For years I had been trying to quit, without success, when I decided to take a new approach. It helped me achieve the previously unthinkable
Smoking has warped my brain. One evening last winter, as I stood outside a pub, cigarette in hand, a friend who works in life insurance decided to calculate the chance of me dying before I hit 60 if I carried on smoking. He quizzed me about my lifestyle, plugging the answers into his death matrix. “If you give up smoking now, there’s a 6% chance you die before hitting 60. If you don’t, it’s 13%,” he concluded. Normal people will see that the chance of early death has doubled. But smokers don’t think normally. Just 13%? I thought. I could work with those odds …
I love smoking. Cigarettes are the cherry on top of life’s best moments and a crutch for the worst. Is there anything better than chain-smoking in a sunlit beer garden? Or more satisfying than the victory cigarette that punctuates a completed project? Is there anything more necessary when you’re given terrible news? My form tutor at school, Mr Styles, once told us that smokers were foolish for saying it relaxed them, as really it was no different from wearing a pair of shoes a few sizes too small and celebrating the relief of taking them off, only to then put them back on again moments later. That analogy stuck with me and I thought about it often. But then I’d watch my team surrender a four-goal lead away at Newcastle and, honestly, there was simply no other response but to light up, inhale, exhale. Sweet relief.
Continue reading… For years I had been trying to quit, without success, when I decided to take a new approach. It helped me achieve the previously unthinkableSmoking has warped my brain. One evening last winter, as I stood outside a pub, cigarette in hand, a friend who works in life insurance decided to calculate the chance of me dying before I hit 60 if I carried on smoking. He quizzed me about my lifestyle, plugging the answers into his death matrix. “If you give up smoking now, there’s a 6% chance you die before hitting 60. If you don’t, it’s 13%,” he concluded. Normal people will see that the chance of early death has doubled. But smokers don’t think normally. Just 13%? I thought. I could work with those odds …I love smoking. Cigarettes are the cherry on top of life’s best moments and a crutch for the worst. Is there anything better than chain-smoking in a sunlit beer garden? Or more satisfying than the victory cigarette that punctuates a completed project? Is there anything more necessary when you’re given terrible news? My form tutor at school, Mr Styles, once told us that smokers were foolish for saying it relaxed them, as really it was no different from wearing a pair of shoes a few sizes too small and celebrating the relief of taking them off, only to then put them back on again moments later. That analogy stuck with me and I thought about it often. But then I’d watch my team surrender a four-goal lead away at Newcastle and, honestly, there was simply no other response but to light up, inhale, exhale. Sweet relief. Continue reading… Smoking, Society, Life and style, Health
