He is a man about my age. WE are just over seventy. For more than half a century he has chain smoked six packs of non filtered Lucky Strikes every day. This is accompanied by fifty cups of strong and black coffee everyday. He rarely touches alcohol and has never done any recreational drugs.
He started smoking at age fourteen or fifteen, when we were classmates in school. By sixteen he was up to three packs of Luckies per day, contracted Bronchitis and for six months had a most dramatic cough, coughing up sputum. His fingers had turned bright orange by that time, and with time as he approached his six pack a day habit by age nineteen or so, his fingers were bright orange and brown (horse chestnut color) and remain this color to this day.
Miraculously he only has a mild case CPD, though does get frequent episodes of Bronchitis, with their accompanying coughing. He is single and runs a mail order business which he can operate from his smoke filled studio apartment, chain-smoking and coffee guzzling while he works.
He has always been nervous, with frequent spells of depression, and a few nervous breakdowns as a young man. Now he claims that caffeine and nicotine are the best and only medicines to make nervousness and depression tolerable. And they also serve as anti nervous breakdown remedies.
He wakes up from sleep coughing and sweating, and promptly grabs for a cigarette, which shortly alleviates the coughing and sweating. He moans, groans, and coughs in his sleep as his system screams for nicotine. He is an okay guy and a good friend, even if he his never without a cigarette or a cup of coffee. I smoke cigarettes occasionally but stay away from coffee and alcohol. 