Read a story the other day, which scared the living sh!t out of me. So much so, in fact, that I've begun my long-overdue quit-smoking project. (Tried cold turkey today for about the seventh time - lasted two hours. So now I'm mixing a nicotine-free herbal blend with my tobacco (I roll my own) and am going to try to wean myself off nicotine over the next month or so, by gradually increasing the herbal mix and decreasing the tobacco. (So far, today's been good with a one part herb to 4 parts tobacco - I'll see how it goes.)
Anyway, what scared me? Turned out that tobacco can do worse than just kill you... it can make a CRIP out of you. There's this condition apparently which can make your hands and feet rot off, which only happens in male smokers aged 20-40 years. Sound like anybody you know? (And how come I never heard of this condition before? I mean, sure... lung cancer and all. But that just KILLS you (in your 50's or 60's usually!) and we all gotta die SOME day, righto? So I didn't care.)
Anyway, I had what I THOUGHT was early carpal tunnel in my wrist last week - did some exercises I found on the Web for the last 8 days or so, and now the pain's gone. But who knows..?
So, I'm going off nicotine.
HERE'S the kicker... in descibing this disease (whose name I won't mention, naming it might invite it!) The doctor writing the article, said (quotation not exact) that "tobacco not always gives an undeniable warning like this condition, *unfortunately* (?!!) all too often your first warning will be SUDDEN DEATH."
Well, GEE... I was kind of hoping that when my time came, it would be so sudden and so quick that I wouldn't have time to get all "funked out" over it. (To go like my uncle, who dropped dead at 41 - his heart just stopped! What an EASIER death, than most people..!) What's up with people, that they'd consider having their hands and feet rot off (becoming sub-human monstrosities in the process) better than dying, which we're all gonna do someday anyhow??? (ESPECIALLY a young guy in his 20's, the usual victim of this disease... he's got a long life as a revolting crip in front of him!) Apparently the doctor writing the article thinks so.
Anyway, what has this to do with the afterlife? Got to keep things on-topic, you know.
Well, if there's reincarnation... I want to reincarnate far enough into the future where there's CURES for "dirty living-related" illnesses - say about 40,000 A.D. or thereabouts, when you can eat, smoke, drink, shoot, or snort anything you want - because they'll have finally got the human body figured out. By the 41st millennium, they MIGHT have even come up with a cancer cure! (I wouldn't count on it being sooner.)
Living in a world like ours - with a *Stone Age at worst/medieval level at best* degree of bio-medical technology - SUCKS. Wouldn't you all agree?
P.S. I'd give a link to the site where I read about that condition, but I think I'll spare you it. I actually blew chunks after reading it... (and normally I have a STRONG stomach.)
Any which way you can,

B-man

Hey Chumley,
However bad and scarry was that article I'm glad you read it. If it made you want to quit and find ways to go about it I'd say the article has served its purpose.

Oh, Just in case you want to change your mind and  put it to the back of your head by thinking, "that rotting hand and foot thing is really bad but is never gonna happen to me". Here is a little something that might help you keep strong about quitting.
Every single time you smoke you are inhaling this into your body...

Harmful Chemicals
In Cigarettes & Tobacco Smoke

Benzene (petrol additive)
A colourless cyclic hydrocarbon obtained from coal and petroleum, used as a solvent in fuel and in chemical manufacture - and contained in cigarette smoke. It is a known carcinogen and is associated with leukaemia.

Formaldehyde (embalming fluid)
A colourless liquid, highly poisonous, used to preserve dead bodies - also found in cigarette smoke. Known to cause cancer, respiratory, skin and gastrointestinal problems.

Ammonia (toilet cleaner)
Used as a flavouring, frees nicotine from tobacco turning it into a gas, found in dry cleaning fluids.

Acetone (nail polish remover)
Fragrant volatile liquid ketone, used as a solvent, for example, nail polish remover - found in cigarette smoke.

