After Winning Over Smoking Dad Wants to Beat Drinking

I was watching my dad last night while engrossed with a magazine about “God’s Point of View of Alcohol.” With his eyeglasses on, and with one eyebrow constantly going up and down, I can see he’s up to something. He was a heavy drinker then and has been controlling the habit for more than two years already. He gives in sometimes though, when his drinking buddies pay him visit.

I’m wondering what he would do to completely control his drinking. Well, I saw him beat smoking almost a decade ago, in a flash. As I remember it, he was complaining about chest pain and coughing that gives him hard time breathing. One day, while at the porch with some friends, I heard him say “I can feel that smoking is taking toll on me already, and I’m worried I might leave my kids fatherless at very young age if I don’t quit smoking.”

Not long after that conversation came his birthday. He was smoking at extreme rate. Extreme, because he finished 1 pack in around 2 hours. His average cigarette consumption back then was 2 packs a day. To our surprise, not even a single stick touched his lips the next day. Until now…

I’m really looking forward to positive things on my dad’s drinking habit. But right now, I wanna share with you guys some real cool tips of cutting off the smoke. Got it from health.com. It’s called the 10 Crazy Ways Smokers Finally Kicked the Habit.

1. Bury the evidence - Literally burying the cigarettes to give yourself a hard time just to get one stick a day should be enough discouragement.
2. Eyes on the Prize - Bet and be determined to get the prize.
3. Pay a Fine - Getting broke is never a good idea.
4. Kill the Craving - Chewing something unusual in exchange of smoking can be real interesting
5. Make a Deal - A good treat for yourself can be enough motivation.
6. Kick Back a Baking Soda Cocktail - 1 tablespoon of baking soda and a glass of water
7. Hypnotize Yourself - It worked on psychologist who also had hypnosis training.
8. Start Small - 1 cigarette reward in a week for not smoking 1 pack a day.
9. Get Dirty - You won’t like it if the cigarette is already greasy, dusty and foul.
10. Say it Loud - It worked with my dad.

Hope it works for you...

Cnn’s Newsroom Is In Heat

Is it alarming to find news reports about sex from popular news bureaus like CNN? Or just disturbing? On the 5th of January 2010, CNN featured an article in its health section entitled “Finding the G-Spot: Is It Real?” On the next day comes “New Year’s resolution: Have more sex.”

One comment in Jan. 6 CNN health news report reads “oh my. First the G-spot article and now this…CNN's newsroom is in heat.” And then, adds “not mad about it though.” Well, people are rather amused by the topics. I must say, the articles were well written.

It sounds medical enough, with all the mentioned scientific studies and tests done by researchers and individuals actually practicing them. In fact, the report seemed to me as wide-reaching sex education campaign, or a “know how” to live longer and enjoy life sexual editorial. Sex gurus might see the network as a business competitor now, huh.

More than simply informing its target audience, it also shapes their imagination. Sadly, it may disturb or prematurely stimulate the sexual nature of the non-target audience – the minors. You tell me what effects such reports can do with population, teen pregnancy, name several more possible problems to come. Tell me if there’s something wrong after that. And tell me if this is the right medium to channel sensitive topics.

Bolstering Doctor-Assisted Suicide

DENVER — The Montana Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that state law protects doctors in Montana from prosecution for helping terminally ill patients die. But the court, ruling with a narrow majority, sidestepped the larger landmark question of whether physician-assisted suicide is a right guaranteed under the state’s Constitution.
The 4-to-3 decision, in a case closely watched around the nation by physicians and advocates for the disabled and terminally ill, was a victory for the so-called death-with-dignity movement. But it fell short of the sweeping declaration advocates had hoped for.
And by avoiding the question of constitutional rights entirely, the court kept the debate in the Montana Legislature, where passions over the issue run high and where tinkering with existing laws is much easier than changing the Constitution.
The state attorney general’s office, which had argued to the court that the Legislature and the democratic process — not seven Supreme Court justices — should decide the weighty philosophical questions raised by the case, Baxter v. Montana, said in a statement that the questions were still alive and still to be answered.
“The Montana Supreme Court recognized that physician-assisted suicide is a policy question for the people of Montana and their Legislature,” the Montana state solicitor, Anthony Johnstone, said in the statement. “As we have argued, that is where the resolution of this important issue belongs.”
A spokeswoman for Compassion and Choices, a group that supports physician-assisted death for terminally ill people and which participated in the case as a plaintiff and co-council to the lead plaintiff, Robert Baxter, conceded that a broader ruling would have been better for their interests.
Mr. Baxter, a retired truck driver from Billings, died last year of complications related to lymphocytic leukemia at age 76.
“We would have welcomed a broad and robust constitutional ruling,” said Kathryn L. Tucker, the legal affairs director for Compassion and Choices. But Ms. Tucker said there was also no doubt that the court had expanded the choices available to the dying in Montana, and extended protection to their doctors, too.
“The court recognized that this is a right patients have,” she said.
The court, which heard oral arguments in the Baxter case in September, was deeply divided, with four separate written opinions among the seven justices — a four-justice majority; a two-justice dissent, and two concurring opinions.
One justice, James C. Nelson, concurred in part, saying he would have upheld the lower court ruling and found a constitutional right to die with dignity.
Two states, Washington and Oregon, allow physicians to help terminally ill people hasten their deaths, but in those states the laws were approved by voters in statewide referendums, and neither state’s highest court has examined the issue of a constitutional right to die. Montana would have been the first.
“This right to physician aid in dying quintessentially involves the inviolable right to human dignity — our most fragile right,” Justice Nelson wrote in a passionately worded opinion.
The majority’s language, by contrast, was muted and lawyerly. A measure passed by the Legislature in 1985, which addressed the withdrawal of treatment for terminally ill patients, created “public policy,” the majority said, that in effect shielded a physician from prosecution for helping hasten the death of a consenting, rational, terminal patient.
The dissenting justices said the majority had misread the intent and meaning of the 1985 law and given it a breadth it was never intended to have.
“The statute provides no support for physicians shifting from idle onlookers of natural death to active participants in their patients’ suicides,” they wrote.