This is a very emotional speech and moving to listen to:

http://www.mediaresearch.org/rm/realityche...re/segment1.ram

Whoa thats really sad :(

Hearing that speech also makes me wish I didn't smoke. Been smoking for 10 years now and I started when I was 12. At the time I thought it was cool, but looking back its probably one of the stupidest things I have ever done.

Theres no doubt about it I am hooked. Its like a necessary evil, obviously smoking is stupid but if I don't smoke I get all dizzy and real irritable if I haven't smoked a cigarette in a few hours. It sucks nonetheless. Maybe I ought to just try quitting even though its hard as hell.

Okay, LI, this is your earthmother talking. Please listen hard and take what I'm saying to heart.

I started smoking cigarettes when I was 15 (that was in 1967 :blink: ). I started for the same reason you did. My parents had just divorced and moved me from the suburbs I'd always known to Manhattan. I had to make a whole new group of friends at my new school. Well, all the kids I wanted to hang with smoked. So despite my turning dizzy and green every time I tried to inhale (to say nothing of the coughing), I persisted. I was accepted by that group of friends (would I have been otherwise?), but I was also hooked. Through college I smoked more and more--smoking as much as two packs a night if I had to pull an all-nighter or was just up partying all night. I'd always been athletic; I found myself huffing and puffing just walking up a hill. In 1977, I came down with the flu. If you've ever had a real flu, you know how bad it is. I developed horrible bronchitis along with all the other symptoms. I couldn't smoke for a couple of days because of that, but as soon as I was able, I did because the withdrawal from the nicotine made me feel so terrible. But of course, smoking further aggravated the cough. So I said to myself while lying there with 103 fever, coughing and puking my guts out, that maybe I should just see if I could make it through another day without smoking. It became a game I played. Can I make it through another five minutes? Another half hour? Until this evening? Through the night? Each time I had the urge to light up, I asked myself if I could make it to some other part of the day. And each time, if I was honest with myself, I could. Sometimes it meant eating something (I did gain some weight during this time). Sometimes it meant going outside for a walk. Sometimes it meant yelling and screaming. But before I knew it, several weeks had passed. I can't say it became easier, and one day I found an old carton of cigarettes I had stashed away in the house, and I lit one up. I totally freaked out, threw it in the toilet, and then threw the rest of the cigarettes in the carton down the toilet as well. So, ten years after I started, I quit. It's now 27 years later, and while I've indulged in an occasional puff on a friend's cigarette if I've been drinking or something, I have never gone back.

My mother, who smoked for about forty years, was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer five years ago. She was supposed to be dead inside of six months. Somehow she managed to beat the overwhelming odds and become a cancer survivor (she's also survived breast cancer). None of her doctors suggest that she's beaten the cancer; it lies in wait to strike again. Inoperable stage 4 lung cancer never just goes away. She's 83, so it's possible something else will get her first, but the lung cancer will almost certainly come back if she lives long enough.

I think my message is clear. Don't take smoking lightly. They know how much damage it does, and not only to you, but any children you may someday have if you smoke in their presence (my parents used to smoke in the car on long trips with the windows rolled up while my brother and I suffocated in the back seat). Quitting is almost impossible to do. The withdrawal is horrendous. Doing it cold turkey is one way (I didn't have other options available to me in the '70s). But I know a lot of people who've successfully quit using a patch and/or Nicorette gum. You're young. You've got a good, long life ahead of you. Make the most of it and do whatever you have to do to quit now. That's a decision you'll never regret.