Why Do Drinking And Smoking Fit Together So Well?

I quit drinking and smoking after engaging in both for more than 15 years and have always been perplexed about how the two practices seem to go hand in hand. I always smoked more when I drank, which I always found to be an interesting phenomenon as well. I used to jokingly wonder if the two practices were somehow in cahoots. The cigarette companies owning the alcohol companies and vice versa. It just seems to me that the whole thing could be some sort of conspiracy. A conspiracy to keep us down. Now that I'm free of both activities, I'm so much more productive and healthy that it's not even funny. I was in the grips of alcohol, and thinking it actually made me feel good, that drinking became normal to me. Then couple that with the fact that as soon as alcohol touched my lips, I wanted to light up a cigarette, and you have what used to be my life. As I said before, this conspiracy to keep me down, lasted for a little over fifteen years before I finally broke free. In a strange way, I think it is a conspiracy to keep us down and feeling sorry for ourselves, so that we spend more money, all in search of something we really don't want anyway. Because when I think about it, I never wanted to smoke or drink in the first place. I tried it because everyone else seemed to be doing it. The problem with these things is that once you try them, they quickly become the thing to do, and then become normal. Having a beer or three after work became "normal" to me. And smoking? Well, hell I was addicted right, quitting just wasn't that simple and besides a cigarette is just so good while drinking, right? Then one day my daughter incarnated into this world and I just couldn't see myself being a bad example to her, and I stopped both of them. And through stopping, I realized that I had spent the previous fifteen years in an alcohol and cigarette induced haze, just the way the manufactures intended. I was surely a loyal customer for both parties, and part of it was because the two just seemed to fit together so darned well.