N. Korea: Kim Jong-il Lights Up Again (keeps smoking, courting death)

Chosun Ilbo ^ | 06/22/23

[TigerLikesRooster]

Kim Jong-il Lights Up Again

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has apparently taken up smoking again after kicking the habit following a massive stroke in August 2008, South Korean government sources say.

An ashtray sits at Kim's right hand in a Korean Central News Agency photograph showing the dictator at a football stadium in North Pyongan Province on Saturday. "If a stroke patient smokes again, the chances of a relapse increase," said one neurologist. And for diabetics like Kim "smoking can cause heart disease by damaging blood vessels," he added. Kim apparently underwent heart surgery around May 2007.

In this undated photo released Saturday by the [North] Korean Central News Agency, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il visits a newly built football stadium in North Pyongan Province. /KCNA-Yonhap

"Kim Jong-il apparently smoked Marlboro cigarettes and drank pink champagne at dinner with Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun in August last year," said one government official. "It looks like Kim Jong-il started smoking again around the first half of last year."

[xrmusn]

I did it cold turkey and didn’t tell anyone.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Likewise...just had a new grandkid, new truck etc so ...

I was such a good, well rounded ‘drunk’, it took my wife almost 6 months to realize I wasn’t drinking.
Drink that much and you are loaded virtually 24/7, always with a light buzz and surely over the ‘limit’.
Can probably correctly state that my kids never saw me completely ‘sober’ till oldest was 25....
Not ‘proud’ of it, just saying....

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I had tried quitting several times previously and my pals pimped me unmercifully when I “fell off the wagon” and went back to my love affair with Winstons.
I remember a smokers cough awakened me one night and naturally, I got up and went to the kitchen for a smoke. Finding the carton empty, I went out to the car for my backup pack—damn ! No cigs.
I found the shirt I'd worn that day and two smokes were left in the pack.
Right then and there, I made up my mind that I would smoke one that night and one in the morning and that would be it.
I think this bit of self-hypnosis worked because I didn't really feel any withdrawal pangs. I did keep reaching into my shirt pocket for the pack that wasn't there. This lasted for several years.
I avoided places where smoking was linked to more smoking; Bars. I still have a little “ping” whenever I see an old Bogie movie where everyone is firing up.