Comment by xoxxala
4 hours ago
My step-father’s parents smoked a carton a day. Each. They started smoking before breakfast and stopped just before sleep. Their trailer home had a 2-3’ cloud of haze below the ceiling and every surface was sticky. I’m not how many years they smoked like that, but probably decades.
As a kid, I could not breathe in there. This would have been late 70s. No way they could have afforded that habit at today’s prices.
That is crazy. How long did they live? It would be fascinating if someone could live a long life despite smoking so much
Mid to late 70s? Their last years were nothing but medical issues (from the smoking, plus excessive drinking) and poor health. Certainly kept me from starting to smoke.
It would be fascinating if someone could live a long life despite smoking so much
Genetic variation probably has a bigger role than we'd like to admit. There are definitely outliers. I know smokers who lived into their 90s, and non-smokers who died much younger. The sibling comment says they lived into their 70s, which is probably average.
...and then there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Health_and_life...
Calment continued smoking in her elderly years until she was 117
2-pack-a-day smoker here (~40 cigs per day), for over 10 years (twice that if you consider the time I was 1 pack or less a day).
I stopped smoking and started vaping for a while (~1.5 years) and went back to smoking after some bad vape experiences. At some point, even the smell of the liquid would cause me nausea.
My health is surprisingly good despite the habit. I walk every day, and I can do longer cardio without loosing breath or feeling tired. I'm either lucky or sitting on some ticking time bomb that went unnoticed so far.
I definitely recommend not starting on either though.
My sister-in-law was so upset when we ran a 10K together, I beat her by 5 or 6 minutes, and when she found me at the finish line I was having a smoke.
Genetic lottery for sure. I’m still quitting but it’s not really because of acute or chronic health problems, mostly cost and being tired of stinking all the time.
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