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The effects of smoking have well-deserved nicknames

Do smokers weigh the indisputably bad risks of the effects of smoking? What if smoking was called something else, like “diving in shark-infested waters”?

Once they gave us a kitten. It was a crazy little ball of fluff that slithered across my kitchen floor and got under my feet. I used to say, “Ollick!” which was actually an exasperated short version of “Oh watch out” or “Oh look I can’t cook with you slipping under my feet”… and so on.

So the kitten was named Ollick and he grew into a beautiful black cat and Ollick was still under my feet, in keeping with his name.

I was reminded of Ollick’s well-deserved name when I recently came across several references to “Cancer sticks”. Easy to guess what they are, of course, and true to their apt name, cigarettes are possible cancer sticks.

Long before smoking bans, there was a nearby cafe that had a notice on the door with a picture of no smoking and the words: “Please kill yourself outside.” There isn’t a single smoker who can look you in the eye and say they don’t know the dangers of their habit, so yes, they are indeed deciding to risk slow suicide: it’s an apt name.

Ollick didn’t understand why he occasionally ended up getting stomped on or smashed with mashed potatoes, but smokers understand…so why do they keep killing themselves with cancer sticks?

Does a smoker understand the word suicide to mean committing suicide intentionally or, as one dictionary also puts it, committing to a course of action that is disastrously detrimental to one’s own interests? Looking at it that way, it might be fair to ask what planet are they on, I mean why don’t they just walk under a bus?

The short answer is that smoking is like squinting at the computer for too long, or wearing high heels all day, or eating junk food, or listening to too much loud music…all of these and many more things they do strange and irrational humans. , has a delayed reaction.

So five or twenty-five years later, what a bummer! She has lung cancer, his eyesight is poor, his feet hurt despite spending a fortune on braces, his diabetes causes pain, and his hearing is poor.

Ask people while they’re doing these potentially harmful things and they’ll say, “Because I like it.” A smoker who has not yet decided to quit will say, “I smoke because I like to smoke.” And they actually enjoy it, because as addicts, they’re increasing their nicotine level and experiencing all of the associated cumulative behaviors, whether it’s social interaction, peer acceptance, a welcome break from work, or a distraction from anxiety.

It seems that in your current way of thinking and at your stage in life, the gratification of temporarily increasing nicotine levels is worth more than the actual ultimate pain of the aftermath of smoking, rather than the effort of going through mild pain for a short time. smoking cessation period.

But if you asked a smoker to dive into shark-infested waters for a guaranteed large sum of money, with a known 50% risk of being eaten alive, I bet you wouldn’t have any takers. There may be a nice reward at the end, enough to buy a lifetime of pleasure, but it’s not worth the risk. We could well call that activity, “Dive that defies death.”

Death defying dive or cancer sticks, take your pick. Diving with sharks has an instant result and the effects of smoking take time to manifest. What is more risky? Both give you a 50% chance to live…or both will kill you in dire circumstances long before your natural lifespan.