Dirty dirty smoker....

I am a quitter.  I quit smoking back in September of 2007, and will be quitting for a long time.  Let me tell you something.  I never truly noticed the amount of people that smoke where I live and where I work until AFTER I quit.  And holy crap batman, there are alot of smokers out there.  Now, being that I have managed to avoid smoking for almost SIX FUCKING YEARS - YEAH I'M FUCKING PROUD OF THAT, I feel fully qualified to say: "SMOKING IS REALLY BAD FOR YOU!!"  69 months I have not smoked.  My body is still recovering.  And it will be for a long, long time.  If I had the power, I would go back in time to that 19 year old version of myself and smack the SHIT out of myself.  Seriously.  How the fuck could I have been so stupid?  Never mind the fact that:

SMOKING IS REALLY HARD TO QUIT!!!!!

Ok, I am a little better.  It is hard.  But let me tell you something else, it can be done.  But I guess that these days, everyone wants to have the right "motivation".  "I want to do it for the right reasons.  My reasons are easy enough to read on the front page of this web site.  I don't want to fucking die at the ripe old age of 40. I hate the fact that my lungs still hurt when I exercise.  Um, how about this, I don't want the last words I hear my children say to be "If only he had quit."   Oh, I had a few others, but those were the big ones.  So, if you really want a reason, let me tell you about the guy that really helped me make the decision to quit. Once and for all.


This picture below is of a guy named Bryan.  Bryan starting smoking at the age of 13 ( I started 5 years later, at the age of 18 - I could vote, die for the country, buy porn - finally - and get cigarettes.  What an odd way to start my adult life.  I digress....) and he smoked successfully for about 20 years.  After those 20 years of smoking, Bryan, who was also the proud papa of a little boy and a 9 year old girl, started to get stomach aches - and not the kind that come from bad potato salad.

While he was in the hospital for stomach aches, he found out that he had something called "oat cell" cancer or "small lung cancer" a terribly aggressive killer.  Not bad in the way of "you wont see your 70's" cancer.  Not bad in the way of "Chemo is gonna SUCK, but hey,  bald men are attractive  too" kinda way.  A death sentence.  And this particular kind of cancer kills in weeks, even days.  Bryan made it about two months.  And the weird part is, this picture isn't the biggest part of what made me want to  quit; oh sure, it does have shock value, but that wasn't the really BAD part.

Bryan's family and friends, who watched this healthy (as healthy of a smoker as you can be) man deteriorate before their eyes in real time and in days.  Imagine that scene from the first "Indiana Jones" film - where the guys faces melt right off their bodies in seconds, and slow it down just a hair.  That's how fast this happened.  They WATCHED this, and still smoked.  BRYAN still smoked until literally, he could not physically inhale anymore.  The people he loved, and that surrounded him on his death bed still smoked.  Knowing that SMOKING is what killed him.  And they couldn't give it up.  They smoked at his fucking funeral for fuck sake.  Can you imagine burying your son, brother, daughter, wife, husband, father or mother because they couldn't stop smoking and then lighting up?  As daylight slides off that disappearing coffin when it sinks into that hole, you wonder how long it will take because you are in the midst of a "nic fit".  What a bunch of assholes.  And I was one of them.  That is precisely when it hit me.  I would have smoked at someone's funeral. Even if they died a horrible death from smoking.  I would have smoked.  I would probably have smoked up until the day before MY funeral. All the while telling myself, "Not me."  Holy shit am I an ass.  What the fuck was I THINKING!!??  Seriously??!!  Smoking at a funeral?  Would I really?

And sadly, the answer was yes.


What an asshole I am.

I got this picture from here.

Tremendous site.  If it does not scare the SHIT out of you, you are an asshole too.  Check it out if you are a dirty smoker like I am - aHEM.  Was.

If you are a dirty smoker, remember that anyone can start smoking, but it takes a real man to quit being a dirty smoker.

With Love,

The Dirty Smoker