In 2013, I was 100% against smoking.

My mother has smoked for as long as I can remember and my Dad falls into the Booze with Fags category. I grew up vehemently against smoking, I used to hide my mothers cigarettes, tell people who did smoke that they smelled awful and was pretty much the poster girl of someone who would never smoke.

I think you are meant to remember your first cigarette, my dad always says that it was a coming of age thing when he was younger. However I have no real memory of the first cigarette I tried,  time-wise I was probably 16 or 17 and sat in a park with my friends who’d stolen some from their mum.

I can’t remember when it came a habit, I’d smoke cigarettes when I could get them, people at work would buy my some baccy to keep me going and I used it massively as a way to maintain my stress. By 17 I was working in a pub back in Dorset, long hours, long shifts and everyone I knew smoked. By no means was it a peer pressure thing, but at the time it just seemed to go hand in hand!

When I turned 18, I could not only buy my own tobacco but decided it was time to fess up to the parentals, no doubt my dad knew i’d been smoking though always seemed to accept it when I said my friends smoked and that’s why I’d smell of fags when I came home from work.

When I came to university I used to smoke in my bedroom, have my own little ash tray and fit into the demographic as a fresher who shoved a sock on the fire alarm and prayed I didn’t set it off when i couldn’t be bothered to walk 6 floors to smoke outside.

By the end of my second year of university, my boyfriend went to America for 3 months, and while he was there he quit smoking, not by choice but because he’d lose his job working at a summer camp if he got caught! When he came back from America he was healthier, happier and pretty different, something that drove me to smoke more; maybe nostalgia?

Surprisingly, none of my friends at university really smoke, apart from one of my housemates, she quit New Year 2016 and since then it has just been me who has smoked, admittedly yes because hey its not as much fun when you are smoking alone.

I have half arsed tried to quit about six or seven times in the last few years, mainly because it is the right thing to do, in the next 5 years I’ll want to have children, can I really not treat my body with respect and then expect to carry a human being in it? I’m trying to lose weight and as my knee injury is preventing me from exercising and also going out for cigarettes as much as I used to, this gives me something to focus my attention on.

I didn’t think I was quite as dependent as I was, a normal thing for nicotine addicts I guess. However I am currently on Day 4, I have the shakes and all I can think is that I am desperate to have a cigarette. I have my little app, which is keeping count for me and keeping my motivated with little buzzes every now and then!

If anyone has any tips or could just leave me positive message for me to look at when I’m about to cave that would be amazing!

G x