How Long Have You Smoked a Pipe?

[fishmansf]

Title edited for capitalization. Please see Rule 9.

To save everyone the trouble, it's pretty much that everything should be capitalized except articles and most 2-3 letter words.

How long have you been smoking a pipe and at what age did you start? What made you choose pipe smoking?

 

[El Capitán]

I started a pipe 3 years ago at 31. Been smoking cigars since I was 8 in Cuba. Decided to switch to change things up. Love it more than cigars now.

 

[TakeThisCobAndStuffIt]

Off and on for 38 years. When I first started I was 12 and trying to emulate the men in my life. I bought a cob at the sweetshop. Stole some half and half from the tin under the living room table and puffed away behind the barn or up in the silo. It didn't take and I took up dip. Fast forward 10 years, I'm in school and thought it would be a fun diversion and more dignified than dip. It didn't take, and I took up cigs. Fast forward 15 years and I have quit cigs but dabble in cigars. Then I started to consume cigars to include a regular trip to Cuba for more inventory. Hurricane wipes out my favorite supplier and cigar prices are through the roof so I decided to give the pipe a try again. This time I had the money and interest to try a bunch of blends in a short time and boy oh boy did I find that I like it! Better tobacco at a fraction of the price! Dropping some coin now to build up a cellar to offset future cost of tobacco.

 

[spike]

It will be 54 years next month. I started on my 18th birthday with a Tom Thumb pipe and a box of Carter Hall I bought at a Sears Roebuck in Chicago when Sears had a tobacco section in their stores.

 

[fishmansf]

It will be 54 years next month. I started on my 18th birthday with a Tom Thumb pipe and a box of Carter Hall I bought at a Sears Roebuck in Chicago when Sears had a tobacco section in their stores.

That’s a long time! Cheers to many more!

 

[Chasing Embers]

33, 17, and nicotine.

 

[huntertrw]

Since 1973 when I was a sophomore in high school. I chose the pipe because my heroes were all pipe-smokers. That list included both paternal grandfathers, my high-school band director, and Bing Crosby.

 

[FurCoat]

I am 52 and started smoking pipes at 16. I was facinat with pipes from a young age.

 

[tracerbullet]

Off and on for only a couple of years

 

[username]

Started in 2000 stopped for a bit then picked it back up 8 years ago.

 

[wyfbane]

11 years!? Wow. I smoke for fun and collecting pipes and tobacco is a great hobby, if somewhat expensive.

 

[LeafErikson]

I started smoking a pipe at 26, which was 3 1/2 years ago. My wife got me my first pipe for my first fathers’ day. I mentioned to her that I wanted to try a pipe out as I read that they were a slightly safer way to enjoy tobacco than cigarettes. I primarily smoke because of nicotine but I certainly enjoy the flavors of the blends that I smoke.

 

[Briarpuffin]

30 years is about right.
i Don’t remember what got me started.
ive smoked cigars maybe 40 years or so.
my dad would smoke a cigar every now and then.

 

[Cloozoe]

I smoked my first bowl 61 years ago at age 11. Sail in a cob, both, uh, liberated from a nearby store and I made my getaway on a bicycle. Around the same time I also smoked cigarettes, tried a cigar or two and gave chewing tobacco a whirl. Only the cigarettes stuck. I liked tobacco from the jump and it had the additional benefit of making me look badass and older; I figured I could pass for 13. And of course if I were really badass, as opposed to just a little street rat, I wouldn't have cared about the (delusional) badass-looking part.

Started up again with a pipe at the age of 21 and this time learned how to do it after a bit and I've been digging it over the ensuing fifty + years. My understanding is that once I turn 75 only codger blends will be allowed me but I might get lucky and shuffle off first.

 

[Servant King]

Five years and change, since age 33.

I'd had a cigar here and there, but they were always too overpowering for me. Cigarillos were okay, but nothing really stuck until I tried a pipe, which I did on a whim after receiving a dried-out Alec Bradley cigar sampler from a distant cousin. The experience was so awful, I felt there had to be something better...then I recalled one of my childhood favorites, Col. Douglas Mortimer from For a Few Dollars More (the late Lee Van Cleef) and his vice. Bought a cheap pearwood bent billiard, some accessories, and a tin of Mac Baren Original Choice. 5+ years later, here I am, with nine pipes, somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-20 lbs. of cellared tobacco, and a bruised, battered and beaten bank account limping along on its last leg! I kid--TAD is considerably cheaper than PAD, the latter of which I am blessed to not have.

I credit the fine folks of this forum, and Mike of @briarblues (the YT channel) for getting my technique up to snuff, and helping me avoiding the myriad pitfalls that befall many novices at the outset.

 

[Bbailey324]

I started around 1986 or 87 in my late teens. Long interested due to reading Sherlock Holmes stories and the observation that many scientists were pipe smokers.

 

[warren]

About sixty years.

What made you choose pipe smoking?

Curiosity raises the impertinent questions yet again. I've answered these question so many times here. So, here we go again. Simple answer; because doing so appeared to attract co-eds. I already chewed when riding the rough stock, on the flight line and when airborne. Cigarettes were started when I was 12. I'm the middle lad of three. I am a retired copper. Rode a murdercycle in my younger years. I've traveled widely. What other personal information do you require?

Oh, before you ask, I do indeed enjoy nicotine.

 

[LEP7cv]

3/4 years, started at 40
stopped smoking nasty cigarettes in 2014 and I kinda missed smoking, so I've tried pipes..then I realized that I've never had smoked tobacco before, just those nasty cigs :D

 

[OzPiper]

Started in the early ‘70s as an undergraduate thinking it’d be a chick magnet. Discovered very quickly it wasn’t
Gave it up (smoking) in the mid-80’s when the kids arrived.

Took up cigars early 2000’s. I’d been attracted to cigars for years. There is something about cigars lying neatly all in a row in their boxes.

I was killing time in a duty-free cigar shop at an airport in 2018 which had a display of pipe tobacco.
I bought a tin and dug out my old pipes when I got home.
And now here I am.

Enjoying pipes so much now I haven’t smoked a cigar in more than 6 months.

 

[HeavyLeadBelly]

On and off since the late 90s. More seriously over the past three years.