When we smoke, we are deliberately choosing to poison ourselves and damage our lungs’ ability to function. With every puff, starting with the very first. As teenagers and twenty-somethings, we feel invincible and believe it won’t really hurt us, because we’ll quit before we get “old”. Smoking only hurts “old people”, right?
But the truth is, every cigarette is another step down a path that leads to only one place – an early, painful death. Maybe cancer, maybe emphysema or COPD, maybe a stroke or heart attack.
I know everyone has that one story, that one friend of a friend of a relative’s relative, who smoked 4 packs a day since they were 10 years old and died at 98 without so much as a cough. But c’mon, are you really willing to play those odds? Do you really think you’ll be that one-in-a-million person? Would you buy a lottery ticket if the penalty for not winning was death?
When we smoke, every cigarette takes us further and further down that path. Every day is NOT a fresh start, every day we smoke adds up, piles up on the days before. And further and further down that path we go, step by step, cigarette by cigarette.
So when will you quit? Because you WILL quit, ALL smokers quit eventually, whether they want to or not (can’t smoke in a coffin, can you?). So when will you quit?
- When you have to choose between a movie with your friends or a pack of cigarettes, because your allowance won’t cover both?
- When you face the disappointment of your parents because they just learned you smoke?
- When you meet the love of your life and they don’t smoke, and complain about how you/your car/your house smells?
- When your young children learn that smoking is bad and tearfully ask you to quit?
- When you first realize you’re out of breath at the top of a flight of stairs?
- When you make excuses not to take your kids to the park because you know you won’t be able to keep up with them?
- When your asthma gets really bad?
- When you finally acknowledge that the coughing fit you have every morning is NOT a cold?
- When you look in the mirror and realize you’re 40 but you look 50?
- When your 20-something child admits to you that they smoke, and you realize it’s because they grew up watching YOU smoke?
- When you watch someone you love die of a smoking-related issue?
- When you get diagnosed with COPD or lung cancer?
- When you die?
Read that list again – that’s the path you are on, the path we ALL chose to put ourselves on, when we took our first puff (as teenagers, for most of us). The first few milestones don’t seem that bad, but each one leads to the next, and the next, and the next. There is no going backwards, there is only choosing where to stop. Where will it stop for you?