Tar
Particulate matter drawn into lungs when you inhale on a lighted cigarette. Once inhaled, smoke condenses and about 70 per cent of the tar in the smoke is deposited in the smoker's lungs.

Nicotine (insecticide/addictive drug)
One of the most addictive substances known to man, a powerful and fast-acting medical and non-medical poison. This is the chemical which causes addiction.

Carbon Monoxide (CO) (car exhaust fumes)
An odourless, tasteless and poisonous gas, rapidly fatal in large amounts - it's the same gas that comes out of car exhausts and is the main gas in cigarette smoke, formed when the cigarette is lit.

Arsenic (rat poison), Hydrogen Cyanide (gas chamber poison)

Good luck on your road to health.

Peace.

SC.

Not only hands and feet go, Chumley,
so do jaws!
A kid near us is spending his remaining life time going to high schools to talk about how he feels having no jaw or gums left from tobacco, altho I think he also chewed.
His expressions are so remorseful and humiliated but he has a message, if one can understand his mutters. I guess the message is more from seeing him and for the kids, knowing he is their age.
Although I believe he'll be physically restored in the afterlife, I can't help but wonder what his feelings in front of all his peers are doing to his soul.

Hi Chumley I was told by a medium that you chose your life and your death . Thats why i thought that if you do then the life you chose you have to live it till its time to cross over.It just gave me the impression thats its all made out for you and whatever  you do or think in that life is what was meant. I do beleive in human free will , i think we should all have that . I think it good you are giving the tobbacco up . I tryed to but i cant get through the stress thing without them . I will give them up one day . I have this fear of really suffering pain before i die but i think that everyone has that fear . I do fear the process of dieing but not going into the spirit world . Good luck on giving up Chumley. God bless juditha

Not only hands and feet and jaws, but other extremities relying on good circulation...smoking is a major contributor to impotence.  Not a very Marlboro Man image...
*****************
Check out THIS handsome devil:

http://www.whyquit.com/whyquit/A_Gruen.html

Wouldn't surprise me, if that guy WISHED he was impotent, and his sex drive were dead. If I'd have been his doctor, I might have NUTTED him after taking off his face... would have been kinder most likely!

(I chewed myself between the ages of 16-19 - I dropped chewing when I was in the Army for cigarettes and never chewed again. I'm DAMNED glad I did quit chewing, or that guy I just showed you might have been me. Perversely, starting smoking was the BEST decision I've ever made - jaw cancer being rare from smoking!)
But now I need to quit the smokes too, my hands & feet being pretty important to me. I just found out today from my mother, that her father/my grandad had nasty circulation problems in his feet sytarting in his 40's - and he was a heavy smoker also! (*WHY* didn't anybody tell me about this before..? If I knew smoking could do WORSE than kill you (the hands and feet thing!) I'd have quit LONG ago...)

B-man

I have a relative who had similiar surgery on one side of her jaw...they rebuilt it with, if I recall, rib cartilege (or maybe something synthetic, I forget what they went with) and she looks pretty normal now, but it took several years for them to finish with it.  At this point you wouldn't notice it if you didn't know, but it was a long haul to get to that point.

Unfortunately addiction doesn't expand linearily. Someone who's smoked only for months could be more addicted than you that have been smoking for decades. It depends on person.

I'm not so good at willpower things, for example after I realised that I'm not in good shape, I still don't go out jogging. I would want to, but after walking few miles I get bored and tired, so I turn back and think that it isn't just worth it.

Plus that smoking, if we forget about it being extremely unhealthy, is a pleasure to me. Maybe I quit after I find some other pleasure to fit the hole. Like a girlfriend, or something.

Maybe we humans are so stupid that we can't see very far. Everything that's bad in the short run, is good in the long run. And vice versa.

Running like crazy for 12 minutes makes you feel sick, but can increase the quality of your life. But not right after.

Cigarettes then is a pleasure, but decreases the quality of your life. But not right after.

Quite absurd.