Do you think smokers are losers?

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Not sure about everyone else, but the reason I smoke is because I grew up around smokers, so it became normalized. My grandfather smoked a pipe. My dad smoked cigs and quit in his late 30s to early 40s after switching to vaping, then he stopped vaping. My mom also smoked cigs and quit in her mid 30s. My step mom has smoked on and off since I first met her. She had quit around the same time my dad did, but has recently started back up again due what I suspect to be family stressors. My step dad smoked cigs and quit in his mid 30s along with my mom.

Growing up watching them smoke I could see that smoking was done as a way to calm down. People smoked after fights, when they were stressed, or when they were pissed off. I noticed them stepping outside for a smoke after conversations. It's a coping mechanism. I knew to stay away if someone pulled out a cig, because it meant they were stressed out. Anytime I approached my dad while he was smoking, he would seem annoyed and tell me to go away, sometimes even yell.

Eventually I caught on, and decided to sneak one of my dad's cigs when I was about 14 out of curiosity, and discovered it was calming/stimulating at the same time and made me feel grownup. The first try did make me feel dizzy though. Since then I've been smoking on and off since I was about 17. 17 was the age I started stealing cigs from my folks regularly. With in the past couple years I've discovered a herbal supplement that stops me from smoking called kratom, but if I don't have any, I start back up again.

So far I haven't noticed any negative effects on my skin, I look younger then my age, but then again I smoke the additive free kind (not that it's any safer), but I'm pretty sure I'm damaging my lungs and cutting my life short. It's so hard the quit though, and I'm working on it, but it's hard when life is so stressful.

As for the loser thing. I definitely don't come from a family of losers. My dad was high ranking military, retired chief. My grandfather was a successful engineer. My mother's a nurse, and my step dad is retired military who now attends a prestigious college to fulfill a lifelong dream he's had.

No, but I prefer to avoid them. I keep getting trapped behind them when I walk down a street and it's horrible.

This is why I'm an alcoholic (sober a year and a half). Every relation I have are lifestyle alcoholics. I was taught that getting shitfaced is the way to solve every problem, the response to every emotion, the excuse for every mistake or cruelty, the only way to fit into a social group - the total norm. But just because you grew up that way, you can still reject it and choose another. Smoking is bad for you obviously, so hopefully you and your herbals can quit.

I think they are misguided, but not losers. There is a complete and utter difference in my mind. Is it possibly in their genetics? Tolerance to alcohol could be traced back to genetics, so surely this can, right? Either way, I personally don't mind smoking. As long as they don't do it around others. People who develop secondhand smoke, I feel for them. It wasn't even their fault, it's unfair. My grandmother developed lung cancer from it and died, because she worked in a laundromat for twenty years. Back then, no one knew about the risks. We could just outlaw smoking - in an ideal society. We keep it around due to the major money it makes.

Users are losers and smokers are chokers!