My dad was a heavy drinker, heavy smoker, and had a family history of various cancers. He was diagnosed with colon cancer at age 50, and kept on drinking and smoking. My uncle had two heart attacks in 10 years. His father was killed by a heart attack. The man is 74 now, and still burns away two packs a day.
According to medical research, this is quite common. A hefty 30% of all cancer deaths are attributed to smoking, and 90% of lung cancer deaths have a clear link to tobacco use. The packaging of cigarettes feature cancer patients to deter people from lighting up. These are called HWLs or Health Warning Labels, and the bigger they are, the more impact they have on preventing smoking, but generally won’t make people quit. There’s really no need to stress this point: people just know that smoking is bad, yet they do it. But what about cancer diagnosis? As an external observer, you might think “what’s the point after diagnosis”, but people don’t give up their willingness to live for a medical diagnosis, quite the contrary. In fact, the scientific literature refers to cancer diagnosis as a Teachable Moment, at which patients are quite willing to reconsider their lifestyle. 86% of them will go and attempt quitting, but two-thirds won’t succeed at all, or will relapse. Paradoxically, lung cancer patients in particular are extremely prone to this. According to this paper, 83% will keep smoking after diagnosis.
It should be clear where I’m going with this. I do believe that many people – I’m one of them – are fully aware of the negative environmental impacts of their lifestyle, yet they have difficulties internalizing the consequences and changing their behaviors. The why is well understood and backed by science. As I learned from this awesome lecture series, tobacco is pretty much a perfect storm of addiction: the behavioral / process addiction related to the act of lighting up then smoking a cigarette, meets substance addiction, as your brain demands its nicotine shot. When picking up the habit there’s usually peer pressure, risk is known, but distant, and the gravitational pull of the desired social image is overwhelming. Overconsumption and environmentally irresposible behavior is similar in many ways, and I want to explore that further in a near future post.