Most people start smoking in a similar fashion to how they start drinking. Some element of the social and/or it's easier to smoke than to deal with whatever's bothering you. I started more because of the latter. When I started smoking at college, only one other friend smoked and I managed to hide it from most of my friends and roommates for a full year.
The summer I started smoking, I was fed up with over eating. So I made a deal with myself that if I wanted to over eat, I couldn't, but I could smoke a cigarette. In part, this was because it was exceedingly cost effective (a nicotine high is approx $0.50 whereas binging is typically $3-5 at a time, not to mention a good deal of self confidence). This was not quite brilliant but worked for awhile because I didn't want to start smoking. Instead, I would journal, but it didn't work forever.
When school resumed, I figured out that smoking was the only thing that would lessen my otherwise staggering anxiety. Running, dancing, tea, journaling, anything else that I tried just ended up eating up time and leaving me in a worse place than when I started.
I've been smoking for just about 4 years now. I've quit several times for a few months -- just long enough to really be over all the side effects. But I always come back to it because I tend to replace it with other self-defeating behaviors, Smoking is the crutch that has worked for me. Now that I'm actually learning to deal with anxiety, I'm trying to get to a place where I can shed it for good. Now that I'm in a place where I feel like I can stop hiding it, I'm hoping to lose it without finding more hurtful habits to replace it with.
The summer I started smoking, I was fed up with over eating. So I made a deal with myself that if I wanted to over eat, I couldn't, but I could smoke a cigarette. In part, this was because it was exceedingly cost effective (a nicotine high is approx $0.50 whereas binging is typically $3-5 at a time, not to mention a good deal of self confidence). This was not quite brilliant but worked for awhile because I didn't want to start smoking. Instead, I would journal, but it didn't work forever.
When school resumed, I figured out that smoking was the only thing that would lessen my otherwise staggering anxiety. Running, dancing, tea, journaling, anything else that I tried just ended up eating up time and leaving me in a worse place than when I started.
I've been smoking for just about 4 years now. I've quit several times for a few months -- just long enough to really be over all the side effects. But I always come back to it because I tend to replace it with other self-defeating behaviors, Smoking is the crutch that has worked for me. Now that I'm actually learning to deal with anxiety, I'm trying to get to a place where I can shed it for good. Now that I'm in a place where I feel like I can stop hiding it, I'm hoping to lose it without finding more hurtful habits to replace it with.
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