Baccy

[Urbandreamer]

I heard on't wireless that digging and refilling holes counts towards that great god GDP.
Does NHS activity count in the same way?

V8

Yes. But not all GDP is productive and benefits society.

The trouble is that the assumption is otherwise. Indeed, what does the P stand for in GDP. Would that be Gross Domestic PRODUCT!
Even smashing windows provides work for the glazier.

Returning to the topic, I use to smoke but gave up. The hardest, real hardest, thing was not hand rolling fags. I coped with the chemical withdrawal. The psychological aspects were more of an issue.

[88V8]

Returning to the topic, I use to smoke but gave up. The hardest, real hardest, thing was not hand rolling fags. I coped with the chemical withdrawal. The psychological aspects were more of an issue.

I have heard that smokers feel the need to find something else to do with their hands, especially in social situations. Fiddle with pebbles in pocket, knit...

V8

[Sorcery]

Yes. But not all GDP is productive and benefits society.

The trouble is that the assumption is otherwise. Indeed, what does the P stand for in GDP. Would that be Gross Domestic PRODUCT!
Even smashing windows provides work for the glazier.

Returning to the topic, I use to smoke but gave up. The hardest, real hardest, thing was not hand rolling fags. I coped with the chemical withdrawal. The psychological aspects were more of an issue.

I agree with that. Smoking tobacco or marijuana and alcohol put my mind into 3 different areas compared with sobriety. That gives 4 different viewpoints and the reason to return to it. Smoking tobacco probably stimulates thinking.

[Beerpig]

I enjoy rolling a few fags and smoking them outside the pub door when I go out.
I can (and do) manage to go several days without a rolly during the week because I don't drink then.
However, when the 'hooter' goes at 4pm on a Friday, I'll leg it to my local and have a few beers and a few smokes.
Its not good for me, I know, but I enjoy smoking occasionally- my guilty pleasure.
Like HYD, in my youth I would smoke, Galois, Gitanes, Players Navy Cut and all sorts of other extra strength brands.
Now, I never smoke genuine fags- they are ridiculously expensive.
I get my baccy from abroad where is is really cheap, or from the odd bloke in town who pedals it.
Society has moved on for the better making fags very expensive and more to the point, getting across that its not 'cool' to smoke.

[MuddyBoots]

I've even heard of people growing their own tobacco, such is the tax on it these days. And advertising is banned too so that shops put tobacco behind shutters. In Manchester airport I had to ask where the cigarette shop was (I was buying for a friend), and was ushered into a secret room well away from any passers-by who might happen to glance at the taboo substances inside.

[dionaeamuscipula]

Society has moved on for the better making fags very expensive and more to the point, getting across that its not 'cool' to smoke.

Unfortunately the youth of today has decided that vaping very much *is* cool, and there is a pandemic of vaping, to the point where you can buy nicotine products to get you off vapes.

DM (20 a day from 14 to 21, from single woodbines to weird oval Turkish things, with a nasty sideline in Agios, a Dutch cigar with a plastic filter tip. And a pipe. Nothing looks more ridiculous than a 16 yo with a pipe)

[bungeejumper]

Smoking tobacco or marijuana and alcohol put my mind into 3 different areas compared with sobriety. That gives 4 different viewpoints and the reason to return to it. Smoking tobacco probably stimulates thinking.

As a student n the sixties/early seventies, I partook of all three. The cannabis we could get then was so weak that anybody under forty would laugh at it these days - sometimes you wouldn't get any hit at all for the first two or three times. The only real proviso was that you really shouldn't drive because it could properly mess up your perception of distance. (Although it did do wonderful things to classical music. You could hear the third violinist from the left scratching his ear. )

Alcohol was the opposite for this impecunious student. Even Watneys Red Barrel (ABV 3.9%) could make the world go fuzzy after three pints or so - which was a pity because it was just about all there was to buy after the big fizzy keg breweries had swallowed up all the traditional brewers. The main reason I didn't drink all that much was that I also rode a motorbike, and the two activities really didn't mix.

But tobacco? Oh gawd, I only smoked for five years (from age 21), and I got heavily hooked and I had a hell of a time giving up. Took me three attempts, during which I tried cigars (which I stupidly inhaled!) Somehow my brain managed to ignore the huge government advertising hoardings that showed how much tar had been in a dead smoker's lungs, and I didn't stop until cost forced me. (Twenty Benson & Hedges went up to 37p, which was outrageous enough to shock me into submission.)

It was no use wishing I hadn't ever started. In student Berlin, being a non-smoker had been a guarantee that you wouldn't have friends or a sex life, so needs must. You might say it was age, marriage and (also impecunious) home ownership that eventually cured me of the monstrous lungweed in the end. And thank god for that.

BJ

[GoSeigen]

I get my baccy from abroad where is is really cheap, or from the odd bloke in town who pedals it.

A bicycle made of tobacco, now I'd like to see one of those. Agree any bloke riding one would be very odd indeed.



GS
@only ever a social smoker (of any sort of substance), gawd knows how I avoided getting hooked. Not touched any of them since having kids.