There are no special skills or qualification necessary to become a smoker. Anyone can take up the habit if they so desire. Not all young men who start smoking are necessarily of the ‘addictive personality’, but so powerful is the grip nicotine has on its victims that anyone can get hooked with enough exposure to the drug. If a man is still smoking by his middle age, then he's probably had multiple failed attempts to kick the habit over the years.
Middle-age is a time where a hardworking man should be able to start enjoying a less hectic lifestyle as he gets to take pleasure in some of the fruits of his labour from the past decades. Alas, for the one who still smokes, his middle years may be the start of a downward spiral as dwindling health and fitness levels begin to materialise. Without good health goes hope, and without hope there can be little to look forward to.
Men who have never smoked, cannot understand why anyone would want to shorten their life expectancy by doing so, yet those making such comments might well be unfit and overweight, meaning there are many other ways to meet your maker well ahead of time. Men who become reformed smokers in middle-age are something else, often turning out to be anti-smoking advocates to the extreme.
Most modern day men have a legal dependency of some sort related to foods, beverages or a substance of some description, and some are worse than others, yet there are no grey areas with tobacco in the twenty first century and its harmful consequences.
All men of middle-age coming from a Western society are educated on the increased health risks smoking has on the smoker. Common smoking related diseases include; lung cancer, throat cancer, breast cancer (yes, men can get breast cancer), bladder cancer, and also strokes and heart disease. These are just some of the more obvious health concerns for middle-aged men , though the list of physical complications associated directly to smoking, is quite exhaustive.
Even though mankind has the intelligence to change his life for the better, he all too often opts to change it for the worse. Smoking is just one of many self destructive choices many aging men fail to give up, but there are others too such as overeating, excessive alcohol consumption, inactivity (sloth), dependency on pharmaceutical and street drugs, ad infinitum.
Why are so many Middle Aged Men Smoking their Way into an Early Grave?
Statics will say that more men in the throes of mid-life are stopping smoking than ever before, and though this might be true, statistically, there are still millions of men the world over that either cannot or will not even consider smoking cessation.
Obviously no man wants to deliberately smoke his way into an early grave, but the powerful hold nicotine has on both body and mind, often means that many smokers only talk about stopping. The majority will be sincere when they discuss quitting with their loved ones, yet somehow the time is never quite right.
A familiar Pattern
How many middle-aged men pledge to their wives, children or other concerned family members, that they plan to stop on Monday, New Years Day, next birthday, after the holidays etc? And how many of them are still smoking while constantly moving the goal posts of that cessation date? Far too many of them, that’s how many, and far too often ill health and death comes knocking before they manage to quit!
What are the Chances of Dying from a Smoking Related Disease?
When a youth starts to smoke, he always thinks he has a lifetime to quit before he needs to worry about any health complications associated with smoking. Although the chances of dying young from the habit are less, it is not unheard of for young men to get terminal diseases as a direct result of their smoking.
What the young man perhaps doesn’t realise is the difficulty he will face when his first attempts to quit arrive. That first failed attempt will likely come as a shock to him, and he'll find some justifiable excuse (one of many more to come), why this first effort just came at a bad time.
In actual fact, most men of middle-age that smoke today were almost certainly not expecting to be smoking after the age of 40, yet so many of them are still puffing away, wishing they could stop, and wondering if they will ever mange to conquer what has become an addiction to nicotine.
Just How Dangerous is Smoking?
No one expects to die in an road accident, although sadly every year people do. However, your chances of dying from smoking are 50 times greater than meeting your fate on the roads! There are countless Illnesses and diseases which are brought on directly as a result of smoking. It’s estimated on average that a regular smoker can expect to meet his fate 22.5 years earlier than he would have done had he never smoked.
Death by Tobacco! Suicide, Murder, or just Plain Stupidity?
Knowing what we know yet continuing as we do, some would say that a smoker is slowly committing suicide. Others might say that when a smoker smokes in the same spaces as his non-smoking family , then his selfish act should be considered manslaughter now that it’s been proven that passive smoking has its victims too.
But to be fair to the middle-aged smoker, only a fellow puffer can sympathise with the heavy addiction and impossible habit that nicotine becomes to its victims. Of course it’s stupid to continue smoking armed with the facts about the health risks. It’s even stupider to start in the first place, but then mankind never claimed to be perfect.
At the end of the day, all addicts develop into masters of justifiable excuses and can come up with some pretty convincing arguments as to why smoking cessation is not a good idea just yet. Sadly, by the time a smoker reaches his middle years, his body becomes weaker and vulnerable to the savage attacks of nicotine and all the other 250 known harmful chemicals in tobacco smoke. In other words, time is no longer on his side.
It might be worth ending on this one small fact:
One thousand two hundred Americans stop smoking every single day - by dying
Still gasping for a cigarette?
Andy Aitch is a middle-aged man that has experienced and overcome various addictions during his lifetime. Now a clean living health & fitness fanatic, his mission is to share his experience, strength and optimism through his website for middle-aged men a place where fellows can meet and interact on topical men's issues.