(October 22, 2023 at 4:15 pm)Jackalope Wrote:(October 22, 2023 at 2:21 pm)emjay Wrote: The German word for smoking is rauchen and I can't think of a more apt word for it than that; to say it, it sounds just like my voice and my breathing sounded when I was smoking at my worst. A great word to practice the more awkward sounds of the German language... a rolling R and a loch-like ch... but otherwise a horrible word for a horrible thing that sounds just like its meaning, to me at least. That's all smoking will ever mean to me now... rauchen.
Sounds like a pretty good word for it.
I think younger people can easily overlook the future health consequences of smoking. It's easy to rationalize things away when the effects occur decades later.
If you were to look at my extended family, and what happened to the generation older than me, overwhelmingly what killed them was smoking, followed closely by drinking.
Yeah, I'm not blaming anyone... I agree it's all too easy to rationalise it away when it's abstract and a long way off.
How are you doing anyway?... I know you were hit badly by it. I still have trouble breathing sometimes but it's nowhere near as bad as it was five years ago when I'd often wake up gasping for air and had to take mints with me everywhere just to help me breathe... so I have healed quite a lot I think... not perfect but more than I was expecting. At least I can exercise now... like I never would've dreamed I could before, but on the flip side I am overweight now, which I never was as a smoker, so that's a bit of a constant battle.
