Sometimes I wonder why people bother to post comments or diaries at Daily Kos at all.
Fed-up with spelling pedants, being "fact-checked" by readers transparently indifferent to fact, or accused of "dishonesty" because you don't subscribe to popular fictions?
Read on..
This is a short diary and I make no apology for it's personal, biased, slanted, opinionated nature. I was on a thread with some folks defending chemical dependencies. I'm getting accused of patronizing them because I believe that the facts confirm smoking is a dangerous fucking disease and am NOT about to back down.
"What makes me happy is quite different
What makes me unhappy is being spoon-fed crap about the non-risks of tobacco consumption by the chemically dependent.
Writing as someone missing part of a limb to remove a malignant melanoma, someone who watched a loved one spew blood from every orifice in her body when the integrity of her internal organs finally collapsed, and then spent the next hours watching her ebb away into the final indignity of death, wrapped neck to toe in a black plastic sack, dosed into a state of imbecility ( I'd say dosed to the tits, but she lost those one after the other in separate successive surgeries in the preceding years. BTW, ever seen what a radical masectomy looks like? A good one leaves a six-inch scar like a big, red zipper where the breast used to be. But I digress)
Where was I? Oh yes, I'm writing because I'm hoping that you'll actually be clever enough to dispense with your aggressive bs, get help and avoid a similar fate.
Of course, you may see all this as patronizing.
Oops. You're a guy? No tits?
I got one for you, too. My old friend Jack G. who took me under his wing many years ago and, like you, hated lectures. Course he was less fussy when receiving visitors in hospital during that long year in '90 when his limbs kept going gangrenous and had to be lopped off one at at time.
I'd already been to Dave's funeral. I spent that day sucking on the cancer sticks myself standing in the rain wondering at my own insanity. I thought I was tough, but I nearly fainted during my visits to see Jack. I looked long and hard at my own behavior, and that of my circle of friends. I sought and received help; and quit myself the following year.
As for Jack, he never did stop smoking. He'd puff away with the one limb left him. But he never did leave that hospital and the number of folks willing to come and visit trailed off in the years after.
Eventually, it was just Jack and one sister, the one who used to smuggle his cigarettes in for him."
Just checked and I learn: my original comment has now been troll-rated. This is the fucking state of debate at Daily Kos right now.
435,000 US deaths in 2000, 18.1% of all (1+ / 1-)
Recommended by:
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Trollrated by:
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US deaths. The single largest cause of death.
Thanks for reminding us that our chances of dying in a terrorist attack are next to zero.
And for pointing us to the real killers. Here's a link for you
Check out what's number two on the list.
I thank goodness everyday I'm not bullshitting myself to death, on the smoking issue at least. And I'm so grateful to Jack and all the others who suffer to show me that I do in fact have a choice and a responsibility for my actions.
If that sounds like bullshit or patronizing, then there's really not much more I can say to you. To all the others, who are trying to quit, have quit or are losing loved ones to this devastating epidemic, hang in there.
Get the picture?
TORONTO, April 1 CNW - Three out of four Canadians, including a
majority of smokers, support the new picture-based warnings on
cigarette packages in Canada, according to a new survey released
today by the Canadian Cancer Society Help a friend quit