I was never a smoker smoker, but I always smoked cigs while drinking or around friends because alot of friends smoked.. and is easy to develop a habit.. but..
What helped me overall is this though: I started smoking cigars and enjoyed the fact that a cigar lasts a long time, and you dont have to inhale the smoke, you simply puff it and let the smoke circulate around your mouth and nasal passages. You still get a nicotine effect but its much more mellow and prolonged and you get to enjoy the natural flavors of the different tobacco leaves.. the best ones come from places like Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic..
^-- as Cigar smoking can become an expensive hobby, i started smoking pipe tobacco here and there hwen I have craving.. but not out of a pipe, I simply buy some pre rolled pipe tobaccos in a cigar shell (think slim cigars) .. they taste amazing because the tobacco wrap/outter leafs are flavored.. and you also dont have to inhale them. Cigarettes are just made to be super concentrated forms of nicotine, and then they do chemical processes to potentiate the nicotine even more/make it absorb better.. which = causes physical addiction as your brain creates more and more receptors to process the nicotine and crave more and more of it