Smoking Sucks
I can’t feel sorry for the thousands or millions of people who die from smoking each year. I can’t feel sorry for the ones who knew that what they were doing was dangerous. I know that people who are in their seventies might be able to claim that they had no idea what could come from their choice of poison. They did have an idea that they could stop, though. I know that Nicorette and similar products have been out for over a decade. I remember them coming out when I was a little girl, and I wondered why all smokers weren’t flocking to them.
So, why am I so heartless about those ’suffering’ smokers? I watched one die. I watched him (Dadada - my paternal grandfather) die from the day my parents moved in with him (I was 8 ) until a week before he died (I was 12), when he moved in with his younger sister. I watched him gasp for air because his emphysemic lungs were filled with fluid. I watched him struggle with heart problems; problems that probably would’ve been better without cigarettes in his daily diet. I watched him battle with his diabetes, which I know would’ve been easier to control if he had actually quit smoking. I saw the tubes coming out of his body after he had bypass surgery. I also remember when he was caught sneaking out of the hospital to smoke a few weeks later. I remember his screaming in the middle of the night, and my mom having to go with him to the ER a few days after he’d been sent home from the hospital the last time.
I also remember my more direct problems. I remember that my mother had to argue with Dadada on an almost daily basis to get him to smoke outside, instead of in the living room where I was. (I’m severely allergic to smoke and exposure to it can cause me to have asthma attacks.) I remember being at the emergency room and having to take steroids, stimulants, etc. because my Dadada didn’t care to stop smoking around me. I remember missing the January of my third grade year from my constant exposure to smoke. I remember my parents being threatened by the school system for keeping me out too much. After that, though, Dadada did start smoking outside.
I can’t feel sorry for people who wish to smoke to look cool or to ‘calm their nerves’. I don’t know what is so cool about having wrinkles, yellowed nails, yellowed teeth, and ongoing severe health problems. I don’t know what’s so cool about having an underweight child with possible behavior problems or mental retardation. I don’t know what is so cool about having to have tubes stuck in your body. I don’t know what’s so cool about having to have surgery after surgery. Those don’t have ‘coolness’ attached to them, do they? Cigarettes have nicotine. Nicotine is a STIMULANT. Stimulants, by their very nature, don’t calm anyone down. The nicotine actually is only needed to ‘calm’ because the body goes through withdrawal (a signal of an addiction). So, you cope by pumping more toxic cigarette smoke and nicotine into your body. This causes a bigger ‘need’ for ‘calming’, so your addiction grows and gets worse. You learn to only cope by damaging your body, much in the same way a self-injurer, anorexic, or alcoholic does. All three of those things are seriously looked down upon by society, why not smoking?
What I’m trying to say is that smoking is not cool or sexy; and what you hear about the health problems associated with it on television aren’t lies. Avoid smoking for your own safety. If you don’t, don’t expect me to pity you. I only take pity on those who have to live with you and have to help take care of you.
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