Our Lungs

In this day and age, we are all a lot smarter than we were ten years ago. We know that cigarettes will eventually kill us. Now I expect that there will be people who read this and say that I do not understand because I do not smoke, but I used to. Now this will probably surprise people who know me, but I did. I smoked on and off in college. It was not an everyday thing, only when we would go out. I am from that era where you could smoke on an airplane, and so I did. I worked for many years as a flight attendant, and many of my friends smoked. I worked back when you could smoke on domestic flights. I mean, just imagine being trapped in an airplane with the last eight, nine, sometimes ten rows all smoking. As it is, you do not have good circulated air on an airplane, and then let us add smoking to it.

I started smoking because, well I really do not know why. Maybe it was because my friend and my roommates smoked. Maybe it was because it was just there whenever I took a break. I honestly do not know why, but I did it, and I do not remember that I liked it all that much. As time went on, I never thought about the cost. I never thought about how horrible I must have smelled from the smoke. I never thought about my health obviously, because I kept on smoking.

Then one day they announced that you could no longer smoke on domestic flights. I was okay with that, because sometimes I worked international flights. For some reason, I thought those flights were much worse as far as the smoking was concerned. They were, because more people smoked, and the flights were a lot longer. That just meant that I was trapped even longer on those planes trying to find some place that did not smell like smoke. Then one day they stopped smoking on the international flights, too. You also had designated smoking areas in the terminals, and I was not about to deal with that. So as quickly as I started, I quit.

Yes, I just quit. I threw away all of my cigarettes and never smoked again. I knew that because of the kind of person I was, this was the only way that I was going to be able to quit. It was hard for me, especially because many of my friends kept smoking. So many younger children are smoking today. If it's not cigarettes, it is e-cigs. We knew what cigarettes did to us back when I smoked, and we certainly know what they do to our bodies today.

My dad smoked for years. It was what killed him — that and his drinking. It was a different generation back then, with the glamorizing of old Hollywood smoking and drinking. Did they understand what it did to us back then? Maybe they did, but they certainly did not talk about it. I can still see my dad today, and I barely remember a time that he was not carrying a cigarette in his hand. They used to have bathtub gin parties, so that is really saying something about their generation.

We should learn from the past, from history, and our mistakes. Right now, with climate change we are not breathing in air that is that fresh anyway. That is not a pass or an excuse to keep on smoking. Why purposely do something that is going to harm us even more? We need to try to do better not only for ourselves but for our children. We should become more vocal about this subject matter. Plain and simple, cigarettes will kill you. Does Hollywood glamorize smoking today? I think that they do. Younger children look to these actors, actresses, and models to see what they are doing. They idolize them, and when they see them smoking they think why shouldn't I smoke, too? Do you want to live, to be around to see your children grow up, or your grandchildren grow up? What is your motivation to quit? Think about it. Do I believe it is an addiction? Of course I do. It is no different than someone who cannot stop drinking or doing drugs. It can become a habit. You wake up every single day and you might have the same routine. Maybe one of those things is to have caffeine to wake yourself up. Yes, caffeine is bad for you, but cigarettes will kill you a lot more quickly.

If you cannot quit, you can see a therapist to help you to quit. You can talk to a doctor to help you to quit. Now maybe not everyone could do what I did — just throw the cigarettes away and be done with it. The thing is that you do not know unless you try. My friend had to slowly try to stop smoking. It took her months to quit, but she did it. Good oral health promotes good general health. Smoking hurts both. We know that smoking cigarettes can cause us to get cancer in our mouth, and cancer on our lips. It makes your teeth yellow, your breath stink, it makes your nails yellow, and your hair and clothes stink. It will destroy your lungs. Look up lungs of a cigarette smoker on the Internet. I personally saw the lungs of a smoker. They were black and grey; they were dead. I also saw someone with part of their cheek missing. It had to be cut out to prevent the cancer from spreading to the rest of their mouth. Yes, sadly we are all going to die from something or another one day, but don't you want to live as long as you possibly can? Try it. Quit smoking. You will never know unless you try it. Anything worth having is hard to do. This will not be easy, but you can do it. Our lungs deserve to breathe fresh air. Your body deserves better. You deserve better.