This is an interesting piece about David Lynch and smoking:
Lynch, by his own account, smoked his first cigarette at the age of eight (which is four years older, incidentally, than Sailor Ripley in Wild at Heart). Smoking was part of his identity as a painter and film-maker. It calmed his nerves and focused his thoughts. “It was part of the art life for me,” he told Sight and Sound last year. “The tobacco and the smell of it, and lighting things and smoking and going back and sitting back and having a smoke and looking at your work or thinking about things. Nothing like it in this world is so beautiful.”
But if Lynch’s cigarette habit was the making of him, it was eventually, inevitably the unmaking as well. Smoking ruined his health and shortened his life and by the time he finally quit, in 2022, the damage was done. He was diagnosed with emphysema, rarely left his house and required supplemental oxygen to even walk a short distance. Smoking, he confessed, was entirely to blame. He urged others to quit and said that he wished he’d done so much sooner. He’d tried to give it up before, he explained. “But when it got tough I’d have that first cigarette and it was a one-way trip to heaven.”
It’s a bit of a taboo to talk about the joys of smoking, since the consequences are so dire. Fresh Air is playing its old interviews with Jimmy Carter, and one of his post-Presidency projects was writing poetry. He had a poem about his dad, and Terry Gross asked him if he shared it with his family (other than his wife). His answer was no, because they had all died of smoking-related illness before he wrote his poem — for some reason, Jimmy never smoked.
Still, one of my first memories was my dad taking me to the bowling alley and smelling the first moment of a lit cigarette. Lynch was right — is there any better smell in the world?
Then there’s the calming effect of smoking. There’s an association between depression and smoking since nicotine has an anti-depressive effect.
When I first heard that Lynch had died of emphysema, I thought about the many stories my dad (a small-town doctor) told me about the last days of people I had known in our small town who were smokers. There was one of our neighbors, a really good guy, who admitted himself to the hospital bent over at the nurses’ station because you can get a little more oxygen that way. There was the father of a friend of mine who had a stroke (almost certainly due to his smoking and drinking). When I visited him in the hospital, he knew who I was, and his furious, frustrated gesturing when he saw me was due to the obliteration of some part of his brain. Mercifully, he died a few days later.
I’m not a smoker — I used to smoke cigars on occasion (not inhaling), but I quit because the morning after isn’t worth it. My dad smoked a pipe but quit so he could spend more time with his grandkids (it worked, since he’s doing well at 94). Still, nicotine, man, it’s a hell of a drug.
Matt McIrvin
You know, it’s strange: I never thought cigarette smoke smelled good but I *did* used to think tobacco shops smelled wonderful, but more recently, the smell of unlit tobacco seems unpleasant to me when I smell it. I think I’ve become un-habituated as the world changed.
My parents used to both smoke in the 1970s, but then my dad quit and my mom stopped smoking in the house and, I think, gradually tapered off. And they’re both still around!
My father had the most weirdly undramatic quitting story ever. He got a bad cold, went to the family doctor, and the doctor said “you’ll get better faster if you don’t smoke until you’re well again… and, you know, it might be best of all if you just never started up again.” And then he didn’t. Most people don’t have it that easy.
Professor Bigfoot
I’ve heard nicotine called “the soldier’s drug,” because of the double effect: you’re nervous because you’re about to go into action, smoke a cigarette. You have to stay awake at that console or you and all your shipmates could die, so you smoke through your watch.
That’s one good reason not to ban it, but the end results… yeesh.
Shalimar
Cigarette smoke gives me headaches so I was never tempted. Whether that was a physical symptom of psychosomatic because I didn’t want my dad to smoke, I’m not sure. But he has been gone 20 years and I still get the headaches when I am around a smoker. You can smell it in the clothes even when they aren’t lighting up.
narya
I quit, cold turkey, 36.5 years ago; 2.5-3 packs/day when I quit. My 30th birthday present to myself. I liked every cig I ever smoked, but I’m so glad I quit.
Melancholy Jaques
I consider smoking cigarettes the stupidest thing I ever did, my number one regret, with no one to blame but myself being a total loser dumbass trying to be the hard ass in my high school years. Quit in 2013.
