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Sorry if this question is rude or arrogant, but I'm genuinely curious. How does one smoke 2 packs a day? That's 40 cigs a day. If you're active for 15 hours a d

Sorry if this question is rude or arrogant, but I'm genuinely curious. How does one smoke 2 packs a day? That's 40 cigs a day. If you're active for 15 hours a day, that's a cigarette every 20 minutes. Assuming one cigarette takes 5 minutes to smoke, did you smoke one every 15 minutes? How were you able to work like this? Also didn't this cost you a fortune? That's like $30 a day, $10k a year. I spend less money on food, I'm curious how does one justify this much money on something.

kaffeemitsahne 8y ago
Well, guess why they quit.
danieltillett 8y ago
In the "good old days" I used to know a woman that would always be smoking. She would light the next cigarette with the last of the old cigarette. I have no idea how many cigarettes she would go through a day, but it must have been more than 4 packs.
mrtweetyhack 8y ago
The definition of an addictive drug is that users will pay anything, do anything for it; lie, beg, steal, and kill. TO a sensible person looking at it from the outside, it looks stupid and wasteful. To the drug addict, who do I kill for my next hit. All reasoning goes out the door.
cronix 8y ago
Not to speak for GP, but a lot of people who "smoke" that much aren't really smoking it all. They're not like on a typical smoke break where they go outside expressly to consume a cig and go back to work. Some people just have a cig burning almost all of the time, but might actually only take 2 or 3 draws off of it and the rest just sits there burning. They tend to be self employed bc there is no way you could do that at a regular 9-5 job. Anecdotally, I've had 2 experiences with people like that. One was a coder who was self employed and worked out of his house, and another was my auto mechanic before I moved. Both always had a cig burning sitting burning in an ashtray but only picked up and consumed maybe 25% of it while they were working. In some places, cigs might cost $15/pack (your numbers), but I just passed by a Chevron gas station selling for $7 where I live (Portland, OR). The cost depends greatly on the local/state taxes and is not indicative of everywhere. A carton of Marlboros here (the most expensive brand) is around $60 ($6/pack). A quick scan of this table [1] shows rates by state. A cursory look shows a tax range of about 0.37% (Georgia) to 4.5% (DC), but those are only the state taxes and don't take into account other local taxes. I'm just pointing out your example of $30/day (I assume where you live) is quite different from $12/day where I live, and there are even cheaper places than where I live. Portland isn't exactly the boonies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_taxes_in_the_United_...
- Udik 8y ago
  > Some people just have a cig burning almost all of the time, but might actually only take 2 or 3 draws off of it and the rest just sits there burning. That describes pretty well how I smoke the ecig: all day long, maybe three puffs every few minutes. While the normal cigs (maybe four a day) I inhale greedily at high speed.
- pessimizer 8y ago
  > Not to speak for GP, but a lot of people who "smoke" that much aren't really smoking it all. They're not like on a typical smoke break where they go outside expressly to consume a cig and go back to work. Some people just have a cig burning almost all of the time, but might actually only take 2 or 3 draws off of it and the rest just sits there burning. This wasn't me at all when I smoked two packs a day. I smoked the entire cigarette, and if I was going to put it down for a while, I put it out. And that was when they were cheap. You just smoke all the time. The first thing I did when I woke up was light a cigarette, before I got out of bed. You choke a couple of cigarettes down during your break, not just one. You smoke through lunch. I was probably 5-7 cigarettes in before I even got to work.
  - blairbeckwith 8y ago
    Yeah, this is closer to my experience. I never reached two packs a day, but would hit 1.5 in the summer months no problem. It was wake up, smoke, make coffee, smoke, have a quick bite, smoke, get a shower, smoke, walk to work, three smokes. Easily seven before I got to the office, then it was out every 45 mins, three over lunch, three on the way home, and then basically chain all evening. I started Juul in late 2017, was off smoking completely by April 2018 (3 pods a day) and quit Juul cold turkey January 1st, 2019. I’d tried to quit millions of times over 10 years, but Juul made it easy.
    - pessimizer 8y ago
      > wake up, smoke, make coffee, smoke, have a quick bite, smoke, get a shower, smoke This rings absurdly true with me. I realized at some point that a cigarette was a little celebration ritual that I went through after completing anything. It's also why I'm negative on vaping as a tool for quitting; it doesn't get rid of that ritual part. Snus (someone else also mentioned dipping elsewhere in the thread) does. Entirely quitting the impulse to the ritual took me a good two years, and having the nicotine hit from the snus helped me through it. Quitting the snus was a fairly miserable two weeks. I'm not denouncing vapes, though, because although I don't think they're good for quitting nicotine addiction, they're good for quitting cigarettes, and that's good enough to lengthen your lifespan by 2-3 years, and the lifespan of your lungs by 10-20 probably. I don't know that we know what the long term effects of inhaling propylene glycol are, but there's no doubt there's a better outlook than cig smoke. I just can't help but recall how gross and unpleasant inhaling what smoke machines produced was when I was in a touring band. edit: entirely incidentally, I feel that ritual made me more productive. Between cigarettes, I felt like I was supposed to do something before the next cigarette. It was like: finish writing that function, smoke, get to the point where I can run tests, smoke while the tests were running, get to the point where I can run benchmarks, smoke while benchmarks are running, get to the point where I can hand things off - make the call to the person I have to hand it to, smoke. After quitting, life seems more dreamy, spacey, and unstructured. I think that's a point for vaping, although I think the fact that cigs are discrete units that lower in quality slightly after having been put out is both a factor affecting the ritual, and a quality that vaping does not have. Quit smoking at least 7 years ago, so this isn't just addict wistfulness.
homero 8y ago
I chain smoked while on the computer. If I couldn't smoke inside I'd do things on my phone outside. Yeah it cost a fortune.

