Smoking

If you were unaware… smoking is gross.  It is an air pollutant, it is super expensive, makes you and your breath stink, makes you sound like you’re 72 when you really just turned 22!!!...  and most importantly, it can kill you.  Not quickly either.  COPD, emphysema, lung cancer, etc.  It kills you slowly (usually)… so slow, you’d probably want to off yourself in the process.  You may have to get an entire lung removed; that’s if the other one is even salvageable. 

I admit, I used to be a smoker.  I was never a really heavy smoker, but I did smoke for many, many years.  I quit for the third and final time.  Woo!  Best part about me quitting, is I (ONLY) reduced my early death!

My dad passed away a little over 8 years ago.  We didn’t find out until he was in the ICU, but he was smoking 4 packs a day.  He had emphysema, chronic respiratory infection and beginning stages of lung cancer when he died.  He was a great man, one who I wish everyday that I never lost him.  Maybe if he wasn’t smoking a carton of cigarettes every 2 ½ days, he would still be here with me and my kids would still have their papa.  Instead, he never even got to meet my sons on this earth.

I have seen old ass people attached to their oxygen tanks, super young kids who stole their parent’s smokes and even pregnant smokers!  Really?!  Pregnant??  Come on now!  Its one thing for the 95 year old who doesn’t give a shit about his life anymore because he’s on his last leg, has no family and the morphine drip just doesn’t cut the stress of impending death.  But a pregnant woman?  What is wrong with you?

Do you know that there is a new life growing inside of you?  Just quit!  Most of these women who are polluting their baby’s lungs as well as their own, will tell you “my doctor said to keep smoking, because the stress of me quitting will hurt the baby more”.  Are you #@(^!?$ kidding me?  That would be my first clue to get a new doctor.  Call me crazy, but I would just assume that a good doctor will help you quit smoking in a way that would be safe for the baby.  Pfft…  what do I know?!  While it is true that the placenta acts as a filter from mother to baby, it doesn’t filter out everything!

I honestly do understand the addiction.  Everyone knows there are addictive ingredients placed with love by the cigarette manufacturers.  How else would they get you to spend all of your rent money and smoke a rolled up piece of filthy ass turd 20+ times a #@(^!?$ day?!  Find something to do that helps fill the void caused by not spending 2 1/2+ hours per day smoking! 

Back in the day, smoking was cool.  It has been a ‘thing’ for the hip, the rich, the poor, and everyone else in between at some point in time.  Now though… now it is 2011 and it is thankfully getting more and more unusual to see.  However, there are still some of you smokers out there!  You know who you are!!  Stop it!  You are not cool, you smell fresh like that new 'ashtray' scented body wash, your teeth are brown and your breath smells awful.  No matter what age you are or what kind of health you are in, you are gonna sound like at any minute gigantic pieces of lung and tissue will come catapulting out of your mouth during mid sentence!  Oh no!  Not my eye!!  Not projectile mucus and membranes all over my face!  

You are spending way too much of your (possibly) hard earned money!  And you gon die!!!!

~Katie