Did You Start with a Pipe or Something Else?

[gambit88]

Started off with camels. After about a year or so i quit cigs and went to a cigar or two a week. I had a few rough cigars and moved on to the pipe. More flavors and more enjoyable. Wife tolerates the smell better as well.

 

[pruss]

I started with pipes, in College, and then descended into the drudgery of cigarette smoking for ten years. I was a 'pack a day' Dunhill smoker and loved the intensity of the Dunhill International King Size cigarettes. I was like the bizarro world Canadian cigarette smoker. Most of my friends raved about the impossible to buy Marlborough cigarettes, while I enjoyed the easily accessible English smokes. I quit cigarettes and then smoked nothing for about eight years before picking up the pipe again.
I have never enjoyed a cigar from first light to finish. In general, I find the smoke too intense and acrid, and don't enjoy the flavour of the tobacco leaf on my lips and tongue. Most of my friends say that I just haven't found the right 'gar yet... I'm okay with that.
-- Pat

 

[cigrmaster]

I started smoking Tijuana Smalls whiarounch were sweet tipped little cigars when I was 12. Also smoked Wolf Brothers Rum Soaked Crooks and White Owl Invincibles at the same time. Me and my buddies would sit at Fenway Park smoking away and it was a blast. I then switched to cigarettes at 13 and got into premium cigars in the early 80's. I bought from JR Cigars until around 1997 when I got into Cuban cigars. In 2000 I also got into pipes so I was dual addicted for quite some time. I became pipes only in 2012, and that is where I am today. I honestly do not miss the cigars as price wise the difference is night and day.

 

[PlanxtyPipes]

Started with cigarettes. Smoked them for probably 10 years and picked up the pipe in about 2006 for a change of pace. I had a friend who had just started smoking a pipe and he and I used to like to go to the best Irish pub in town and smoke our pipes and drink Guinness and sample Irish whiskys. Eventually I gave up smoking cigarettes but I don't think I'll ever give up the pipe. It's a pastime and not an addiction like the cigarettes were. I sometimes put the pipe down for months at a time but I always come back eventually.

 

[warren]

I think I started with my thumb or, possibly a pacifier. I quite both of those by high school and turned to cigarettes. Pipes and cigars came in college. "Red Man" in the Air Force as smoking was strictly verboten on the flight line. Unsure if my tobacco dependency is necessitated by nicotine addiction or an oral fixation. Whichever, it's all good.
I omitted any reference to an early addiction to breast feeding. I still find them attractive.

 

[derfatdutchman]

I started with a pipe, moved into both cigars and pipes, and now I primarily smoke pipes. I've always found allot of cigars to be very one dimensional, when a cigar is great they are a pleasure to smoke. The problem I find is that there are too many mediocre cigars that just don't have the depth of allot of pipe blends. So I my tobacco cellar grows and I'm down to just a small humidor.

 

[cobguy]

Started out with Carter Hall, Dr. Grabow and Missouri Meerschaum then moved on to cigars and back full circle.
I enjoy both now and keep 25-30 cigars stocked at all times along with the pipe tobacco.

 

[buckaroo]

Yeah, cigars for 6 years then curiosity got me into pipes.

 

[jpmcwjr]

Started with a pipe or two in college in the '60's, grew to a dozen or so briars and a couple of meers, most of which I am smoking today, after a 40 year layoff.

Started with cigs because of a woman a few years later, but quit after ten years.
My big love was Burlington Arcade, blended by the late Harry S Tint & Sons, Philadelphia. Still looking for its successor.

 

[jkrug]

Some great tobacco tales and personal history posted above!
Never smoked cigs, always found them nasty and stinky. Started dabbling in cigars and pipes in the early 80s. Never was very seriously into either for a few years and then I started enjoying the pipe more and cigar smoking dropped off quite a bit. I still enjoy a cigar or cigarillo once in awhile but it is the pipe that enjoy daily now. ::

 

[agnosticpipe]

Strangely, I tried to smoke cigarettes in the mid 1960s in high school, you know, just to be cool. I hated it, and it made me sick. So I never smoked again until the early 1980s when a friend asked if I had ever smoked a pipe. I hadn't and so we tried it out. I was hooked, and I've been smoking pipes on and off since then. Yes, I got caught up in the cigar craze of the mid 1990s, and still enjoy a cigar on occasion. But pipe smoking is where it's at for me now. I'm loving all the different pipes and tobaccos that are out there. I don't see an end to it yet, and Kevin, thanks for this forum, it has helped a lot!

 

[stickframer]

Started out on cigs at age 14. For a few years in my early 20s I smoked the odd cigar with my dad to celebrate birthdays and such.

 

[sallow]

No cigarettes since 2009, but plenty the previous 25 years.
I smoke a few cigars per month, but like my pipe every night after dinner.

 

[kola]

At 14 years old (and after reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) I made a corncob pipe out of a piece of dried corn and I glued in a piece a reed for a stem. Back then it was easy to buy pipe tobacco from the stores. Packed er' up and off I went. I ran away from home not long aftewards as well. Blame that book on my rebellion! True story.

 

[lordofthepiperings]

I pretty much started with pipes aside from a few Black&Mild cigarillos in my high school days.

 

[edwinbaz]

I began with cigarettes, as a way to curb the stress a bit. About three years ago, for no apparent reason (I didn't know a single pipe smoker back then) I decided to buy a pipe. What I find is that a pipe is like tea, whereas cigarettes are just like a double shot expresso on the go. Cigarettes are neurotic, in-a-rush, "instant gratification". Pipes, on the other hand, are calm, contemplative. Pipe smoking I believe helps with stress in a more profound way, because it instills patience, it requires preparation and ritual (prepping the tobacco, packing the pipe, charring light, tamping, etc...), it puts you in a quiet state of mind, and it takes you out, for a moment, from the noise/hustle-and-bustle/gotta-keep-moving of this "modern age". I suppose it's like doing yoga and meditation vis-à-vis popping a Xanax.

 

[brudnod]

When I was a teenager, I must not have gotten the memo about how cool you look with a cigarette hanging from your mouth. Started with a pipe just when my father was thinking about given them up, which increased my pipe collection (he had both his and his father's). He smoked Edgefield which did not suit my taste and I smoked mostly Rorkum Riff and Balkan Sobranie. That was more than 45 years ago! Hope the health and tobacco prices hold up.

 

[mso489]

My next-door neighbor buddy pilfered his dad's nearly empty cartons of Lucky Strikes and Camels when we were young enough to haul our smokes in a Radio Flyer wagon, down the alley to smoke under a bush where they were constructing a house. I turned green more than once. That was aversion therapy for cigarettes. In college I enjoyed the occasional small cheap cigar, and in the Navy as well. I married at 30 and took up a pipe intermittently, but quit in solidarity with my late wife who gave up cigarettes, a three-plus pack a day habit. As far as is known, her illness did not relate to smoking. Took up pipes again as a widower, very moderately, as I smoke now. Cigars I enjoy only rarely, finding pipes much more various with blends and mixing.

 

[okiescout]

As a young man I started with a pipe then on to cigarettes and an occasional cigar. I went cold turkey at 29. In my later years I returned to the pipe. It is my friend, companion and solace.

 

[macfeegle]

Like most I started on the cigarettes as a teenager and kept at them for 30 years despite many attempts to stop. Last year my fishing buddy gave me a Peterson and a tin of Erinmore after I'd told him I was thinking of giving the pipe a go, not looked back although I've loads to learn yet.