Cool article, and yeah I really agree with it. It's not that smoking makes you cool, it's that cool kids are the ones smoking. Lots of smokers are just cool people. I think I'm one of them
But yeah, when I start getting those hacking coughs, I know something's up. I've had some really bad substance abuse problems starting around when I was 18, nearly any drug you can think of and then some. But I had some bad, dangerous benzo binges, and it also overlapped with a huge opiate problem, and unfortunately some GAFfers like to throw that in my face from time to time. I'm not a bad person. I went through some real hell, some extremely heavy withdrawal symptoms. But I made it, and I've now almost entirely limited myself to alcohol and cigarettes (though I did do MDMA last weekend). But I really think I've made a lot of progress, because this time four months ago my life was a mess in every way.
I'd be more eager to switch to vaping, but vaping looks so dumb