How did you get started smoking tobacco?

[guitarguy86]

I humbly apologize if there is already a thread on this subject. I tried searching for one, but to no avail. Anyway, all my life, I've always been drawn to tobacco pipes. They look cool, smell good, and usually the people smoking the pipe have an interesting appearance. When you're a kid, you look up to your elders. I remember being about 12 years old, at my parents' friend's house and he had a rack of pipes that his father left him. I was a bit disturbed because the pipes always sat there never to be used. They were really cool pipes. I lived in Oregon for a while, and I remember this one guy would drive through town every day, in his Williy's Jeep, with tendrils of smoke waving behind him like a cartoon. I first started smoking the pipe nearly two years ago, and I stopped soon after due to tongue bite. I gave my pipes away, but kept the tobacco. I had it in a cigar box in my closet up until about a week ago. I was in the moving process when I came across my tobacco, and I immediately wanted to start smoking again. I went out to a tobacconist, purchased a pipe, and within the past week I've gone through more than I would have when I first started, and I think that is because this time around, I've found out about different blends and information I didn't have before. Also, this site really helps too!

Now I'd like to ask you how you got into pipe smoking? Any cool stories/occurrences leading up to the pipe?

 

[nsfisher]

Good story mate, thanks for sharing.

Old guy, when I used to cut and stump pile wood for a living, smoked a pipe. I would burn a tank of gas, pile and mark my wood, fill my saw, then have a cig. and go at er again. He would do the same, but instead of a cig., he would light his pipe, filled with Green Sail, take a few puffs then, back to work. Next day, I bought a pipe and gave er a go. Took me 15 yrs to get off the cigs. completely but here we are.

 

[crk69]

I think my first exposure to pipes is what peeked my interest... A friend of my father smoked a pipe, and whenever we visited his home, the wonderful aroma of the smoked tobacco would greet you as you entered the door.. I don't know what it was that he was smoking, but it was heavenly. Later in life I started with snuff, chewing tobacco and cigarettes in high school, then picked up cigar smoking. My father had an old pipe that he would smoke on ocassion, and his tobacco of choice was prince albert. I tried a pipe later, and was frustrated trying to figure out how to pack it and keep it lit. I burnt out the bowl on a drug store cheapie and gave up on it. Then I ran across Pipe World in Austin, Tx. and fell in love with the multitude of pipes they had in the display case. A short tutorial from the store owner later, and I walked out the door with a Nording pipe and some of their house blends. I have recently gotten back into pipe smoking, and have been buying pipes like crazy to my wife's dismay... I have been buying estate pipes from ebay, along with several Meerschaums and new pipes from my local B&M. I currently have 25 pipes dedicated to a mulititude of different pipe tobaccos. I still smoke cigars, and have given up the cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. I currently have 5 humidors in service and approximately 600 cigars sitting comfortably in the "tobacco room" (guest bedroom) which also contains my pipes in racks i purchased from estate sales and pipe tobacco cellared in the closet.

 

[ruraldean]

Counter-intuitively, my doctor suggested it. He's a friend and a pipe smoker and I was seeing him for back pain which he felt was stress-related. He told me a pipe would help me relax, and he was right.
Unfortunately the back pain stayed, because it came from a congenital heart defect.
He was a crap doctor.

 

[bigmike]

Cigarettes to Cigars to Pipes....a progression or regression, depending on how you view it.
Fond memories of spending time with my grandfather, and his pipes, was a contributing factor as well.

 

[shaintiques]

I actually smoked my first pipe at a friends house when I was living in Ukraine. I actually went out and bought two pipes there but never got around to smoking them. Then when I moved to Georgia 3 years ago one of my buddies here smoked a pipe and I was like hey I've got some pipes and it began. I call him my Pipe Jedi and I am his apprentice, oonly when I master blwing smoke rings will I consider myself a full Jedi master of the pipe.