Anne Laurie
Nicotine, apparently, *really* helps with ADD / ADHD — that’s one reason so many creative people have been smokers, ever since tobacco became globally available. Apparently epidemiologists have drawn some pretty convincing graphs about the “rise” of adult (diagnosed) ADD and two factors of modern American life: the increasing number of places people *can’t* smoke (from the office to their own apartments), and the rise in coffee shops (because caffeine has a similar effect on brain chemistry).
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Both my parents smoked although I was only around Mom from 5 onward. My father’s 3rd wife smoked so I grew up around smokers
I worked in a co-op program in high school to get a vet tech certificate (this was just when the 2-year college programs started) so worked in a vet’s office for a year and a half. One time, we did an autopsy on a dog, not sure why. It’s lungs were cancerous which is what killed it and my boss said the lungs looked roughly like what a human smoker’s lungs would look like.
I took one, wrapped it up in cling wrap and took it home and plopped it on the kitchen counter and said “Mom, this is what your lungs look like.” She rolled her eyes and nicely asked me to toss it.
Flash forward maybe 23 years and she’s retired and moved with us to Central Misery. After a doctor’s appointment, they had done something diagnostic and urged her to quit. So she did, cold turkey. She never smoked again.
But, the chemical changes the nicotine had caused all those years on the brain resulted in her being far more volatile, inclined to be depressed, basically, it wasn’t a mental state she really enjoyed being in.
Finally, in 2015, they found a “spot” on one of her lungs. She decided not to do anything about it and in 2 years, was dead of cancer that started there and metastasized. She was working her extensive gardens literally until a week before she was gone. She never wanted to hassle with the treatment and wanted a quality of life that trying to fight lung cancer over who-knows-how-many-years-in-ones-80s would have sucked from her perspective.
All of which is saying that yup, nicotine is a helluva drug and the damages of smoking, even after one’s quit for 20 years, can come back to bite you in the ass. And yes, she always said she never got over the allure of cigarette smoke.
And then you have somebody like Deng Xiaoping who was a chain smoker (Mom was not) who lived until he was 92.
Petorado
“Lynch was right — is there any better smell in the world?”
When you become an ex-smoker, it is absolutely the worst smell in the world … to the point of irrational anger.
It is a powerful drug. And drug culture has its rules of ignoring the rest of the world while you get your fix. But, as always, it’s hell on those around you who are not locked in that cell of addiction with you. Sorry to hear of Mr. Lynch’s passing, but then there’s the second-hand damage inflicted upon those in his sphere. A pre-emptive sorrow for their fates as well.
different-church-lady
Tobacco smells wonderful. I can’t understand why anyone would want to light it on fire.
Professor Bigfoot
The WWII generation’s drugs of choice were nicotine and alcohol.
Yep, a bunch of chain-smoking drunks saved the world. ;)
Bartleby
“Is there any better smell in the world?”
You must not have asthma.
different-church-lady
@Professor Bigfoot: Hitler, on the other hand, was a health nut.
Matt McIrvin
Now, these days the smell of tobacco smoke that used to be omnipresent when I was a kid has been replaced by the smell of pot smoke, which is stronger. But less like automobile exhaust.
Matt McIrvin
@Anne Laurie: Caffeine is totally my drug of abuse. Shamelessly so.
Doesn’t make me less anxious, I’ll tell you that.
Melancholy Jaques
@Petorado:
Agreed. I can’t believe that people put up with it all those years.
Jobeth
I smoked for 30 years, been off them for about 20 years and I still get the urge when I pass someone smoking on the street. Nicotine is that addictive. I’ve told my kids if I live to be 90 don’t buy me a birthday cake, get me a pack of smokes.
Lord Fartdaddy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I don’t know, I think cigarette smoke is awful. When I was in college, we’d go out to bars, and I never smoked, but after five minutes in a bar, my clothes reeked, my hair stank, even my skin smelled like cigarettes. It almost made going out not worth it.
Today, I’ll watch an old movie or something… Ever seen Casablanca? Holy Christ, the whole fucking world stank of cigarettes back then, there was no escape. Casting smoking out of society is one of the best things that’s happened in the last 20 or 30 years.
Matt McIrvin
@Lord Fartdaddy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Pot legalization means that I’ve been smelling the pot stank a lot lately… but it’s still not considered OK to smoke it indoors. In the 1970s and into the ’80s, residual cigarette smoke smell filled every interior space, every public place was full of ashtrays, and the ground was strewn with cigarette butts everywhere outdoors.
