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From Smoking to Vaping
I’m 35. Born in ’83, I was 18 at the turn of the century. Around this time, everyone smoked cigarettes. It wasn’t like it is now, where spotting a smoker is like glimpsing a giraffe in a parking lot. In my teenage years, you displayed your individuality by what brand you smoked. It said something about you in some strange way.
This was totally amorphous, changing depending on what crowd you ran with. In some circles, Newports were “Freshies”. Around others they were fiber glass that tore up your lungs and left you hacking blood.
My mother smoked Marlboro Reds.
That’s where I started at around 14. I’d sneak a few every now and then. If her pack was full, then I had to wait because I knew she’d catch on. There was a sweet spot where they were loose and a couple missing wouldn’t be noticed. I’d go with a friend or my cousin and giddily ride our bikes to the train tracks and “light up”.
It was fun and exciting and made us feel like adults or something like that. It was bad and so it was what we did. We’d get light-headed and laugh about that, holding our drags in for longer to maximize this effect.
Silly harmless stuff.
As the years went on, I found that cigarettes became an all-encompassing aspect of my life. Couldn’t go an hour without one. Well I could, but it sucked. It always…
