Smoking doesn’t cause MS and nor will it increase the symptoms of MS (tobacco or marijuana) but they can make you die of something else.  If you smoke cigarettes, it will do your health good to give up.  After 45 years of smoking I finally had the impetus to give up in March 2011 – partly cost related (saving daily as well as annual life insurance), partly health related and partly to stop feeling like a loser/leper. But it may have taken a small heart attack to give me the necessary motivation to stay off them because they are seductive little suckers that like to lure you back!  When I was initially diagnosed with MS, both Nursie Mel and Dr Jim suggested continuing the nasty habit for a while, both saying it is best not to change any routine habits until you body gets used to the Avonex.  Mel said the same for marijuana (which works really well for some MSers), but I don’t think this is the time to take up another vice. 

One thing I will say, for all smokers wanting to give up, and especially for those with MS - DO NOT try Champix (aka Chantix) - it is a dangerous and potentially deadly drug.  Cigarettes are a health tonic by comparison.  There is good reason that pilots in the United States are banned from taking this drug.

I do have an affinity with smoking.  Mine was a strange addiction.  I didn’t have ‘cravings’ as such.  I could happily enjoy a dinner party with non-smokers, a restaurant meal, a movie or a flight without thinking about a cigarette.  I used to like them to relax, or to help spark a creative thought (and still would, dammit!).  And nearly every friend I have is or has been a smoker.  I find people with addictive personalities attractive and interesting.  The other smokers in my life have given me enormous pleasure and I wouldn’t change my friends for the world! 

Dr Jim, who also enjoys the occasional nicotine hit, posed a question as to how and why smoking can cause cancer.  Does it happen as a consequence of a long-time habit, or just arrive in one cigarette?  Anyway, after a year now, I am a commited non-smoker, but I don’t plan to join the anti-smoking Nazis.  A little pictorial smoking essay below…

To donate to MS Research, you can call 1800 CURE MS (1800 2873 67) or just click here.

 

SMOKING IS NOT SEXY!!

I will say that again – smoking is definitely NOT sexy! 

Smoking  is a filthy, disgusting, unhealthy habit. 

And I am now a non-smoker.  Woo-hoo!!

However, while tobacco is a legal product and as long as you don’t involve others in your passive smoking, I will paraphrase Voltaire.  I may disapprove of what you do, but I will defend to the death your right to do it.

You see, we Baby Boomers grew up in a time when the culture of smoking was ‘cool’ – in an environment that you Gen X and Gen Ys will never understand – people smoked in restaurants, on planes, on public transport, in offices, even in hospitals. 

Cigarette companies sponsored sporting events… it was associated with athleticism, challenge, conquest and triumph… and, by association; the non-smokers were the losers…

Our parent’s generation smoked – those who went to war were given cigarettes as part of their rations – when a company was put ‘at ease’ it was often followed by the order, “hats off, smoke if you wish!”.  Our sporting, celluloid and musical heroes were smokers –  For example, let’s take a small survey of four musicians from Liverpool, all of whom smoked and, obviously, sometimes simultaneously…

Now, from this small survey, 25% of these musicians died from lung cancer, 25% from gunshot wounds and 50% are still alive – one aged 71 and the other 69 – which averages out at the Biblical allocation of three score years and ten – and Paul and Ringo are still acting like teenagers.  

This is not to suggest for a moment that smoking is at all good for you, but just that there seems to be a ‘luck of the draw’ element.  Fit people who have never smoked drop dead from heart attacks, unfit smokers can smoulder on into their nineties. 

And another irritation of mine is the way the anti-smoking Nazis twist statistics – if someone dies of heart failure and is a smoker, that death goes to the statistical data of ‘another smoker who succumbed to a heart attack’. 

I would imagine that John Lennon technically died of heart failure following being shot.  But, as a smoker who died of heart failure, he could also, technically, have been lumped in with the smoking statistics.

Now, let me get something off my Chesterfield.  

While I am in no way condoning smoking, have a look at these print advertisements…  

Entertainment legend Bob Hope chose to smoke Chesterfield… he was statistically a victim of smoking because his heart finally gave out in 2003, at the age of 100…

Actor and the 40^th President of the United States of America also chose to smoke and promote Chesterfield.  He died a comparative youngster in 2004, aged 93.  I guess if he hadn’t smoked he could have lived for another couple of years enjoying Alzheimer’s…

You see, Gen X and Y, it wasn’t that long ago that even scientists and educators promoted smoking…

Even the medical profession promoted smoking!

And okay, John Wayne died of cancer, aged 72, BUT he did smoke six packets a day!  And Bette Davis shuffled off at age 81. 

Of course, some of our heroes like Humphrey Bogart, died of cigarette-related cancer in their 50’s…

But his wife, Lauren Bacall, also a smoker, is 86… and still working…

But, because government bodies are smarter than individuals they have taken the wise step to warn us of the dangers inherent in cigarette smoking…

…simply because people who are supposedly intelligent, talented and sophisticated need protecting from themselves… 

Good Lord, Katharine Hepburn’s life was cut tragically short at the age of 96.  Imagine what she could have gone on to achieve if she had an appropriate warning on her cigarette packet!

And as for the James Bond portrayed by Sean Connery – he’s 81 this year and he was voted the sexiest man of the 20^th Century – imagine how much sexier he would have been as a non-smoker!!

No, my friends, smoking is not sexy…  it never has been… it is hard to imagine how anyone could have found Marilyn attractive!  Gack!!  Coyote ugly.  If you woke up with that snuggling next to you, you’d chew your own arm off to escape.

And smoking may have had nasty side effects like giving people amazing blue eyes… and while Paul Newman did die of cancer, at the age of 83, what a life he had!

Ahhh well, at least we have learnt from our past folly and no more will we need to worry about making poor individual life choices or be subject to negative role modelling…

And I, for one, am just so pleased that smoking is no longer considered sexy…

Woof!! What a dog!!!