the tobacco industry has a long history of viral advertising.
some of these are product placements.
most of them are.
my advice is don't get habituated. smoke at parties; don't smoke at home, and don't smoke alone.
the problem i had quitting smoking was that it made me too tired to do anything.
i quit at the end of 2015, after not really starting until very late 2001 and going cold turkey for long periods between 2001-2015. so, that was less than 15 years, but really less than 10 years actively smoking. i smoked socially at parties in the 90s; i was a teenager in the 90s. i turned 20 in 2001, which is about a year sooner than the people i went to high school with. it had to do with the fact that i turned 4 in january, 1985. the rules about going to kindergarten are that you can go to 4 year old kindergarten when you're 3, but only if you're born before new years. i couldn't go to 4 year old kindergarten until i was almost 5, because my birthday is in early january. therefore, i was almost a year older than everybody, all the way through school, even in university. i tended to get along with older kids - three or four years older - better than younger kids or kids my own age, so it was extra frustrating. but, it meant i could buy cigarettes at the store legally in january, 2000 and basically none of my friends could. except jon. he could.
cigarettes were cheap then, too. $3.00. $4.00. $5.00 was way too much. a gram of pot was $10 and has experienced zero inflation, since. you'd pay that for a six of something. so, it often made sense for me to show up at a party with a pack of cigarettes, smoke a handful when i was drunk and/or stoned, and hand the rest out to my friends, who couldn't buy them, or give them to rolling buddies to roll with.
what i learned was that the best way to wake the fuck up at 4:00 am or 5:00 am, after drinking alcohol and smoking pot all night, was to have a cigarette. cocaine wasn't an option for us, and i have never touched the stuff, nor did any of those kids. except jon. jon did. too much.
the reality is that nicotine is a powerful stimulant. if you don't smoke all of the time, smoking two or three cigs will wake you the fuck up for an hour, and then you can get up and go home and sleep it off.
but if you get hooked, which i didn't see coming and should have been more vigilant about, then the opposite thing happens - if you don't smoke ever hour or two, you fall asleep. you become utterly exhausted. the physical addiction is quite daunting.
so, i should just sleep it off, right?
sure. i tried that. like, 50 times. unfortunately, i had to go to school, or go to work, or write an essay, or study for an exam. i had to stay awake. so, i lit up a smoke, and it worked. that's why it took so long.
eventually, i had to sleep it off for a month and then i was quit.
after 2015, until my social life died in the pandemic, i was able to go back to smoking at parties, which is what i wanted the whole time but just couldn't force myself into from 2002-2015. i found the key was to have respect for the possibility of addiction and make sure i was only smoking at parties, never cheating, never sneaking. i could handle that, and i did. i found that the nicotine had a more powerful effect once the tolerance wore down to nothing, as well. the nicotine began working as a stimulant, again. that was why i smoked in the first place, so i wanted to maintain that by not abusing it, and it worked. i realized the need to have that smoke at 6:30 am, coming out of an all night underground party in detroit, before i got on my bicycle back to canada. it woke me right up, and made sure i didn't pass out in hamtramck, or at the russell, or in the art park, or something.
but i've been essentially cold turkey since early 2020, when they shut down the bars. others reacted almost oppositely but, for me, the end of the bars meant the end of smoking, because i had quit smoking at home in 2015 and i had every intention of sticking to it.