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Photo by Gail Harvey, no reproduction without permission
Skip This If You Want To Keep Smoking It feels important to keep addressing the topic of quitting smoking, not because I have turned into one of those self-righteous former smokers, but because smoking kills amazing, talented people every year and I am sad I ever smoked. In fact, when parents assure me that their kids 'hate' smoking, I tell them: I hated smoking when I was a kid, too. Mais voila. And Mom, I'm not blaming you: Anne Bancroft in The Graduate was the real reason I started smoking....
But smoking, lest you think this is a humour piece: it is not:
It takes away moms and dads, best friends and partners. It sucks the life out of your face, the vitality from your heart and the message it sends to everyone who sees you smoking is: I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself. If you are fine with that telegraph, well, I bet you’re not. I have never met a single happy smoker in my life. I can’t quit because this, or that, or it will do this, or that: you are going to die of a respiratory illness that will make you so damned sorry you ever picked up a cigarette that quitting would be so much easier, so please do it now, and if you are young, please do it immediately: smoking is something people who hate themselves do. Harsh words, I know, but those of us who have smoked know the quiet truth: we pretended to take time for ourselves, we pretended to meditate, we tried to say it was ‘our time’ and or ;just something we did when we had a few beers.’ Those of us who are writers who smoked feared being unable to write without smoking. Those of us who refused to express our anger and disappointment in daily life smoked instead: you know this is true. Those who battled depression, anxiety and grief also smoked and insisted they could not stop. And the best one yet for women: if I stop smoking, I’ll get fat. I guess intelligent women, many of whom smoke, would rather be dead than a little hefty for a brief interlude? No greater sin in North America than being fat because of quitting smoking, a daily choice that is killing you? How about the fact that too many of us sit on our asses watching brain-dead TV for hours a week and eat corn-injected processed food at least four times a week: to fight this truth more powerfully, do quit smoking.
All you need to do to realize how stupid smoking is, and how antithetical it is to life: hold a baby.
Babies do not smoke. Children, unless sad and living in toxic homes, do not like cigarettes. Instead, babies and kids learn each day how to breathe. They snuggle into your sweater and if you are a smoker, even if you do not smoke in the rooms they inhabit, you are smothering them with toxins when you cuddle them. So stop. Stop sending the message to our children and youth that you are helpless and special and more challenged than other generations---you’re not. Kids do know that you smoke even when you don’t light up in rooms they inhabit. They see you standing on curbs killing yourself: do you think children miss a single detail of new life? They don’t.
Any single human being, from any challenged background, can quit, and you must. NOW. Companies are getting rich off your ill health: the network of wealth from this is endless, do not kid yourself. And smoking and diabetes, cancer and heart attacks ARE linked, so if you would like to experience hell on earth, work really hard to eat as poorly as you can and smoke.
It was not romantic that I helped my grandfather, whom I adored, to roll his cigarettes.
It was not romantic to lose one of my closest friends to a premature death directly connected to heavy smoking. He was a gifted actor who could barely read his awesome novels for the last 15 years of his smoker's life without audibly wheezing.
And it is true, that even when someone quits smoking, they may still die of lung cancer some ten years later. We lost our good buddy Paul Quarrington this year. Radio host Andy Barrie lost his beloved wife to lung cancer. All the more reason to send the most awesome message of all to children: smoking is no longer an option. For anyone. Do not let them see a single person saying, little by little “I hate myself!” Because that is all that smoking is, a message to the world that you really wish you weren’t breathing.
Please quit smoking. If I had a million dollars to motivate you, I would, but instead can only say this: I have never felt better, have never looked back and HATE that I wasted time, money and air on saying to the world "I hate myself, look at me, I smoke, ain't I cool?"
Tony, rock it, brother: quitting is going to be the best thing you ever did for that sweet princess in your world. Happy Birthday, Naps.
And by the way: quitting smoking is not hard: choking to death, and you will, is much harder.
Love, M.
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