WTFGhost
@Anne Laurie: Yes. A lot of people who crave nicotine are self-medicating. Someday, we’ll learn more about what they’re self-medicating for, I hope, so they don’t feel the same crushing need.
I just remember, as a teen, thinking “whole lots of people just like me think they can quit any time. Do I really think I’m *that* much better, at resisting an addictive drug?”
Madame Bupkis
@Shalimar: I smoked for 40 years. Quit 10.5 (yes, I count the .5) years ago. After 4 years of non-smoking, they found a spot. Fortunately, it was found so early, they just cut the corner of my lung out. No chemo or radiation. Truly, I was born under a lucky star. I urge everyone who has ever smoked to get a lung CT scan. It saved my life.
To your point (finally), when I moved to Colorado from San Diego, I could not believe how much the smokers stunk! In San Diego, no one smokes in enclosed areas. Where there is winter, people smoke in their houses, garages and cars. P-U.
I am happy to report in the 10 years I’ve been here, so much less smoking and stink!
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t like either smell. Cigarettes smell marginally better.
Eduardo
Smoke for 22 years, and then stopped cold turkey.
Yep, short term smoking is absolutely wonderful.
John S.
@Matt McIrvin:
Where have you noticed it the most?
I would have thought that legalization meant smelling it more, but I have smelled it much less here in Seattle than I used to in New York.
raven
I quit when I was in Vietnam at 19 years old. My legs had too much competition and I had to quit something!
wmd
I’ve smoked less than 50 cigarettes, and somewhere near 100 cigars in my lifetime. I disclosed this to my oncology team and they said I should be classified as a non-smoker as far as risk is concerned. The most recent time was when my son got back from Iraq, we drank a couple bottles of red wine and smoked cigars and talked.
I’ve not intentionally smoked tobacco since my diagnosis and successful treatment (I took a hit off a spliff that had tobacco in it). I’ve been considering smoking a cigar again once every year or two while drinking whisky with friends. Pretty sure when I bring it up to oncologist she’ll say don’t, but that the added risk is minimal.
Baud
Can’t stand cigarette smoke. Best reason to live in USA is that it’s now not as ubiquitous.
David_C
@Lord Fartdaddy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I agree about the smell. Yuck. My father smoked and I acquired the skill of wolfing down my food in a hurry so I could finish before he would light up. Back in the ‘70s I worked in restaurants, rode intercity buses and had to smell smoke all the time (and on airplanes?), and in ‘80s in grad school, the faculty members would light up during seminars and journal clubs. The move away from indoor smoking was one of modern society’s best moves.
prostratedragon
@different-church-lady: Orthogonality in action.
Jay
I still smoke. Helps me with stress and depression, but I don’t smoke anywhere as much as I used to.
Dad was a cigar smoker, Mom was a cigarette smoker, and I first started smoking as a young adult in Clubs. A form of self defense.
When I smoke, it’s outside, away from other people, off of any path others might walk, take into account wind direction, and the butts always go in the trash.
Starfish (she/her)
@Anne Laurie: You have posted most of the COVID content here. Did you see any long COVID people saying nicotine helped? There were some local to me who said they had nicotine patches to help long COVID. Apparently, other people online are saying that too.
Gretchen
@Matt McIrvin: My story is similar, also from the 70’s. I got a terrible cold, didn’t smoke because it made it harder to breathe, and then I realized that I hadn’t smoked in several days and didn’t start up again. I missed it for years, though, every time I was in a bar or talked on the phone.
That, and cigarettes went up to the outrageous price of $5 a carton.
Another Scott
Fresh baked bread smells much better. It smells even better than Captain Black pipe tobacco.
:-/
Smoking tobacco is very, very bad. Very.
(I tried smoking when I was around 8, stealing cigarettes from my mom’s purse. I hacked and coughed and that was much more than enough for me.)
It looks like America was exporting tobacco back to England as early as 1615-1616. Getting off it was probably one of the very best things we have done in the last 400 years (especially from a public health viewpoint).
Best wishes,
Scott.
Gvg
I have always hated the smell. It was wonderful when Florida banned smoking indoors in most places. Work became safe. Hotels too. I didn’t have to fight with people who forgot.
