well its not that easy to quit unfortunately.. smoking becomes engrained in you.. becomes part of who you are and how you "live"...and it can even become a part of the culture... and of course its a social disease too....obesity is too btw... if a lot of the people you know are smoking then you tended to become a smoker... this is the milieu somebody like david bowie would have been around in the 1960s and 70s...its hard to explain to somebody today, when everyone basically gives you the death stare for smoking in the street and parks say "do not smoke" how it was back then.. I can remember as a kid riding on airplanes long distances and hating the smoke all around me but it was just the way it was.. if you look at pictures of conference meetings back in the day everybody smoked and it was full of ashtrays everywhere...so I try not to be judgmental of somebody who started smoking way back when...I can remember my parents, both not smokers, hosting dinners and having to carry carton after carton of cigarettes..it was the polite thing to do.. the next day i'd come downstairs and the house would smell like an ashtray..so gross..and yet they had to have cigarettes for their guests.. that is just the way it was..
as far as today, it is pretty hard to understand why anyone would smoke today... I mean its not like its very social or much fun to smoke outside a club/bar in the freezing cold often by yourself...
in my case I love smoking very much.. passionately..when I smoked I did because I loved it.. i'm not one of those people who stops smoking and then thinks "oh I can't believe I did that..." and proceeds to hate on those who smoke..god, I hate those people...but I have kids and a partner who hates smoke like the plague.. so many years ago- like 14- I cut way back...how this love for smoking developed seems really weird given how much everyone in my family detests smoking and how I grew up hating it... even after having cut way back and only had a couple of cigs last week next door to the 930 at the satellite room I get incredible cravings for nicotine close to a full week later!..which is really astounding to me considering the previous couple of cigs I had was in like April of last year.... I have no doubt that if I was on my own I would continue smoking..
my aunt had breast cancer, stopped smoking, and quite a few years later she took it up again... it is a very hard habit to kick....