heating element requires a decent bit of power, but I have religiously stuck to things that don’t require me to charge them: most notably, I’ve stuck to wired headphones

Most vapes I’ve tried end up lasting a couple hours when turned on unless I spend a whole night charging.

I finally ditched cigarettes almost entirely. Saltnics with the right dosage: for me it's about 5mg/ml. Resistance about 1.2ohm. This lasts much longer than non-salt nic. I carry a 15mah stick with pods. I have two so that I always hve one charged.

I still smoke cigarettes when I go fishing. But I can drink beer or coffe just fine with the vapestick.

I played around with vapes for a bit, and I found them to be way more compulsive and addictive than traditional cigarettes. Had to give them up completely. Just typing that out really makes me want to vape.

(Vs having been a cig smoker for years, now just socially, and I can easily moderate to whatever level of consumption I want, w/o cravings. Not so w/ the vapes!)

Vapes make it so easy to take in Nicotine. There's no end like with a cigarette, and no need to go outside to use it. I started dragging on a vape pen one night while watching a movie. After a while, I realize my heart was racing like crazy, and I was up all night. Definitely overdid it on the Nicotine. For better or worse, I quit using the vape pen after that.

God this whole thread makes me want to smoke again.

The margins on vape liquid must be insane. I quit smoking using a vape and made my own liquid for it, it's only four ingredients which are all really cheap if you buy in bulk and you can can taper down as slow as you like. I went down to an eighth of a milligram per millilitre before I binned it off for good!

I might have to try that. I’ve heard similar things from people saving money by rolling their own cigarettes as well.

> It's a terrible, smelly, health-destroying habit, and I was right to give it up, but I think I'll always be a smoker at heart.

It's incredible how much I can relate to this. I finally managed to quit smoking after multiple attempts but I would still say I will always be a smoker at heart. I loved smoking and probably always will.

I feel like there’s levels to it.

I mean people drink heavily while chastising smoking (both are bad) but there are people who are social drinkers or smokers. I’m not so sure that smoking one or two cigarettes per week or a month is that bad, I mean obviously the best is to not smoke. But only 30% of people get addicted to nicotine.

I guess all I’m trying to say is that life is finite anyway and nothing beats going to the top of a mountain and lighting up a smoke whether it’s a joint or a cig. Just don’t abuse it like anything else.

I’m no expert here and hopefully a doctor or public health student can chime in with the most accurate data here.

However a quick google search suggests that nicotine is categorically more addictive than alcohol. It’s hard to measure exactly what proportion of people who consume alcohol are alcoholics, but it seems like 10% is a reasonable estimate.

For cigarettes it seems like smoking even only once per month puts you at a much greater than 10% risk of nicotine addiction.

I used say, "I hate being a smoker, but I love smoking." Pretty much 90% of my social circle evolved because of smoking. Like church, it is fulfils a particular role in society that you don't really understand if you haven't experienced it.

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