2. Smoking — smoked socially in college — we’d go to this seedy bar and buy a pack to keep our hands busy while we drank beer. Surprisingly I never got addicted, though the nights I drank (which was like 5 nights/week) I’d smoke about a half a pack. Aaah, good times.

3. Drugs — hmm. There’s alcoholism in my family. I have friends whose close family members have had drug problems. The former is still an ongoing situation (though the intensity has leveled off some, I still think about it Every Day) and in the case of the latter, I’m not sure how much has been resolved. I haven’t seen it up close, fortunately, but I know it can be quite ugly.

2. i started smoking in april or may of my senior year of high school. i only quit while i was pg and then immediately took it up again pretty much as soon as they cut the cord. i don’t know why i started. some friends and i were hanging out one night, and me and another girl decided “hey, let’s go buy a pack of smokes” and i was the only one who stuck with it. my friends thought it was gross and gave me endless shit about it. it’s wierd…i can go all day on the weekends or vacation without a cigarette, but at night, and when i’m at work, i could chain-smoke. i’m down to about a pack every other day, but at one point, i was at close to 2 packs a day.

3. my son’s father is a drug addict. he’s done just about everything, but his true drug of choice is pot. yeah, yeah–pot’s harmless. tell that to someone who watched someone else smoke 5 joints a day and spend all of their grocery money and bill paying money on weed. tell that to someone who wouldn’t invite people to their house because it reeked of pot. tell that to someone who worried her kid was going to eventually find out about daddy’s little habit. he claims he’s clean now, and from his psychotic behavior, i’m inclined to believe it–but i don’t think he’s 100% clean.

2. I’ve never smoked, cigarettes or otherwise. My favorite uncle died a horrible death from lung cancer after smoking 3 packs a day for years, so it turned off from it forever. I respect others’ right to smoke, though – I’m not an anti-smoking freak, I just choose not to do it myself. The odd thing is that when I was pregnant and now when I’m super stressed out, I fantasize about smoking. How wierd is that?

3. I have a friend who became a crack addict about 3 years ago. He’s cleaned up now, but just had a horrible accident where he lost most of the fingers on his right hand so I’m scared to death he’s going to backslide. And of course, my father-in-law’s alcoholism is well-known and documented.

1) I always had adult consent. I suppose my first memory though would be ordering a whiskey sour at a very uptight friend’s bat mitzva at her very uptight country club. The bartender made it for me. I drank half before her parents took it away. Douches.

2) On and off since I was 14. Thank GOD I’m now off for good, since Dec ‘01. I always said it’s easy to quit; I’ve done it lots of times.

3) Yes, too many to recount. From an alcoholic close family member now one year sober (yay!) to pothead friends with too few braincells left, to Nate’s meth-addicted and totally messed up 21 year old brother. We’re praying he finds his way because right now, things don’t look so good for him.

2. I smoked once and only once when I was 14. I don’t understand the draw.

3. Unfortunately, I know too many people with drug and alcohol problems. I think I’ll save the gory details for a post of my own. When I feel ready.

2. I tried smoking in 6th grade with my friend’s Marlboros pilfered from her dead grandmother’s desk. They were probably two or three years old. Blech. But that didn’t stop me. Summer of ‘88 (age 15) I picked it up in earnest and smoked socially until getting pregnant. I could go weeks without a cigarette, but was categorically unable to sit at a bar without one. I still find that hard. Drink goes in one hand, butt in the other. The absence feels weird. Banning smoking in bars helped that a lot. I’ll never be a smoker, but I anticipate having one or two more before I die. (Travelling in Europe is way too tempting. And I plan on doing a lot of that in the future.)

3. I have witnessed many drug problems, ranging from casual pot-head to full-on heroin junkie. Not fun. The long-term effects are the scariest. My uncle died at 47 from complications from abdominal surgery. He was 12 years sober, but the thinking was if he hadn’t been an H junkie for so many years, his body might have been better up for the fight.

2. My dad had smoked cigs his whole life and I never had any interest since it was so gross, though grad school introduced me to cigars that I really enjoyed for a while. Once when we were little, my cousin and I tried to smoke one of my uncle’s cigars and he caught us. He made us smoke it in front of him, she choked like crazy and I didn’t have any problem as I had watched how my dad smoked for 10 years at that point.

3. Most of my friends had a pot issue and nothing much more than that. As to that, a lot of people I knew in college got thrown out of school due to their pot consumption. It was really sad.

1.) I got into a substance-free dorm my freshman year of college – my own choice. Then at the end of the year, I couldn’t take it any more and went wild. When I was hanging out with some guy friends, they were drinking and smoking pot, so they made me some drinks, too. I stumbled back to my dorm room and my ex came over and forced me to drink a lot of water so I wouldn’t have a hangover. (Nice guy.)

2.) I’ve never smoked anything ever and don’t have any desire to. For some reason, I see it as completely different than drinking – although both are addictive drugs that damage your body. I’ve always thought that people who smoke are weak for giving in to that pressure – and stupid because they must know that it’s not good for them – but then I have to remind myself that drinking is not much different. Now that I’m never around it (my mom used to smoke, then quit), whenever I AM around it, I can hardly breathe.

3.) And finally, as alcohol is a drug, yes, I know people who have (or have had) drug problems. My family, unfortunately, is filled with alcoholics – but I didn’t realize or know about it until THIS YEAR actually. I have to be really careful so that my love of wine doesn’t end up taking over someday. SO SCARY.