Smoking..

funny how one thing can lead to another, and well maybe you can see where this is going. My father died when I was 15 as the result of a cocaine overdose. Now I grew up in a town notorious for stoners and alcoholics. There just wasn't much else to do.

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Everybody in High School seemed to smoke, but I was different. Strangely I had lumped all controlled substances into one nasty category .. shit I would never touch. And I did, much to my Dad's credit, escape the 1980's without so much as touching a joint never mind the more "dangerous" stuff. ( I assure those of you who didn't grow up in the mid to late 80's this shit was everywhere and peer pressure could do a number on a kids head) I was lucky, people didn't care, I had many friends, was pretty popular and well kind of looked away when the mirrors and razor blades came out at parties. I guess I had other redeeming qualities, who knows.

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College of course changed nothing, apart from discovering alcohol, which was short lived and after a couple really bad incidents I signed off that as well. Then I got married, I was 21, my girlfriend was pregnant, and I became uber responsible FAST. I acted and lived as if I were in my 40's all through my early to mid 20's and so did my wife. We smoked cigarettes, that was our vice, even consuming alcohol seemed inappropriate with little babies running around and we lived accordingly. I remember a half case of beer a cousin brought over for my younger son's christening sat in the fridge for a year before we threw it out, and of course the idea of getting a sitter and going out "for a few" never entered our minds. We actually looked down on people who drank regularly, as if they had some kind of illness. We were weird kids...

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Skipping ahead to 1997, my separation and subsequent divorce. I started going online and meeting people a couple months after I left. This was my official introduction (as you would imagine) to bars and drinking on a regular basis. Now living (during the week) apart from the children and family I went out a lot, and met many new friends, one in particular who loved to smoke. That was the year I tried it for the first time. It was a little fun, I liked the combination when mixed with a drink or two and soon was smoking practically every weekend with said friend, well at least for like a year. Then my friend got some bad stuff, and I got really sick, like "I'm gonna die any minute" sick. (Actually I am not even sure what made me sick that night but in my mind it had to do with the weed) That was pretty much the end of that.

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Since '98 I tried twice more, because my most recent ex loved to smoke (well before we met anyway) and even though I didn't get sick, it started to make me feel out of control, sluggish, dazed out, completely not myself, and I hated the feeling. So I cannot appreciate how someone like my 55 year old boss can partake each and every night, it baffles me. I know there are a lot of people like him, hell I know a couple people who even grow. It's just not my thing, and maybe never was.

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so here's a MEME to get some input..

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Have you ever smoked (if no, don't bother going to #2) ? Yup
How old were you the first time? 27
Did you like it initially? yea very much
Which do you prefer, Drinking or smoking? Alcohol definitely
What is the funniest thing you ever did after or while smoking?
my friend and I went into the back room of a seedy local Gay bar and pretended we were Puerto Rican curious straight boys. We were practically mauled by a slew of creepy old men and made it out of there with at least one of our shirts half ripped off. I can still see them coming toward us, it was like night of the living dead!! "Brains..Brains"

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Laters :)
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Posted by :: 1:02 PM :: 26 Comments: (this is a re-post)