Whenever i traveled to more libertarian places like Texas, i would really notice how even their nonsmoking areas, weren’t.
Actual smokers have been dropping here for a long time and i notice the how to stop smoking support ads have continued non stop even through retrograde governor’s like Scott and desantis. It seems that is going to continue here. Not sure why. When they banned smoking in restaurants, it turned out business increased instead of the predicted drop. That seemed to end resistance.
Baud
@Gvg:
This almost always happens when business claim some regulation will be destructive.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: If secondhand smoke is a thing, spending time in Moscow is not good.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
That’s the only reason I don’t visit.
persistentillusion
I smoked for years. But my very worst smoking situation was at work in the early 80s in Chicago. Smoking indoors was still allowed. I worked at a small securities house in a bull pen. The man next to me smoked cigars all day long. Talk about going home reeking and with a headache! An he was a very nice person, so I kept my mouth shut.
And then they arranged to have the office painted over the weekend. Paint fumes and cigar smoke….
Another Scott
@Gvg: A few decades ago, my J took an Aeroflot flight from DC to Ireland (it was very, very cheap!). She had a non-smoking seat.
(You know what’s coming…)
As soon as the plane was at altitude, all the Russian businessmen around her started chain-smoking. She called the stewardess over and said that she was supposed to be in a non-smoking section.
“Your seat is the non-smoking section.”
:-/
Best wishes,
Scott.
Kristine
Both my parents smoked. I remember sitting in the back seat of the car surrounded by haze. And the smell.
I was hospitalized with chronic bronchitis/pneumonitis on iirc my 11th birthday. At the time, my folks didn’t make the connection.
My dad started smoking in the mid-40s when he was a Marine in the South Pacific/WWII. He was able to quit for a few years in the 70s, but started up again, and smoked until he died at 78 of pancreatic cancer. I don’t believe that’s smoking related, but I doubt it helped.
Mom made it to 87. She did have COPD, but it wasn’t debilitating. She never quit, but she tapered, nursing one or two cigs, taking a few puffs at a time during the day.
I was never tempted to even try one.
hells littlest angel
One day, should our civilization last long enough, people will look back at the era of cigarette smoking, which is now drawing to a close, and wonder what the hell was wrong with us.* I’d guess the habit reached it’s height of glamour and acceptedness around 1950, when there were ashtrays inside elevators. I am a former smoker, but I recognize it now as a gross and filthy addiction, and a truly unnatural act. It’s funny to watch an old movie and see a character lurking in a doorway reach into his breast pocket and think, oh, he’s going to make a phone call.
*In a couple of hundred years people will probably figure that the Cigarette Era and the Trump Era happened at the same time, just because it will be natural to conflate two insanities of similar degree.
NotMax
Feeling lucky?
:)
Butter Emails!!!
There’s a pretty long list. I think it falls somewhere in between the smell of a ruptured colostomy bag and durian breath.
NotMax
Multiple decades later, remain confoozled about “Scandinavian size.”
;)
@mistermix.bsky.social
Thanks for sharing your stories. My mom never smoked but she died of lung cancer. I blame her dad, who was a smoker and had emphysema (but died after being hit by a car).
What I meant by “best smell in the world” was the first second or two of igniting a cigarette. Count me as one of the people who’s glad that smoking was banned in bars, because a place with a lot of smokers just reeks.
Captain C
I had my first cigarette at 14, started smoking on the regular at 18 (went and visited an ex, which turned out to be a bad idea for a number of reasons), and quit on March 24, 1994* having gotten a bad cold, taken a couple days off, and decided to take advantage of the head start**. Some of my idiot friends thought it was funny to blow smoke in my face during the month that followed, which was annoying as hell but also made it much easier to not relapse or even be tempted in smoky bars. I haven’t smoked tobacco since, except for a few occasions involving hashish and international relations. I don’t miss the smell at all; cannabis is much better IMHO.
When AZ banned smoking in bars, I was prepared to be outraged on behalf of my smoking friends until it came into effect and I had my first smoke-free dancing night (at the late, lamented Hollywood Alley for Major Lingo) and it was wonderful enough that I decided my smoking friends could damn well go outside.
*Exactly a month before I went to Pink Floyd at Sun Devil Stadium.
