David Lynch Started Smoking at Age 8 - Now He Needs Oxygen to Walk: 'It's a Big Price to Pay'

[queenursula]

David Lynch Started Smoking at Age 8 - Now He Needs Oxygen to Walk: 'It's a Big Price to Pay' (Exclusive) https://t.co/kChWuWDixg
- People (@people) November 14, 2024
David Lynch started smoking at the age of 8. “A big important part of my life was smoking,” says Lynch. “I loved the smell of tobacco, the taste of tobacco. I loved lighting cigarettes

Comments

[silverstarry]

When I was about 6 years old, my pediatrician told me that I was allergic to cigarette smoke and it was making me sick. She then told me to ask my dad to stop smoking. Even at that age, I knew nothing was going to make my dad quit smoking. Luckily for me, my mom never allowed my dad to smoke inside the house. Even in the dead of winter, my dad would smoke outside in the snow (which was one of the many reasons I knew that he would never quit).

When I'm around cigarette smoke, I get asthma-like symptoms (wheezing, coughing) plus the overwhelming urge to vomit. It's crazy to me that elementary schools have forbidden peanut butter because there are kids with allergies but people are allowed to smoke in public and blow the carcinogenic smoke everywhere.

Since people seem to have forgotten everything that C. Everett Koop pushed into the public consciousness, secondhand smoke is more cancerous than the firsthand smoke that smokers inhale directly. Kids who have parents who smoke have a higher incidence of ear infections and other ailments. Nonsmoking spouses who are married to smokers have a 40% higher chance of getting lung cancer.

My dad ended up having emphysema for years and near the end of his life, he could barely handle walking up one flight of stairs to his bedroom so he spent all day downstairs and only made the trip once it was time for him to go to bed. He needed an oxygen tank which prevented him from flying anywhere (like back to the place where he grew up, which he wanted to do one last time before he died).