No offense Prophets, but clearly he was addicted and almost assuredly would have died had he not continued to smoke. I believe he just gave up in the end. I think whenever someone has a serious illness, especially terminal, we all should have sympathy. I enjoy your posts and certainly don't want to get into an argument about this.
what it shows is how terribly addictive nicotine is. I quit many years ago and it was the toughest thing I ever did..at the time there was a debate about whether nicotine was actually addictive...I really laughed at that one!
hey man i can relate. When I had serious depression and anhedonia along with bad cognitive problems I used cigarettes to make me feel better. This was after a terrible incident in my life. I used to bum in college and that probably led to me picking up the habit again. Then I got addicted and it became the only thing it seemed that would keep me alive. I hate that I spent those 3 1/2 years smoking, but I also know how horrible I felt and how much I craved them. Now I obsess over and over how I could have done that, but I did, but in my case my circumstances may have been rather extreme. Still I will never not have sympathy for even lifetime smokers. But we can't deny that they did it to themselves, but their knowledge of what they did to themselves must destroy them internally, and I'm sure they have horrific regrets over smoking so long. But yes it was irresponsible of them not to quit younger. It's a no win situation. The last thing people with cancer, from smoking so long need, are the myriad number of people saying, "I have no sympathy," "they did it to themselves," or "what fools." Talk about insult to injury.
But I quit a while ago, and now need to quit the nicotine gum as there are many studies linking it to mouth cancer. You can't win. But no matter how torturous I feel at times, I will never take a damn puff of a tobacco product again in my life. Just think, we pay thousands of dollars for our own demise.
Edited by dfowler, 15 September 2009 - 05:38 AM.