**I had heard, and found it to be true in my case, that when quitting the second day is the worst—anyone can deal with a day (for example, a long day of air travel) but the second day is when your addicted body really starts freaking out. After that, each day is a little easier and after a month the physical addiction should be broken.
Captain C
@Baud: They allow pantslessness in Moscow?
A Ghost to Most
My whole career was, as my coworker from Oz said, “Living on the Ines: caffeine and nicotine.”
twbrandt
California was the first state to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. I remember going on a business trip there shortly after the ban and was so impressed that I could go out for dinner and drinks and not smell like an ashtray when I got back to my hotel.
NeenerNeener
Both of my parents smoked from their late teens until their early 50s, then quit cold turkey. When they quit it was as much about the cost of cigarettes as it was for their health. Colon cancer got my mother in her mid-70s, but lung cancer got Dad in his late 80s. He was exposed to second hand smoke in his job right up until he retired in his late 60s so we wondered how much that contributed to the tumor. None of his doctors ever did more than listen to his lungs, so never caught the tumor until it was stage 4.
mark
Humans and their addictions. Smoking and drinking have been more socially acceptable over the years. Smoking finally got kicked to the gutter. Nixon declared war on drugs more than a half century ago. Since that time marijuana has been widely legalized. We’ve had the crack wars, meth cookers, opioid crises, fentanyl. powder cocaine. Doesn’t seem to be any end in sight.
Tokyokie
When I was about 5 years old, my brother, who was 5 years older, offered me a cigarette. I took a puff and immediately fell to the ground wheezing and coughing. After I regained my breath, my brother explained I was doing it wrong, that I needed to hold the smoke in my lungs for a few seconds before exhaling. So I tried it again with the same result as my first puff. My brother told me that I needed to practice to get it right, but my thought was why would I want to do that? I haven’t smoked since, while my brother died of lung cancer early last year.
FastEdD
Retired teacher here. The high school where I taught had a rule that teachers who smoked could go out on their break to the bus stop in front of the school for a puff. There were four teachers who did that every day. Every one of them died from lung cancer. I remember them well.
prostratedragon
“When did you start smoking?”
dc
I loved smoking and was a smoker for close to 20 years. I did not start to smoke, however, until I was 21 years old. I quit on my first try, and I quit to avoid damaging my health anymore. But I never tired of smoking, though life is easier now as a non-smoker, it’s one less thing I absolutely must have, like my continuing addiction to caffeine by way of coffee. What did I love about smoking? The sensation of smoke filling my lungs, and how well smoking accompanies reading and thinking.
I am very glad I no longer smoke, and though I loved smoking, I did not like the smell of stale smoke. Besides the health benefits, it’s also cheaper to be a non-smoker.
Old Dan and Little Ana's
Deleted. Accidentally messed up my nym
Old Dan and Little Ann
My mom and grandma smoked all the time when I was a kid. I hated it and vowed to never do it. Then I started to smoke when i was 18 due to my girlfriend/ future wife being a smoker. I always said I’d quit when I felt like it. 13 years of almost a pack a day of marb reds and finally quit on New Years Day of 2006. Best decision I ever made.
TBone
It’s looking like we might lose Noah the Love Cat. He’s still not eaten a thing and is losing weight just like Josey did – very quickly. I gave water by syringe today, and he did drink a little on his own too, which gave me some hope. He’s had transdermal Mirataz appetite stimulant both yesterday and today but all plates of various kitty tapas have been refused. Goddamnit.
Vet 9am.
Ruckus
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
We aren’t all the same. We don’t all have the same responses to different illnesses or foods or any number of things. Because there are ranges. I am the tallest member of my family of 5. (And that’s not because I’m the only one left – I was when they were alive) Now dad was not much shorter, older sister was quite a bit shorter. It’s possible I was supposed to be taller but I didn’t grow for over 5 years as a kid. I was selected by classmates to go up on stage for an assembly early freshman yr HS as one of the shortest in school. I would have been #2. Told my class mates that picked me that if I stood up I was walking out the back door of the auditorium – and flipping off Father Schaffer, the VP, who was holding this BS assembly. And yet, I’m now about average height for my age. Genetics is a variable, it’s what we start with, not necessarily how our body manages all the control/growth mechanisms.
