Sex. Fun, yes – most of the time. But let’s not forget that cross-gender intercourse can lead to pregnancy, even in teenagers.
I read in an article in the Herald this week that over forty percent of teenage mothers smoked while they were pregnant. At first I assumed they were smoking before they got pregnant and simply continued, but now I’m not so sure. I found another article which said that some pregnant teens in the UK “take up smoking to avoid the pain of childbirth.”
That, ladies and gentlemen, is about as stupid as taking up smoking in order to lose weight. The rationale behind this idiocy is perhaps that some studies have linked smoking during pregnancy with low birth weight – and so the numb-nut teens think that if their baby is smaller than it’s going to hurt less on the way out.
FYI emo – not only might your baby be smaller, but smoking during pregnancy, particularly after twenty weeks is also associated with SIDS, diabetes and childhood obesity. And that’s not counting the damage smoking can do to you.
Listen up fools! Here’s a message from teenage role-models R2D2 and C3P0:
While we’re on the subject of smoking, let’s talk a bit about quitting. I smoked for close to twelve years (yes, ex-smokers are the most militant anti-smokers) and for the second half of those years I lived Mark Twain’s smoking quote: “Giving up smoking is easy. I’ve done it hundreds of times.” I tried patches, lozenges, inhalers, Allen Carr’s Easyway to Stop Smoking, the American movie-dad trick (chain-smoking until I threw up), website support groups, and even LSD (well, I once gave up after a bad trip).
But none of them worked. In the end, I just woke up one day and, deciding I’d had enough, went cold turkey. Close to two years later and here I am. Yes, I have had a relapse, but it was very short lived and I guess it proved to me that while it’s great that I could give up, smoking will never lose its hold on me. I expect that I’ll have a cigarette or cigar or two over the rest of my life, but if I’m vigilant enough, I’ll never be a smoker again.
What am I saying? I guess that I have no real advice for anyone who’s thinking of giving up smoking. I have no idea how I did it, I just did. And it was pretty easy in the end.
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