My principal vice is beer. I'm quite fond of the sudsy fuel of civilization. When I was younger I didn't think beer was really all that appealing. The taste of it was what drove me off. It was bitter and strange and very much unlike everything else I had experienced. However I've noticed that with age comes either a more refined palate or a deader one. Now I love the taste of beer, all kinds too. I'm comfortable with a stout, a lager, a pilsner, or an ale. One thing I am quite certain of is that beer in aluminum cans definitely is worse than beer in glass bottles. I won't buy beer unless it's shipped in glass. I can't really explain it, but I'm quite sure that beverage scientists have studied beer out of a can and found no appreciable difference in the product. Perhaps I'm just an elitist that way.
As for quitting, I'll never. Life isn't worth living if all you are is chaste, penitent and pure. Life isn't worth living without beer, without bacon, or without butter! Yes I carry more weight than I want to and I long to have a body shape that isn't apple-shaped, but to get to that point would require that I sacrifice the very things that make life worth living. Quite a large amount of life is wasted in unavoidable suffering, so denying the few things that bring you pleasure, a small respite from suffering is worth trading in the years you would have otherwise spent being "good". What's the value of a long life of suffering versus a slightly shorter life filled with a rich kaleidoscope of things to eat, drink, see, say, and learn? Death comes for everyone and sometimes it's fate, you can cheat death with machines and pills and guesswork-in-white-coats, but if you get to the end of your life without scars, without memories, without passion and most notably without pleasure then it wasn't a life you were living but a death you were coveting.
They'll have to pry my bottle of beer from my cold dead hands. I refuse to see the world in any other way. The last thing I intend to do is be tied to pills, a machine, or the opinions of a bumbling quack.
If you lead your life richly and you eat well and smartly, using real food, then a long lifespan is just another wonderful gift. Living in an iron lung and eating a feed bags worth of pills isn't living. It's breathing. I'd welcome death at that point.
