I had a friend who played saxophone. He was a schooled, versatile and passionate jazz player.
He smoked cigarettes, full time.
He also had experienced a collapsed lung.
Despite the above being enough, obvious incentive/deterant, in addition to desperately wanting to, he simply could not stop smoking.
Personally, due to my smoking damage, I have trouble blowing up balloons, or inflating floatation devices and without getting a massive head rush. I can only imagine blowing out several, sustained notes on brass or woodwind and getting light headed. Playing a whole concert, or hell, a whole song on stage, under the lights, I could easily pass unconscious.
Also, being an artistic type, he created a conceptual art piece / personal service announcement, which hung on the wall above the head of his bed.
His brand of choice was a menthol, named and packaged to seem 'upper crust.' I had a run at charring / crystalizing my own lungs with the same, taking influence from him.
This piece of art was a framed, goldenrod matte board about 36" wide by 24" tall. A number of his empty cigarette hard packs were glued to the matte board, in a formation spelling out, in large, capital letters, the word "NO."
It was baffling to many of his peers, especially the non-smokers, of course, why a saxophonist who had a collapsed lung (quite intelligent, to boot) could possibly continue to smoke.
This was one of my early, living illustrations of the severity of nicotine addiction.
The art piece, in all it's creative valiance, ultimately proved to be ineffectual. (He was also using 'the patch.')
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