 

[85royals]

When I was a kid a old uncle Howard would come over to my grandparents home and he would smoke a apple blend and I never got that out of my system I guess.. fast forward to 3yrs ago setting on my deck one night just enjoying a warmer winter night and some one walked by with a pipe going and that scent so I went to a local B&M and got a small sampling of tobaccos 1-Q Strawberry Apple Morris Blend and one or two more a MM Cob and went to YouTube to learn how to pack and light and ect..ect.. first blend 1-Q and I still DON'T care for it I have gathered a few pipe smoking buddy's in the last 3yrs and every now and again we have a little swap I get stuck with a 1/2 oz of 1-Q.. Now I have developed a taste for English and Balkan I still like Capt Black (white) and Villager Mid Day Egg Nog from Pipesandcigars.com if I had only gotten that 1-Q I would have been out fast I just don't know what it is about that blend.. the Strawberry house blend that they had is what saved me and then made me explore.. and that's how I started from a scent memory to now

 

[judcole]

I took it up when I went to college because in my mind that was part of being a College Man. ::

 

[voorhees]

My tobacco interests began with machine rolled cheapie cigars back in the mid 80's when I was 15-17 years old. I never smoked cigarettes and actually did not smoke cigars again until my mid 20's. I moved up a but to Garcia Vegas(LOL)and got turned onto some relatively inexpensive hand rolled smaller cigars. The cigar infatuation has gone on progressively for more than 14 years and then came that day when I thought I'd grab an old pipe for smoking the nubs of my cigars. That was a bad idea, but I quickly realized how cool and interesting pipes were as well. Picked up a few samples of tobacco here and there and now have another great way to enjoy tobacco.

 

[colcolt]

I also like some hookah

storeint-What is that? You mean hash? :mrgreen:
A fellow three years older than me got me to try cigarettes when I was 13 years old. That was just the cool thing to do back in the late 50's and early '60.s They did it on TV, movie theaters had commercials about smoking as did the drive-in. John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Ricky and Lucille Ball and many more did it in the movies and TV so it was excepted everywhere. Not immediately but in a couple years I got hooked...bad. I didn't try the pipe till in my mid to late 20's and gave up as I wasn't getting the "hit" with pipes I did with cigarettes. I still swear to this day they put some additives in cigarettes not found in other tobacco.
At any rate, I got interested in the pipe again about a month or so ago and with the aid and helpful suggestions here it seems I'm enjoying it much more than before. I only had two pipes back then, a Dr. Grabow and a Yellow Bowl and only tried SWR and Borkum Riff. I didn't know 10 million other types of baccy existed until I got on this forum and certainly never heard of so many different pipes including the meer. So, I'm still "wet behind the ears" compared to most who have been smoking the pipe for decades and I've ever learning.

 

[baronsamedi]

I bought a pack of Marlboros out of a cigarette machine for about $1.50 when I was 13 or so. I wanted to try it because that's just what rockers are supposed to do, right? Nothing like a smoke and a liter or two of beer after a hard day of Junior High School. I was a mean little shit back then. Ended up smoking Camel Filters for 15 years or so. off and on. Got into cigars in my 20s and then pipes in my 30s. Don't smoke the nails anymore, but if I did, it would be Nat Sherman or nothing.

 

[lateeno]

Well ,
It all started back in 1996 when I was visiting my uncle in Germany. I loved the way he treated his beloved pipes with passion and extra-appreciation !
He noticed how curious I was , he then offered me a sip of his bulldog loaded with McBaren Mixture ... for a few minutes .. I was almost touching the clouds ! Back to reality , I knew that pipe-smoking will be my life mate , and so it was and still is .
Puffing Is Loving ..

 

[mrgunnar177]

Well my father and grandfather smoked pipes but I do not recall them ever doing it around me. Hell I don't ever remember my dad smoking or seeing his pipes or anything. My grandma smoked cigs all her life and died a couple years back because of lung cancer. Anyways. I got interested in tobacco when I was 15-16 I bummed a couple cigs and got ahold of some dip. Never got hooked but I'd dip in class and stuff, mostly my junior year of high school. I smoked cigs every once and a while since I was a sophomore. But ever since I was 16 I was interested in pipes, I asked my dad about pipes and he got angry and yelled at me ( he quit when I was little) but that had no effect in me I was still obsessing late at night over pipes and al the different kinds of tobaccos. Well when I was 17 I met a guy on YouTube and I had made a video voicing my interest in pipes. Of course people started to offer me pipes and tobaccos. Well I was honest with them and told them I was not yet legal of age,well one guy still offered to send me pipes so I said ok. Well the thought that hewould send me pipes to my house scared me hawanda I sent them to a friend who was 18 and he ordered some tobacco from tobacco barns aeromatics for me and him to try and so last summer we would sit in his apartment and smoke. When I turned 18 I took the tobacco I had and my pipes and put them in my house. Long story short dad found out he respected my decision seeing how I was 18. So Iv been smoking pipes ever since. I occasionally will buy a cigar but I can't afford to smoke cigars very often. Iv been thinking about asking my dad to smoke with me bUt I haven't yet.

