I’m just depressed. I’ve had frowning wrinkles since highschool though.

What if I wanna sit on the couch and eat pizza?

Hearing people younger than me talk about how their bodies are falling apart is surreal. I do basically the bare minimum in terms of nutrition, exercise a bit daily, and I feel basically the same as I did in my 20s. Maybe better even because I’m not underweight.

See this is another matter. I don’t have wrinkles, but I went gray before I turned 20.

Some wrinkles, some grays… Well, a lot of grays in the beard.

I got a genetic double whammy. Baldness on my mom’s side, and my dad (and his father and brother) were gray by 25.

That being said, I blame it mostly on a certain group of people I can’t seem to escape.

They make my life more difficult at every turn.

Their mere existence is guaranteed to give me a head ache down the line.

Of course I’m talking about youthoughtthiswasgoingtoberacist end users.

If you have wrinkles at 40 you need to wear more sunscreen and drink more water.

As someone who has a relationship with smoking, I feel like I have to say a few words:

Apart from abusing my body in ways similar to what you described, I also smoked for almost 15 years. I started out of stupidity in my twenties. I was not even in high-school, I totally averted that danger… only to step in it years later voluntarily and for stupid reasons (I coughed when trying to smoke pot so I thought I should practice, then found out the high was pretty nice and reasoned it was cheaper to smoke this than pot). Anyway, I gave up 2 years ago, but I tried many times before that. I tried cold turkey, I tried gradually, I tried lighter cigarettes, but nothing worked. The idea of never ever smoking another cigarette for as long as I lived was paralyzing. I also hated how it controlled me, and it felt like avoiding any contact with any cigarette ever was also a form of it controlling me from the other direction. So I worked something out that works for me, and maybe it will for you:

My goal was to solve the control problem more than anything. So I said I don’t want a love or hate relationship with cigarettes: I want indifference. It means I don’t buy cigarettes anymore, for one. This is probably the most important part, just don’t smoke at home or during normal activities. The physical dependence is present in the first 3 days, after that it’s just psychological, or so they say, so I took advantage of when I was down with a cold and couldn’t smoke, and I kept it up after. I still had some cigarettes left and I smoked them with some friends when I was out for beers, about 2 weeks later. Whenever I felt stressed at work or whatever, I tried to just take my hand and put it on my mouth with like 2 fingers as if I was holding a cigarette and just suck thin air like it was a cigarette then blow the fictional smoke, I’d do it multiple times if needed — this gesture was calming, even if it didn’t last as long as it did with the real thing, it was like halfway there. Even though this sounds like quitting, the goal was still indifference, but I was way too much in the “I need to smoke” control zone so I focused on pulling out. Throughout I didn’t think of myself as anything related to smoking: I wasn’t a smoker because it felt defeatist, I wasn’t a non-smoker because it felt unearned, I wasn’t an occasional smoker because it felt lazy — I was just trying to take the control out of my relationship with smoking and turn it into something more like “friends with benefits”. I had a quit-smoking-timer app on my phone which in previous attempts I kept resetting with each cigarette I wasn’t able to resist, but this time I said I’m not going to punish myself anymore: this is a new mindset and it allows for casual smoking just like you casually try some weed at a party if someone is offering and it doesn’t make you addicted to weed or a weed smoker or anything like that — you’re just having fun — so the app measures the time since I adopted this new mindset and new (non)relationship with smoking.

The first month was probably the only time I kept needing to repeat all of the above to myself. After that it became second nature. It was both easier and harder to do than I initially thought, but I’m confident in myself now because it’s more of a fundamental identity change than a change in habits or actions: it’s internal, how I see myself vis a vis smoking.

Maybe a mindset like this can help you conquer your addiction, if you’re interested. I say “if you’re interested” because you probably know already: you have to want it first. It can’t be forced on you, it really has to come from you. If it helps, for me it came when I got mad that, after forcing myself to smoke lighter and lighter cigarettes, I learned that they’re just as harmful in the long run, so I got even more mad at big tobacco for lying to me like that (apart from all the other horrible shit they’ve done) and that betrayal was the fuel I used as motivation. It’s always the petty stuff that gets us the most, lol. Also, I really don’t want to check out that soon. Non-existence is terrifying, and life is finally getting better for me. But I’m also older and need to watch my health, so I’m more open now to actively changing stuff for said health.

You sound like the type of bastard that lives to be a hundred.