1. In your mind, you used to be the Audrey Hepburn of club smoking areas, lightly puffing away.
2. But now you're a reformed character who's either left alone inside to look after everyone's drinks...
That awkward moment when all your mates go toilet or for a fag and you're left at the table looking after the drinks and bags 🙋🙈
3. ...or forced to freeze outside, surrounded by temptation because no one wants to sit in a smoke-free zone.
4. When you smoked socially, you never really thought you and your mates smoked that much.
5. But in retrospect, you know you got through more than you liked to think.
6. Pubs and parties reawaken the memory of just how well a cig went with a beer or glass of wine.
7. But no one will be sympathetic to your plight because you weren't a real smoker in the first place.
8. Despite that, your friends are always trying to tempt you back to the dark side with sly ciggy offers.
9. And if you do ~accidentally~ give in to drunken temptation, you spend the next day riddled with unparalleled guilt.
10. You used to get a thrill treating yourself to the odd packet of 20, after weeks of bumming cigs off others.
11. But now you can buy yourself actual treats because you don't literally burn money.
12. You used to despise all those former smokers who banged on about the ills of smoking.
13. Now you itch to tell your smokey mates to jack it in.
14. You kinda hate yourself for how piously healthy you feel these days.
15. Your hair also now smells of shampoo rather than a bottomless ashtray.
16. But that still doesn't make up for all that smoking area banter you're missing out on.
17. In fact, once you stop smoking, it can feel like you're in social exile.
18. In socially awkward situations, you no longer have the old "Sorry, I'm going outside for a smoke" excuse.
19. And you can't rely on a mutual smoking habit to make new friends.
20. But you know now that asking for a lighter is not an acceptable chat-up line or opening gambit in a conversation.
You asking for a cigie and my lighter... would you like my lungs too?
21. Because actually, social smoking isn't that popular with other people.
I hate social smokers! Especially those that steal my cigarettes #IAmNotACoOp
Any habit that relies largely on other people's generosity is never going to be that popular.
22. Smoking was fun but those days are done – and good riddance.
