More Hollywood Studios Say ‘No Smoking’

[DanaC]

I'm also not suggesting that you a) shelter your child, or b) tell him never to smoke.

My dad was a smoker. And he hated the fact he was addicted to them (something I now fully comprehend). He tried so many times to quit, or to at least change the nature of the habit to something less devastatin to his health. Used gum, used those tobacco pouches, smoked a little clay pipe for a while.

When I was little he didn't really talk about it much, other than to tell me I probably wouldn't like the taste. This was the same tactic he'd used when I wanted to try drinking whiskey. I insisted with the whiskey that I might like it....he let me have a sip and I thought it was the worst thing I'd ever tasted. I didn't ask to try the cigarette. As I got a little older and he went through a stage of using those 'bandits' tobacco pouches, I got a little braver and asked if i could taste one. He repeated that he didn't think I'd like them, and at the same time explained what addiction to tobacco meant, and that the pouches were his way of trying to stop smoking cigarettes. I insisted I wanted to taste, and he let me. It was pretty disgusting to my 10 yr old palate :P

At the age of 12, fully 'aware' of the health risks associated with tobacco, having seen its effects on other people and having been told stuff by mum ( a nurse) about people she was caring for (not a scare story, just incidental anecdotes of life on the ward), I started smoking.

I am not, nor do I believe I ever was, a moron. What I was, was a child of 12, aware of the dangers, but unable to connect those dangers to myself. In just the same way as a 12 year old knows they will age and turn into old people, but doesn't really believe it, so I knew the dangers, but didn't really believe them.

That grasp of the personal enormity of being an adult and getting older is something that comes later in life. We have what we think is a grasp as children, but then we grow up and realise...what we had was the frame of knowledge upon which that understanding would hang. Teaching your son the dangers and him understanding the message, may not be enough to stop him acting in a way that may damage him, whilst still too young to grasp those concepts fully.


[eta] Dad's now dying of a serious lung disease. I am a habitual smoker who intermittently tries to stop, sometimes succeeding for days or weeks, once over a year.

Do you feel you choose to smoke every time you light-up?

[DanaC]

It's a false choice if it's driven by a physical craving. I would say I do and don;t choose. I can be very conflicted at the point of actually buying or lighting cigarettes. I can't even begin to try and explain to you what that actually feels like, or how that manifests in my thought processes, because it's a very in-time thing, and is one of the few states of mind, that I find myself in and am unable fully to understand.

A false choice, what is that?
I smoked cigs for a while, and was addicted. I still chose to smoke every one I purchased and lit, just like I chose not to smoke when I did. It was hard, a hard choice.
Addiction is not a choice, to give into it is a choice, every time.

[DanaC]

I doubt your addiction was as strong, given that you are able to smoke small amounts of tobacco without returning to cigarette addiction. I am of the "one drink is enough" category of addiction when it comes to cigarettes:P

Yes it is a choice. But, choices are made in the brain, and the brain's chemistry is altered by nicoteine addiction. The urge is both physical and psychological.