I was a pack a day smoker - I quit a couple years ago.. well quit isn't the right word - I transferred my addiction to another form of nicotine (snus/dipping tobacco, as well as lozenges) - I think the part I miss most of all is the social aspects of smoking, the enjoying instant comradere with some people - it made me a better storyteller, a better and more eloquent speaker - basically helped me to a great extent shave all the rough edges off I had as a kid - it also gave me an instant social group to hang out with at work too.
I dip now, which is a slightly more exclusive club (there just seems to be fewer of us) but there is subreddit for it - that is just as supportive and friendly as r/cigarettes though - r/DippingTobacco posts are a bit weirder.
I switched to vaping about 4 years ago. Even on nights that I forget to charge and thus end up with a dead battery, I still go outside and hang with the smokers every so often.
I still appreciate the reset from the conversation at whatever social place / gathering I'm at, as well as the switch in context and opportunity to meet others. And generally, smokers don't care whether you're also smoking.
I also take the equivalent of smoking breaks while I'm working. I can vape at my desk for hours, but I like to go outside for a bit to spend 5 minutes away every so often.
It's one of the few positive (and free) habits I got from being a smoker for 22 years, and I'm not giving it up.
The hypocrisy of non-smokers still annoys me - the people who complain about cigarette smoke, but bury themselves in cologne, perfume or aftershave for example. As it turns out, I have an astoundingly strong sense of smell, or so I discovered when I quit smoking.
Great, so you can understand where non-smokers are coming from. All my neighbors smoke and I can't open my windows in nice weather because then my house just smells awful and it triggers migraines for my wife. I don't think they'd appreciate it if I left a bucket of rotting fish on my porch.
I don't like the smell of smokers or perfumes (of any sort), personally. No migraines or allergies or hypocrisy; I just think they all stink. I don't even like scented shampoo. My favorite deodorant now has an "Invisible" version that's completely unscented. I gladly overpay for it - and very much need it due to my own rotten scent after, say, 12 hours.
I smoked in my tiny 1 bedroom apartment for quite a few years. I Never smoked in the bedroom, but the rest of the apartment was open-season. I'd quit smoking in that apartment about a year before I moved to a new city. Two years later, as I was packing to move to yet another city, I realized there was a box beneath my bed I'd forgotten about. After opening it, I realized it was a forever-unopened box, full of [washed/folded] clothes that I hadn't seen in nearly a decade.
The whole apartment suddenly stunk like a bar at 10am in the nineties. It was awful. The smoke had seeped into the closed bedroom, into the closed closet, into the taped-up box and had completely saturated the clothes. It took 3 days to air out the place, and I was terrified that my landlord would show up and think that I'd smoked in the apartment, which I absolutely never would have.
My [now] wife and I looked at each other completely grossed out, with the realization that we smelled like that at all times for 22 years before we'd quit (much less than that for her).
I have never smoked, but I had a similar revelation once.
Up until I was about 35 or so, I went through a 12-pack of 12-ounce cokes in a week. I reached that inevitable point in life where my metabolism was slowing down, and I was gaining weight. I decided to go cold turkey on the cokes, as that was pretty much all of the empty calories I consumed at that time. I figured it would be tough to quit such an ingrained habit, developed over the course of 20 years or so, but it wasn't. I switched to water without incident. My weight gain stopped.
About six months later, I was eating at a restaurant, and decided to order a coke, for old time's sake. I can have one every now and then as a treat, I thought.
Good god. It tasted awful. The most sickly-sweet disgusting thing I'd ever had in my mouth. I couldn't even finish that sip, let alone the entire drink.
That was over ten years ago, and I haven't touched a single drop of any carbonated sickly-sweet beverage since then. I can't believe I ever wanted to drink something so disgusting, for so many years, in such great quantities.
I have no doubt smokers don't know how they smell, I think either they can't smell it or their brain filters it out. That has to be the case because sometimes I'm in an elevator with someone who was just smoking and I'm standing there trying not to gag while obviously they're fine. For some reason they smell worse in cold weather.
I knew I smelled, but I didn't know what I smelled like or how strong it was. If I hadn't smoked in a day or so, I could smell other smokers, but only to trigger a craving and nowhere near as strongly as now. Almost all the adults I knew were smokers when I was growing up, so I probably didn't know the absence of the smell for most of my life until I, myself, quit.
I assume my sense of smell was worse as a smoker, but I don't know that for sure. It feels more like it was a filter. This was what I smelled like, so I couldn't tell when others smelled that way. Much like dog-owners can't smell a dog in the house, but as a non dog-owner, I know the previous owners of my house kept their dogs in the basement. I'll be removing the carpet next spring because of it. Oddly, my wife can't smell it, but it's pungent to me.
I can - both smell awful to me now - but one is quite socially acceptable (cologne/perfume) - the other makes you a social pariah (smoking) most perfume gives me an instant headache that lasts somewhere between 30 min and an a couple hours. Cigarettes don't bother me in that way - but its the smokers that are the awful people - thats the hypocrisy thing.
I dip now, which is a slightly more exclusive club (there just seems to be fewer of us) but there is subreddit for it - that is just as supportive and friendly as r/cigarettes though - r/DippingTobacco posts are a bit weirder.