Dr Daniel Price (excruciverbiage)
With you on the “morning after” effects of puffing cigars. That’s what keeps me from lighting one up, even to celebrate.
Jay
@TBone:
So sorry, it is always so hard.
hitchhiker
@TBone:
I’m so sorry. It’s just the worst.
Baud
@TBone:
I’m sorry.
karen gail
Never liked the smell of cigarette smoke, I can smell a full-time smoker from a distance; my father smoked and would quit cold turkey then years later being in long term stress filled situation and start again. The last couple of years of life he struggled to breathe, what killed him was the asbestos he was exposed to while in military.
I do like the smell of pipe tobacco before it is burned, during my weekly shopping trips back in 70’s I would stop at pipe store just to smell the tobacco. Guy at store talked me into getting samples to take home for the smell.
Anyway
I thought one of these was going to be increase in weight…
WTFGhost
@TBone: Here’s hoping for the best possible outcome – wish I hope can be a lively kitty for a time to come.
karen gail
Just caught a headline on “Raw Story” Trump is now threatening Denmark and treating the purchase like a real-estate purchase. According to writer he is using the same “tools” he has used in pass to pressure people into selling beach front property that he wanted.
catclub
My theory is that smoking might be a net good thing if you start around 75 years of age. There are things that nicotine does to brain function.
karen gail
Purchase of Greenland, just when you think there is no bottom to what he will do when he takes office.
catclub
Ozempic. For the other addiction.
Ohio Mom
@Kristine: Oh no, pancreatic cancer can definitely be caused by smoking. Heavy drinking is another cause and of course, there are lots of people who are both heavy smokers and drinkers.
My mom, like your dad, died of pancreatic cancer and was a very heavy smoker. Looking back, she had depression. If only she had been born half a century later, she could have taken an SSRI instead.
Somewhat off topic but another cause of pancreatic cancer can be the BRCA breast cancer genes. They can also cause ovarian and prostrate cancers.
karen gail
When ex-husband got lung cancer he assumed it was from smoking; tests lead doctors to believe it was from all the circuit board soldering he did. He was R & D in 70’s when they would spend hours building things in poorly ventilated rooms.
We often think of lung cancer and smoking going hand in hand while forgetting there are other things that cause lung damage.
RevRick
@different-church-lady: When I was a kid, both my parents smoked and went through a carton each week. And I hated it. I absolutely could not stand the smell of cigarette smoke, and especially not at dinner time.
I guess that why I developed the habit of wolfing down my food so I wouldn’t have to endure the acrid stench, which ruined how things tasted… not that we enjoyed any gourmet meals. And it was hard to escape it since it seemed all my parents’ generation smoked.
Christmas Eve and Day were the worst, because three other couples came to our house on Christmas Eve and the ashtrays overflowed and my eyes burned from the thick smoke. And then we visited them the next day and more of the same.
As I grew older, I nagged my parents to quit. My mom did when I was in high school. My dad transitioned to a pipe. The raw tobacco smelled delicious, like it was scented with chocolate. And the pipe aroma didn’t bother me half as much since my dad spent half his time relighting the pipe. But eventually he quit too.
My older brother took up smoking as a teen in the 50s when smoking was cool. He tried to quit many times, but he always relapsed.
My mom died of pulmonary fibrosis at aged 90, my brother succumbed to pulmonary fibrosis and small cell lung cancer at aged 72. My dad died from diabetes.
I have never smoked any tobacco products. My brother’s widow still smokes, but as far as I know my nephews never have.
Fair Economist
I tried smoking once with cigarettes – didn’t seem worth the unpleasantness – and once with cigars, which made me violently nauseated. I never liked the smell, either burnt or unburnt, except when I had a crush on a cute smoker in college. I kept a towel of mine he used while visiting me unwashed for weeks for the faint scent of him – and his cigarettes.
Kay
The Peoples Marches in DC and Chicago are big. Its a new coalition that includes the women’s March people from ’16 but is more inclusive.
From the video I think the Peoples March In DC today will be bigger than Trumps inauguration crowd.
Nice to see some real live resisters showing up – gives me hope.
Fair Economist
@karen gail: A friend of mine recently died of lung cancer, in his early 60s. He had never smoked; he had a genetic susceptibility. As you say, most lung cancers are caused by smoking, but there are other reasons.
