Tag: quitting

Take it from Dr. Snee: You say you want a resolution

Yeah, I'm not too thrilled about the new year either, Exhibit Y.
Yeah, I’m not too thrilled about the new year either, Exhibit W.

Why, hello there, patient readers. Sorry I haven’t answered your letters recently. I’ve been busy, fighting some paternity suits from my totally unrelated chain of sperm banks and fertility clinics. Needless to say, I’ve got a lot of unhappy mothers to accuse of postpartum depression under oath. (Not sure what the legal defense is against allegedly cuckolded dads is, though.)

Anyway, it’s a new year, which means it’s time for the same old boring resolutions. So, if you haven’t quit quitting smoking yet — which odds and these Camel dollars say otherwise — then congratulations! You’ve made it over the hump: one week. Your body is no longer addicted to nicotine. Technically.

However, there’s just one minor obstacle to get over: the rest of your life. Continue reading Take it from Dr. Snee: You say you want a resolution

Take it from Snee: The quittening

We suburban Americans are normally a cowardly lot. We don’t really grow a pair of balls until wrapped in steel Toyotas and a horn can do our talking.

But, there are certain times when we just can’t resist making someone feel like s@&t about their personal habits.

Prime example: smoking.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t have sympathy for smokers, and I smoke. But it doesn’t matter where you light up. It could be in the clearly marked smoking area, a corn field in the middle of Nebraska, an asbestos shingles factory in Bangladesh or the Earth’s molten core. Somebody will walk up to you and say, “You know that’s killing you, right?” Continue reading Take it from Snee: The quittening

The pink elephant in the room

Americans have made great strides in quitting smoking … well, some Americans.

It turns out that a large percentage of modern smokers don’t support a daily habit nicotine habit, but smoke cigarettes “part-time.” Researchers are trying to figure out why people occasionally indulge in something that’s dangerous, tastes good, relieves stress and gives you something to do with your hands when surrounded by strangers. (In other news: people still eat Hot Pockets between trips to McDonald’s.)

But, of all the scenarios that The Wall Street Journal lays out, they left out the most obvious prompt for casual smokers to indulge: drinking.

It’s well known that booze and smokes go hand-in-hand. Alcohol shares all of the same benefits listed above with tobacco, but also blocks out shameful memories when you go too far with it.

What’s interesting, though, is that the article only focuses on cigarettes. Why not cigars or pipes? What about hookah? It’s pretty obvious that whoever did this research clearly does not smoke.

Paging Dr. Obvious, paging Dr. Obvious

Sharks: the scourge of our next generation.A New England Journal of Medicine study is blowing the roof off of the house that is everything we understand about medical science.

Now that smoking rates are down, everyone should be healthier, right? That’s what we always heard.

However, the obesity rate is still rising. So, while lower smoking rates raised the average life expectancy for current 18-year-olds by 0.31 years, obesity lowered it back down 1.02 years.

So, after all that quitting, we finally learned that if (a) one thing doesn’t kill you, (b) something else will.

Also, maybe you were better off smoking?