The worst thing I did to my body

There was a saying when I was younger. Live fast, die young, and have a good looking corpse. When I first heard that, my reaction was "nope, not for me". When I die, I want people to look at my corpse and say "man, that guy went through hell", "what did he do to make himself look that bad?". I wanted to die old, have a terrible looking corpse, and show the world I did everything I could while I was alive. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

So far I have accomplished 1/2 of my goal, my corpse will look like hell (those of you who know me know how true that statement is)

Over the years I found great ways to abuse my body. I started the abuse with tobogganing. When I was just a kid my mom got my brother and me a toboggan. Anyone who has ever used one knows the kind of damage you can do on a steep hill. Next came skiing, a brand new way to hurtle my body down a steep snow covered hill with obstacles waiting to slam you to the ground. As I got older I discovered even better ways to abuse my body. Alcohol let me feel the same pain without all that work of getting all dressed up and using all that energy. Anyone who has ever had a serious hangover knows exactly what I am talking about.

Without a doubt, the best way I ever found to abuse my body was tobacco. I was a Newport guy for somewhere around 20 years. I know why I started smoking. When I was a kid, it seemed like everyone was a smoker. My mom smoked, her husband smoked, I was pretty sure my dad smoked (we were not that close when I was a kid). Everyone on TV and in the movies smoked. The high school I went to actually allowed smoking (not inside, but outside the building between classes). The students and teachers would go outside to catch a quick smoke between classes. Smoking was cool, an adult thing to do. It put you in the company of older "cooler" people, and gave you something in common with them. It gave you an easy way to approach girls, "got a light" was smoker talk for "wow you are hot, looking for a boyfriend?" Even though you had to be 18 to buy cigarettes, the school never gave us any problems. Buying them was easy as well. You could not go into a store and buy them, but there were cigarette machines everywhere. Drop in $.50 (Can you believe that? Not $5, 50 cents), pull a lever and out came a pack of smokes and a book of matches too (that was before the greatest invention in the history of smoking, the Bic lighter). When I got to college, it was easier (since I was old enough to buy them). Since smoking was legal for all us college kids, The OC (my college hangout) allowed smoking inside. In fact they had a small non-smoking section way in the back for all the weenies who were not cool enough to smoke!

I never realized the damage I was doing. When you are young and in reasonably good shape, smoking did not make it hard to climb stairs, or make you hack and cough when you woke up. It was only as I got older that the damage became more obvious, and by then, I was severely addicted. I lied to myself by saying I could quit whenever I wanted to, I just did not want to. The truth was tobacco had me by throat (actually somewhere lower, but I am being polite).

The world changed around me. Somewhere between the time I started at 14 and the time I quit at the age of 34, the world discovered that smoking was actually bad for you. It started with a warning on the side of the package. "Warning: cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health", became "Warning: the Surgeon General has determined that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health", then a series of warnings about cancer and low birth weight. It was now painfully obvious that smoking was a dumb thing to do.

Everyone around me became a non smoker. My mom quit, my dad quit, one by one all my friends who smoked quit. My wife never smoked (how she tolerated my smell is beyond me). Suddenly there was pressure from all angles to quit. So I did what anyone in my position (hopelessly addicted) would do, I lied about quitting. My car became my smoking refuge. As often as I could, I went for a drive to feed my habit. In between drives, I tried to hide my habit (took a shower when I got home, brushed my teeth, used mouthwash, splashed on cologne). Of course I fooled no one. Smoking was no longer cool. Now if you smoked people looked at you like you were a loser. The non smoking section became the smoking section (way in the back with all the other weenies who were not cool enough to be a non-smoker), and eventually we were even kicked out of all the buildings. I still see the desperately addicted, huddling together outside in the dead of winter braving the cold to feed the beast its nicotine

Two things finally got me to quit. One was when a friend of mine died of alcoholism. I was talking to someone about it, and I said "How can you be dumb enough to let a substance control your life like that" As I put out my smoke, the parallel struck me square between the eyes. I was doing the same thing, just with a different substance. I was no smarter and no better than an alcoholic or a heroin addict. A crack head and a smoker have a lot in common. The only real difference is you can buy smokes anywhere and for a lot cheaper. The image of me as an addict was too much for my ego to suffer, I knew I was better than that. The second thing was when my oldest daughter "caught me". I took her to my office, had her stay in the car while I ran in to get something, and used the chance to light one up. As I was coming out of the office I flipped away the cigarette (when you smoke, the world is one big ashtray), and thought I got away with it. When I got back in the car my 5 year old said "daddy, why do you smoke?" I don't remember my answer, but I do remember thinking "yeah, why do I?". The follow up is what caused me to quit forever. My 5 year old looked at me with tears in her eyes and said "daddy, I don't want you to die".

I wish I could tell you quitting was easy, it wasn't. It is fifteen years later, and once in a while when the alarm goes off, I will reach for a smoke and realize I will never smoke again.

My oldest claims she has tried cigarettes, but there are too many signs to ignore. She does not smoke often, but that will change if she does not end it now. No one can be a part time smoker. It is only a matter of time. I know from personal experience, once it has you, it is like a Boa Constrictor. It wraps its coils around you and keeps squeezing you harder and harder (an apt analogy since they both take your breath away).

I think I will remind her that smoking gave me tongue cancer (part of my bad looking corpse, I am missing the right side of my tongue courtesy of a mildly invasive squamous cell carcinoma). I will take her to a bar named Roosevelt's (a smokers paradise). I will have lunch there with her, then take her outside and have her smell her clothes and my hair. When you smoke, you carry the "cloud" of stench with you. Since she likes money as much as her dad does, I will show her that over their lifetime, a smoker will spend an amount that if invested would become a Million Dollars (no Joke, A MILLION DOLLARS.) $5/pack x 7 packs per week x 52 weeks per year x 30 years + a reasonable rate of return, do the math. And smoking will not get cheaper, it is the favorite tax target of every State and the Federal Government. Funny, they are like drug dealers, taking advantage of the addicted to raise money. I will try to explain the terrible price you pay by smoking (she already knows this, but a reminder never hurts). Somehow I must inspire her the way she once inspired me.

The price of smoking is way too high. I can't let her take as long as I did to learn. I love her too much to idly stand by and watch her slowly kill herself. You probably have people in you life that need to quit. Remind them with love. Nagging doesn't work, criticizing doesnt work, punishment doesn't work, education doesn't work, at least all those tactics failed to change me. In the movie "Natural Born Killers" there is a line that says "love kills the beast". It killed mine, now I must see if my love can kill it again.

Remind the people around you who smoke, how much you love them, and how hard it is to watch someone you love slowly kill themselves. Let's all hope that love kills the beast