Tobacco Is An Anti Depressant

Dad would be 80 today. The sad thing is he died at 57 from all the cigarettes, pipe tobaccos, and cigars that destroyed his lungs. The heartache of losing my dad was so hard. He was a fantastic, fun dad who loved kids more than anything. He never met a stranger, everyone he met became his friend. My dad was the most generous person I have ever met. If he saw that someone had a need he did whatever it took to help out. This sometimes drove my mom nuts when he would give up things that they worked and saved to acquire.

Losing my dad to a tobacco addiction made me a firm believer that I had found 1 thing  that was an absolute. Tobacco was bad, absolutely. This addictive substance had no redeeming qualities and no one should ever touch it and everyone who was addicted needed to get the help they needed to get to remove it from their lives forever.

When Ryan was a teen, years after my dad died, he began smoking which simply broke my heart. Then a psychologist told me after he made a less than serious suicide attempt, that cigarettes probably saved my son's life. This man explained the anti depressant affects tobacco has and how it helps people who are depressed cope. Of course, he agreed that cigarettes were a poor choice even as an anti depressant. This was hard for me to swallow since I had determined years before that there was no up side to cigarettes.

Ryan quit smoking a few days before he took his life. Now I am not concluding that the lack of tobacco impacted his actions. I am certainly not qualified to make that determination. There were so many factors that contributed to Ryan's actions and he had come close to this place on several other occasions in his short life. What I do believe is that tobacco is an anti depressant and if someone is going to quit abruptly they should seek help from a professional and get a replacement anti depressant if it is recommended.

I miss my dad so much and I still wish no one ever smoked. Smoking is a harmful act that is so hard to quit and makes people feel ashamed. The cost and the stench are not worth the benefit. There are better ways to deal with stress than lighting up a cigarette. My kids never got to know their grandpa and trust me they missed out. He would have enriched their lives with his humor and love. We lost years that we should have had him as a part of our lives. Ryan and Dad both left us too early and left a great hole in the family.

Happy Birthday Dad, I still miss you.

In Him,
Joyful
11-17-2010