How sad to hear about the death of Leonard Nimoy AKA Mr Spock. Now if any actor was defined by a single role, then it was Nimoy. I never really got into Star Trek but everyone knew who Spock was. He was that logical guy with the big ears who always pissed off James T Kirk and whichever hairpiece he was wearing at the time.
Nimoy made it quite clear last year why he was dying. It was because he smoked cigarettes, 40 a day, and he didn’t quit until he was in his fifties. He ended up with his lungs in ruins, suffering from COPD, acknowledging in public that smoking would kill him and soon. I gave up at the age of 37 and in the middle distance of my life I wonder if, without self-pity, it will hasten my demise. After all, smoking killed my mother, her brother, her father and her mother (Lung Cancer 2 Heart Disease 2 – a pretty unfortunate score draw there) so I am in the frame. My father, who died four years ago tomorrow, was convinced that he too quit too late. Whether he did or not, smoking doesn’t seem to do you any good.
I enjoyed my smoking. I enjoyed buying a new pack, opening the pack, drawing on that first cigarette of the day, lighting up as soon as I had a drink of anything, lying on my holiday sunbed. Must have another cigarette. After all, it won’t affect me. I’ll be okay. These horrible smoking related diseases always happen to other people, not me. People like my mum and dad, for example.
I changed from a smoker to an angry non smoker. I didn’t realise how much I stank when I smoked, how my clothes must have smelled, how much my breath smelled It was only when I stopped, I realised how bad it was. I don’t know why I became angry and militant against smoking, but I grew to detest smoking and what it did to people. It wasn’t just people I was related to who succumbed to the effects of tobacco, it was friends too. The age of 50 seemed to be a big point. People would suddenly get different cancers (a friend died of bladder cancer, another of brain cancer, a common secondary cancer after lung cancer) and they’d go and die on me, leaving awful tragedies and enormous voids in the lives of their loved ones.
I’m an asthmatic these days and have been for upwards of 20 years. Or is it a warning of COPD in old age? I certainly didn’t get asthma when I smoked my Peter Stuyvesants (the man who founded New York and gave them all lung cancer?). Sometimes, I still dream I am smoking which is ridiculous since I loathe smoking with the same passion as someone who does smoke, albeit without the addiction.
My advice? Unwanted, I suspect, but just in case…
Don’t start. It costs a lot of money, it will shorten your life and it will make you smell.
If you do start, then stop. And the only way to stop is cold turkey. None of these E-cigarettes because everyone who I know who has tried them has started smoking again. It’s hard, almost impossibly hard, but you need to stick with it. Remember that the only reason you crave a cigarette is not to cope with stress in your life: it’s to get a hit of nicotine. “I need a fag” just means I need nicotine. Remember how much it makes you smell and then work out how much it is costing you from your already taxed income.
If I can quit smoking, anyone can. Nowadays, I never get a sniff of tobacco and think, ‘Oh, I’d love to have just one puff.’ In fact, I loathe the smell and I loathe what the addiction has done to people I like and love.
Leonard Nimoy did us all a great public service when he told the world what was going to kill him, what was going to shorten his life. I have seen it at first hand and one day, what happened to him could just happen to an ex smoker like me.
Smoking isn’t a gamble. You don’t win, you always lose. Logical, isn’t it?