Fair Economist
@Kay: I wonder if part of the reason they moved Trump’s inauguration indoors was to avoid unfavorabke comparisons with protestors.
mark
@TBone: hope things work out.
Kay
@Fair Economist:
I’m impressed at how many there are! Its such a sad time but they’re out there, freezing to death. Resilient people.
prostratedragon
@karen gail: I know this will surprise many people around here, but I really, truly, hate that motherfucker. That is all.
TBone
Thank youse all for your well wishes and comfort. We’ll persevere no matter what. It’s just extra hard because it’s so soon after losing Josey, but we’ll be okay somehow! Not giving up hope. Not yet.
NotMax
@a href=”https://balloon-juice.com/2025/01/18/one-way-trip-to-heaven/#comment-9497051″>Fair Economist
See: Andy Kaufman.
cmorenc
Among the very best things my dad ever did for me was the night when I was 11yo when he caught me with a full pack of cigarettes (minus the one I had mouth-puff smoked). We lived in a small town in the tobacco belt of NC, and it was early August and a couple of my buds and I had walked down to a local tobacco auction warehouse where anyone c. 1960 could buy a pack from a vending machine for a quarter, and we each did so from the machine down in the warehouse.
Anyhow, as I attempted to walk back in our house about 10pm with a casual too-cool-for-school demeanor and get quickly upstairs to my room without attracting attention to the cigarette pack bulge in my pocket, my dad immediately caught on and busted me. He ordered me to go with him out onto the screen porch, where he sat there and made me chain-smoke every cigarette in the pack, inhaling every other puff. It was around 1am when i finished the last one, and my face was probably about the complexion of the fairways at Augusta National in April. I was never able to tolerate cigarette smoking after that night.
NotMax
Whoops. Fix.
@Fair Economist
See: Andy Kaufman.
Ruckus
Folks, let’s not forget that life could be/was a lot different for most people 75 or more years ago.
Most people worked more hours, many barely made enough money to exist. It isn’t perfect now but it is better. Sure we have far more cars these days but modern cars create less chemicals than cars back then and even with far more of them the air is often far better. (I was born and grew up in Los Angeles and the air when I was young often sucked – a lot) Food is better regulated today and therefore better. Jobs were often far more dangerous – especially if you got tired from working long hours/overtime. Even though we have far more people and cars, the cars themselves are far better and withstand accidents better. The world has changed a lot in the last 75-100 years and mostly for the better. Of course that requires better leadership than we will have shortly. Especially as we will have close to zero or it will be actually negative leadershit.
JustRuss
30 years ago I did tech support for conferences and conventions, I was working a medical conference where they were discussing various diseases, and I swear nearly every presenter said “…and we don’t see this in people under 60…except for smokers.” I quit soon after that. Smoking that is, not the job.
Steven Holmes
In the late 80s one of my wive’s grandfathers told me about when he quit smoking in the 1930s. He was waking up with a hacking cough and felt like it was the cigs. He decided to quit smoking on the spot. All his friends told him he was crazy, hell even the doctors told him it’ll calm his nerves. He told me this when he was 95, most of those freinds had already passed.
dnfree
My mom was a smoker and smoked all the way through her pregnancy with me (I am an early baby-boomer, born in the 1940s). Then she quit, because she had always thought a woman smoking while pushing a baby carriage looked disgusting.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Professor Bigfoot: (and speed. lots of speed.)
Matt McIrvin
@WTFGhost: I sure as fuck know I’m not better at it, which is exactly why I’ve always stayed away from nicotine.
But that I even considered doing that is dumb luck, because when I was a little kid, I basically assumed smoking was something 100% of adults did, because as far as I knew that was true. I vividly recall seeing an American Heart Association PSA where a kid says their parents don’t smoke cigarettes, and it blew my mind a little because I hadn’t heard of adults not smoking cigarettes.
mark
mom was a life long and aggressive smoker. Got a new car? Fuck you, She would smoke in it. She didn.t care. Smoking was the most important thing in her life. Dying in the hospital. Fuck you. Mad as hell that she couldn’t smoke in there.
Matt McIrvin
@John S.:
Right here in Massachusetts. In my own town.