Cheers

Gunnar

 

[taerin]

My parents have a picture of me smoking my father's pipe as a two year old. He had the most wonderful smelling tobacco and pipes laying around always. When I went through a really bad relationship with a girl and hit rock bottom in my depression (2 years ago) I decided to buy a menthol and regular pack of cigs because people often used that to help them with stress. I never inhaled because I could never live with the idea of hurting my lungs as an extreme sports enthusiast. I decided I liked it, but cigs were too accessible, it was too easy to reach for one every time I wanted to feel better. I visited a local tobacco shop which had pipes and I decided to get an entry level one for $25. I have been smoking pipes ever since as well as the occasional cigar. I'm not real worried about cancer since I barely smoke, it takes way to long to do it on a daily basis, it's only about 2-3 times a week.

 

[whitebriar]

i was about ten years old--old guys in the barber shop or hangin' around the store or gas station smokin' their pipes impressed me--after seein' them i went home and made myself a cob--lousy pipe but i burned just about everything in it including some tobacco--never looked back--in the service i needed nicotine and cigarettes were more convenient on duty MOST of the time--off duty it was my pipe--never really liked anything but the pipe so i have stuck with it ever since--
oh by the way i made lots of cobs--they weren't cured right and tended to burn out, but a kid doesn't know that much about pipe mechanics--

 

[nightmarejones]

My grandparents were tobacco farmers and every summer my sister and I would stay with them up in KY. and have to hoe the fields and all.One day while in KY. we went to more or less the general store and I saw a cob and said to my sis "one day I'll smoke one like popeye" because I was like 8 or 10..lol..I have many times since thought about getting a pipe but just thought whatever they're expensive and cigs are cheap.One day last Dec.at Hess I saw a man(an old guy about 75-80) sitting in his truck parked next to us lighting up a huge calabash and I just stared as he raised his pipe as if to say hello/here is your sign.So I went home and unfortunately bought a plastic pipe with a metal bowl and some local B&M tobacco and have have fallen further down the "Rabbit Hole" if you will,ever since

 

[guitarguy86]

Thanks for the awesome stories everyone. I look forward to reading more. I think another reason I switched to the pipe is due to my belief that cigarettes are just an addiction, while pipes are a fun addiction. I've never heard anyone talk about cigarettes the way tobacco pipes are talked about.

 

[jfoster1]

It was just the smell of Pipe tobacco. It did not matter whether it was being smoked or not. It always smelled better than it tasted though to me. I tried and tried to master a pipe and I never did.

 

[thatbeetleguy]

As long as I can think, I have been exposed to tobacco products (about 70% of my family members smoke, mostly cigarettes).

My story began when I started smoking cigars (never smoked a cigarette). This was about two years ago when I was overly stressed out and overwhelmed with two of my best-friends breaking up with each other along with taking an overly difficult biochemistry course I needed to take in college. My per usual methods of relaxing weren't cutting it. Then I remembered, from a few months prior, how relaxing smoking a Backwoods Sweet Aromatic cigar was and bought a pack. Since then, I've smoked them along with other brands of cigars that were similar in taste and aroma. It helped that I was getting complements about the aroma of my cigars and how "cool looking" I was smoking them.

But pipes always interested me. My father, whenever I saw him on the weekends, would always smoke a pipe. I was fond of the aroma of the Black Cavendish he would smoke from his pipe and the fancy pipes he owned but rarely smoked in my presence. Sadly, my father smokes his pipe like a cigarette and he was constantly coughing when he did smoke.

Then this past January, I was beginning to notice how expensive smoking cigars started to become (considering I was outta college and jobless). So I started looking for cost effective alternatives and I decided to give pipe smoking a try (with considerable influence from Tolkien's "The Hobbit" and the Lords of the Ring trilogy films). After ordering three different MM corn cobs and Captain Black regular (white), I realized how much I enjoyed pipe smoking (especially how much longer it lasted compared to cigar smoking).

The funny/cool part was that my mother was perfectly fine with me smoking both cigars and pipes (but threatened to disown me if I started smoking cigarettes 8O ).

 

[hobie1dog]

I went from enjoying marijuana, then switched over to pipe tobacco, something my Grandfather always seemed to do.