Don't quit while you're ahead?
Okay I didn’t need to read this study (thanks for nothing, leuschke). It’s great to know that quitting smoking at 30 adds 10 years to your life, but horrible to learn – at least for someone who recently quit, like myself – that quitting at age 40 adds nine. So sacrifice, on average, one year of old age for an extra 10 years of delicious, delightful smoking? Or endure a decade of unrequited yearning in order to buy an extra year of drooling, pants-shitting life in the Journey’s End retirement community? I DIDN’T NEED TO KNOW THIS!
I can hear you cracking… DON’T! Stay with it man. It gets better and better…sort of…?…I think…?
It’s true, D. Don’t crack man!! Think of this: You start smoking again, like chimney, and find out you have tongue cancer on your 40th birthday. Spend the rest of your life making weird “unh”ing sounds, wondering if you’d never come across stupid fact at leuschk, *maybe* you would have stayed quits when you were in your 30th year, and cleared up your system, thus maintained your ability to communicate clearly until you lost your mind in your late 70s, (which is what the late 70s are about.)
Also, the effects of cigaretting will totally start to show between 30 and 40; you’re still resting on the laurels of adolescence or something; shit goes south pretty quick if you fuck around, is what I hear. If you smoke again then your hair will start to look and feel like a pub carpet and your eyes will take on a vaguely jaundiced shade that everybody will interpret as untrustworthy. Rather than stay upwardly mobile, every single prospect in your life will plateau thanks to smoking. As you approach 40, your viscous coughing will make strangers as well as loved ones visibly uncomfortable and your puckered lips will make you seem cold and spoiled inside. Don’t smoke dude.
Don’t worry dudes, all is good. I did cave, but then uncaved, which has happened before without causing long-term problems. And I wouldn’t bet my life on a single, unsupported study. There’s plenty of reasons not to smoke besides a simple longevity calculation (which is a pretty bad reason when you think about it).
In any case, that little bit-tit gave me all the more reason for ten more years of nicotine-inspired goodness. As the expression goes, “smoking takes ten years off your life,” and those are the crappy years anyway.
Look at Reagan: he didn’t smoke, but he still spent the last ten years of his life amused by his own feces. I can live without ten years of that.
What’s wrong with being amused by your own feces?
The smell, mostly.