Once I was walking on the pedestrian bridge between the Haverhill commuter rail station and the adjacent parking structure, and someone had dropped the still-fuming end of a big fat doob there. Maybe dropped it in a panic because a cop was coming or something, because you’re probably not supposed to smoke there. I stepped on it to put it out since I didn’t particularly want a fire starting, but of course that meant my shoe had pot stank all over it from then on and it stank up my car. Might have gotten in trouble if I’d been pulled over.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: Hell, I’d probably be able to manage my anxiety a lot better right now if I did smoke, but the other hazards aren’t worth it.
Gloria DryGarden
@dnfree: my mom smoked three packs a day all through my gestation, and into my late teens, when her doctor told her she was getting emphysema, but could reverse it by quitting. She’d watched her dad die of emphysema and lung cancer.
my dad smoked two packs a day, as well, so I grew up with a lot of unfiltered second hand smoke.
i don’t like it. Smells terrible, burns when I breathe it. I think I have long term health weaknesses because of it.
Matt McIvern, pot smoke smells rather nice, imo. I don’t need to smoke it, but when it’s around, it’s pleasant.
(The self medicating with pot and alcohol does have effects on nearby friends and family, but that’s a separate discussion)
Gloria DryGarden
@Madame Bupkis: congratulations on quitting. I understand it’s very difficult. Amazing that you had that scan, and it was a simple enough surgery,
out out damned spot..Success!
BellyCat
Late to party. Not read thread. Nicotine mints may kill me… from the sweetener, but Native Americans chose well when they elevated nicotine to the Pantheon of Stimulants and Relaxers. (Actually, it’s the only one in the hall,)
Never a smoker. Been “trying to start” since 2006 with nicotine gum and mints. Best deal is Sam’s Club (1/4 fortune). Second best is Walmart (1/2 fortune). Pharmacies are 1 fortune.
Way better than SSRI’s and others antidepressants, quite honestly.
BellyCat
@Starfish (she/her): Anecdata here. Nicotine user (lozenges) and was NOVID for the first four years. Finally caught COVID though several months ago. Much more mild than the average cold. <shrug>
sab
My mom smoked from her teen years until she died at 84 from non-smoking causes. She only smoked in the kitchen and the basement, but wherever she smoked it stank. I hated it.
My dad was a surgical pathologist. A big part of his job was diagnosing lung cancer. He even taught the lung pathology course at our local med school. Then he came home to her smoking.
Mom didn’t die of lung cancer. Dad’s younger sister did, at age 52. Mom still couldn’t quit.
BellyCat
@TBone: FUUUUUUUCK…..
sab
Smokers can’t smell. My husband smoked for 30+ years and then quit cold turkey. He is amazing that way. But he still can’t smell much of anything. Smoking fried his nose.
sab
@TBone: Oh no. I am so sorry. I hope he gets better but please don’t torture him out of love. Everyone dies eventually.
Gloria DryGarden
@BellyCat: really! What about a patch?
gosh, I’d love the antidepressant effects, but who knows what else it does. I run a bit sensitive.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: i am so sorry! It’s too soon.
I gave my kitty transdermal fluids the last week of his life. And put him on a heating pad. We communed extra, those final weeks; if I tried to go out he gave me this look.
They just reach a certain age; but it hurts a lot….
TheQuietOne
Whenever I see photos of the 60s and people comment on how few overweight people there are, I wonder how much of that is due to smoking. So many people smoked back then. It probably wasn’t a majority, but sometimes it sure seemed like it. Smoking is supposed to be an appetite suppressant, right? I’m sure there are a lot of factors that go into it, but I can’t help but think that’s one of them.
TerryC
In 1956, when my brother and I were eight and seven years old, my uncle Rollie, at the time 17, made us each a special milkshake.
He half-filled two tall tumblers with whole milk, and then added a bit of every condiment. My grandmother had in her kitchen. Which wasn’t a lot, because we were real Appalachians, but was enough. Salt, pepper, sugar, cinnamon, ketchup, mustard, all mixed together in a smoothie.
He took my brother and I out in the backyard and made us each drink a glass of that while we smoked a cigarette. Of course, we got sick and puked all over the place and neither of us ever touched a cigarette again.
gothmech
@Matt McIrvin: More like burnt automatic transmission fluid, unfortunately.