I was another adamant non-smoker until I hit around 19 - which is the dumbest time in the world to start. I ended up quitting when I was about 31 after living in Pittsburgh for like a year (which is a city that SMOKES), after many failed attempts over the years to stop. Nothing worked until I started intentionally hanging out at like dive bars, and bowling alleys, and really started to focus on the gross people who couldn't not smoke. Then I started noticing it everywhere, my dentists office, local restaurants, the assholes who would butt a smoke and stuff it in their pocket 2 seconds before getting on the bus (which is probably one of the worst smells in the whole world, seriously) and then firing it up immediately as they got off. The yellow fingered people who had to have a cigarette every chance they got. It really changed my perception on smoking, in a snobby way admittedly because I started to look down on smokers for their weakness and inability to function otherwise without (which probably has something to do with why I never started drinking coffee really either, even after being a barista for a few years), but it worked so I'm not judging (well, me that is). Drugs and patches and all that shit will never work until you change the way you think about smoking, I'm convinced of that now from my own experience and talking to other successful non-smokers too.
It was never an issue of being cool, or peer pressure that got me to smoke, or kept me going either. I actually liked it while I did it, aside from the occasional bouts of guilt "I gotta stop... someday" stuff. And I occasionally still want one every so often, depending on the movie I am watching or the company I am keeping, and I am sure I always will too. But once I finally saw how much I really disliked the whole culture of smoking, from top to bottom, it was really easy to stop.
And blah blah blah - my health drastically improved right after quitting. No more winter chest colds, in fact I've barely ever been sick since (been I guess 3+ years). Sense of smell and taste came back better than ever. More money to blow on other crap I liked more. And I get to be that jerk now around all my friends who still smoke whenever they ask me to go outside and have a cigarette like "yeah, I quit yeaaaars ago, dewd." - what a dick I am!
In short, listen to what people are saying Petey.
