First time safe.

I was 14, popular, great at sports and had excellent grades. I was always a leader and an individual until my cool, elder cousin Victory came to town. She was beautiful, witty and COOL! even more popular than me and every kid at school worshipped her. When she smoked she always looked so glamorous, she would pout her lips and form these little rings or would move the cigarette back and forth making a "U" shape to which these perfect "O's" would form. She was fabulous! and my hero.

Anyway, the day I picked up my first cigarette, she was there pulling ranks, there were also a few of my friends and some of the younger girls in the street. As she was the "Queen Bee" we all lined up to prove our worth and eventually, it was my turn. I took a puff and my whole world spun so fast that my eyes rolled into the back of my head and my lungs were bursting from the inside out. Well, I choked and dropped the cigarette and everyone laughed, even some of the younger children who got through their first puff without choking thought it was hilarious. I was a loser! and immediately an outcast. Victory just smirked at me and told me to "Get home!". That day I lost some girlfriends to Victory but I also walked away a non-smoker and free from Victory's quest for absolute power.

Anyway,  I never made the cut that day but a few years later I did become a fully fledged slave to nicotine. Thousands of dollars, millions of grams of nicotine, ten years of smoking, endless amounts of attempts to quit and a epiphany later I realise how much of a fool I have been to think that I could have given it up so easily.