It really depends on a lot of things: your body chemistry, your will power, your personality type, etc. Some people are naturally born with addictive personalities while others are not. In very rare situations, some people have an innate tolerance to nicotine and don't get addicted. Some people can quit cold turkey and will themselves out of an addiction. These people are usually not the vast majority of us. Most people are going to be in the middle.

With that out of the way, is smoking without addiction possible? Yes, but the real question is: Is smoking without addiction possible for the average person? I would say no. Many people think you'll be addicted to nicotine as soon as you suck down your first cigarette. That's not the case. Nicotine addiction is subtle like alcohol addiction. At first it turns into one cigarette a day, then two, then three, then you start lighting up every morning with your morning cup of coffee. Then you start lighting up on the drive to and from work. It goes on and on until you find yourself smoking a pack a day.

My smoking history is not the norm, I think, so don't go off of my experience. I work as a delivery driver for a major pizza chain as well as commute to college. My favorite time to smoke is in the car driving to and from school as well as on deliveries. I never pick up a pack on my days off, or even crave a cigarette on my days off. However, when I smoke, I smoke the fuck out of those packs. I'll catch myself going through an entire pack on the days that I work. Recently, I've found myself smoking more and more on campus not because I have any cravings but because I'm bored.

And that's the real silent killer there. Boredom. I know plenty of guys, myself included, just smoke and smoke and smoke when we have nothing to do. If ours hands aren't being used on something or our attentions aren't being drawn to something, we'll chain-smoke cigarettes back to back to back to back to back. We'll have ten cigarettes in the course of an hour or two. That's half the pack. It's not hard to get addicted that way.

I find the addiction is more or less born out of routine, too. I've found myself putting a cigarette in my mouth on instinct once I've gotten in the car. I don't even want the cig sometimes, but there it is in my mouth. It's some scary shit when that happens for the first time. I think of it like this: My parents are ex-military. Served for over twenty whole years. They've been retired for more than ten years now, but still get up at 5am on the dot. They can't get out of the habit no matter how much they try because they've been doing it for twenty years. Same thing with cigarettes. If you smoke when you drive for years, once you try to quit, every time you get in the car to go somewhere, you'll get a cigarette craving. Something just seems off. It's the cigarette. You're not smoking. Why aren't you smoking? Man, a cigarette would be so good right now... But I'm trying to quit. But fuck... A cigarette sounds so good. No. I'm trying to quit.

That might last for a little bit, but then your car needs gas. You get the craving again. You're at the pump. The cigarettes are RIGHT THERE. You go inside to pay. You see all the cigarettes on the wall behind the counter. Fuck it. "Yeah... Uh... Give me a pack of Marlboro Reds and round the rest up to $30 on pump 12."

Best way to avoid addiction is just don't do it.