My First Cigarette

I was about 13, and on a school trip to a wine region in France. We’d been on a tour of a vineyard, and at the end were allowed to buy bottles of wine “to take home to our parents.”

Of course, back at the hotel that evening everyone just started drinking the wine together, and some of the girls had packets of cigarettes with them too. I remember that compared to the wine, which was tried first on its own, then mixed with orange juice, then discarded entirely; cigarettes tasted okay.

The rumours I'd heard of coughing fits had been greatly exaggerated. I only had a couple of tokes though, before passing the cigarette on to someone else, a girl who’s still in my circle of friends today. She looked pretty stressed out by the whole thing, but everyone was pretending to be drunk and there was quite a lot of peer pressure at work, so she had some too. Neither of us smoke today though, I’ve tried cigarettes a few times since but don’t see the point in starting the habit – it’s unaffordable, bad for you, and achieves very little.

Hanging out in the smoking areas of clubs is quite cool though, but you just need to be friends with a few people who smoke to do that.