kaffeemitsahne 8y ago

Well, guess why they quit.

danieltillett 8y ago

In the "good old days" I used to know a woman that would always be smoking. She would light the next cigarette with the last of the old cigarette. I have no idea how many cigarettes she would go through a day, but it must have been more than 4 packs.

mrtweetyhack 8y ago

The definition of an addictive drug is that users will pay anything, do anything for it; lie, beg, steal, and kill. TO a sensible person looking at it from the outside, it looks stupid and wasteful. To the drug addict, who do I kill for my next hit. All reasoning goes out the door.

cronix 8y ago

Not to speak for GP, but a lot of people who "smoke" that much aren't really smoking it all. They're not like on a typical smoke break where they go outside expressly to consume a cig and go back to work. Some people just have a cig burning almost all of the time, but might actually only take 2 or 3 draws off of it and the rest just sits there burning. They tend to be self employed bc there is no way you could do that at a regular 9-5 job. Anecdotally, I've had 2 experiences with people like that. One was a coder who was self employed and worked out of his house, and another was my auto mechanic before I moved. Both always had a cig burning sitting burning in an ashtray but only picked up and consumed maybe 25% of it while they were working. In some places, cigs might cost $15/pack (your numbers), but I just passed by a Chevron gas station selling for $7 where I live (Portland, OR). The cost depends greatly on the local/state taxes and is not indicative of everywhere. A carton of Marlboros here (the most expensive brand) is around $60 ($6/pack). A quick scan of this table [1] shows rates by state. A cursory look shows a tax range of about 0.37% (Georgia) to 4.5% (DC), but those are only the state taxes and don't take into account other local taxes. I'm just pointing out your example of $30/day (I assume where you live) is quite different from $12/day where I live, and there are even cheaper places than where I live. Portland isn't exactly the boonies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_taxes_in_the_United_...

Udik 8y ago
> Some people just have a cig burning almost all of the time, but might actually only take 2 or 3 draws off of it and the rest just sits there burning. That describes pretty well how I smoke the ecig: all day long, maybe three puffs every few minutes. While the normal cigs (maybe four a day) I inhale greedily at high speed.
pessimizer 8y ago
> Not to speak for GP, but a lot of people who "smoke" that much aren't really smoking it all. They're not like on a typical smoke break where they go outside expressly to consume a cig and go back to work. Some people just have a cig burning almost all of the time, but might actually only take 2 or 3 draws off of it and the rest just sits there burning. This wasn't me at all when I smoked two packs a day. I smoked the entire cigarette, and if I was going to put it down for a while, I put it out. And that was when they were cheap. You just smoke all the time. The first thing I did when I woke up was light a cigarette, before I got out of bed. You choke a couple of cigarettes down during your break, not just one. You smoke through lunch. I was probably 5-7 cigarettes in before I even got to work.
- blairbeckwith 8y ago
  Yeah, this is closer to my experience. I never reached two packs a day, but would hit 1.5 in the summer months no problem. It was wake up, smoke, make coffee, smoke, have a quick bite, smoke, get a shower, smoke, walk to work, three smokes. Easily seven before I got to the office, then it was out every 45 mins, three over lunch, three on the way home, and then basically chain all evening. I started Juul in late 2017, was off smoking completely by April 2018 (3 pods a day) and quit Juul cold turkey January 1st, 2019. I’d tried to quit millions of times over 10 years, but Juul made it easy.
  - pessimizer 8y ago
    > wake up, smoke, make coffee, smoke, have a quick bite, smoke, get a shower, smoke This rings absurdly true with me. I realized at some point that a cigarette was a little celebration ritual that I went through after completing anything. It's also why I'm negative on vaping as a tool for quitting; it doesn't get rid of that ritual part. Snus (someone else also mentioned dipping elsewhere in the thread) does. Entirely quitting the impulse to the ritual took me a good two years, and having the nicotine hit from the snus helped me through it. Quitting the snus was a fairly miserable two weeks. I'm not denouncing vapes, though, because although I don't think they're good for quitting nicotine addiction, they're good for quitting cigarettes, and that's good enough to lengthen your lifespan by 2-3 years, and the lifespan of your lungs by 10-20 probably. I don't know that we know what the long term effects of inhaling propylene glycol are, but there's no doubt there's a better outlook than cig smoke. I just can't help but recall how gross and unpleasant inhaling what smoke machines produced was when I was in a touring band. edit: entirely incidentally, I feel that ritual made me more productive. Between cigarettes, I felt like I was supposed to do something before the next cigarette. It was like: finish writing that function, smoke, get to the point where I can run tests, smoke while the tests were running, get to the point where I can run benchmarks, smoke while benchmarks are running, get to the point where I can hand things off - make the call to the person I have to hand it to, smoke. After quitting, life seems more dreamy, spacey, and unstructured. I think that's a point for vaping, although I think the fact that cigs are discrete units that lower in quality slightly after having been put out is both a factor affecting the ritual, and a quality that vaping does not have. Quit smoking at least 7 years ago, so this isn't just addict wistfulness.

homero 8y ago

I chain smoked while on the computer. If I couldn't smoke inside I'd do things on my phone outside. Yeah it cost a fortune.