Why I am giving up smoking

I am a hypocrite in more ways than one. This is why I am giving up smoking from tomorrow (for the third time). You will have to ignore this self-indulgent post but I feel it needs to be written.
There are many good reasons to give up smoking. Cleaner breath, clothes that smell of washing powder and meadows instead of stale smoke, teeth without stains, a heavier wallet and better health. Not to mention stronger and harder erections. All these, on their own, are good enough to warrant a smoke free life.

Something dawned on me today though and it was the final nail in the coffin for my smoking days. Smoking makes me an irrational person and there is nothing I hate more than irrationality and a lack of common sense.

It is a classic case of short-term fix at the expense of long-term health. At least with other vices there are upsides. With cocaine you get a feeling of happiness and a sense of wellbeing, albeit only for the duration of the night but that is something. With alcohol it at least helps with social lubrication. With gambling it can be enjoyed as a leisure activity and you get the occasional win. Hell, even with prostitutes you at least get an hour of fun. With smoking there is absolutely no upswing but it has more drawbacks than any of the others.

I get slightly annoyed when people say they are religious as it flies in the face of common sense, I get even more annoyed with people preaching the values of homeopathy and alternative medicines. I can’t bear it when people insist on supernatural happenings. The reason I get on my high horse about these things is purely based on evidence. You can, on these matters, say that your opinion carries more weight than believers of such fallacies as it is backed up by evidence. It wouldn’t take much for me to believe in God, ghosts or psychics. Hard proof and evidence is all I would require. Alternative medicine would be simply medicine if it was proven to work.

‘Smoking is bad for you’ has a massive amount of evidence but I choose to ignore it. I have no excuse, which makes me as bad as anyone who believes a horoscope, or holocaust deniers.

I don’t want cancer more than I want a cigarette. It should be easy to give up on the single fact that smoking causes cancer.

They say the best way to give up is by telling everyone you have quit. So this is me telling you. If I ever smoke again I will also apologise for every rant I have made about other peoples irrational views on God, astronomy, ghosts, psychics, acupuncturists (although the evidence is getting stronger on the practise of acupuncture*) and any other examples of bad science and bad thinking I have picked you up on. Because, if I ever smoke again, I will be just as bad as you.


*While there is a growing case for acupuncture as being better than a placebo it is still a load of rubbish about aura and balance of chi energy in the body. Tests showed that while inserting needles into the body slightly affects nerve endings and can relieve pain, it doesn’t matter where you put the needles as There is no such thing as Chi energy or meridians

** It certainly doesn’t help with child birth though, apart from a placebo effect.