For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for March 17, 2016

Phil, you scoundrel!

Why did she want to marry him?

Why hide them? Why not just get rid of them?

He can buy more regardless.

Basically he just said he loves cigarettes more than her

time for this gal to cut him loose

In the real world the wedding would probably be off anyway if Phil can’t kick the habit. Not many non-smokers will marry a smoker.

One of the problems quitting: you don’t have to go to a crack house or some dark alley to buy them, just the neighborhood convenience store

Creepy Phil is back.

When this strip was originally written, I had to commiserate with Phil, since I was a pack to two packs a day smoker. In those days, cigarette smoking was far more accepted and widespread.I must have quite a thousand times before I finally ‘detoxed’ and got over my nicotine addiction. Even after kicking the physical habit, the psychological cravings remained for over a year.It’s been 31 years since I’ve smoked a cigarette… but I admit, every once and awhile, I still think about having one with a drink or a cup of coffee.

Talk about the underpinnings of a very dysfunctional marriage!!

Dump him.

Before we condemn Phil for his behaviour,you have to remember this strip was written in the 80’s before the smoking cessation aids like Zyban,nicotine gum,and patches came out to help people quit! His crappy behaviour was mirrored by many others t eying to quit a habit almost as bad as heroin addiction.That being said ,Georgia should still kick him in the ass and tell him to take his stinking habit outside!

My mother was very successful at quitting smoking; she did it again and again and again……:-PWatching her struggle all her life, and ultimately die slowly and horribly and very very young of cancer, I have often thought two things:1) I am SO GLAD I never started that habit. So very much easier to be a non-smoker if you never smoked to begin with2) Of all of the addiction assistance centers available for so many substances, why oh why aren’t there any for smoking cessation? Someone trying to quit is forced to carry on their regular lives at work and at home. This can be so challenging that sometimes OTHER people start pushing cigs on the poor family member or co-worker, just because they can’t stand who that person is during withdrawal. I’ve seen it happen in my old workplace, and my respect for the person pushing the quitter to smoke became non-existant.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

They’re missing a fourth panel that says now SHE’S gone because she can’t live with a smoker and isn’t signing up to play nurse to a cancer victim.

She should have flushed them, not hid them.

“Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.” — Airplane

@comicsssfanYour change in commentary direction has been duly noted,and will be tolerated for now….I think.

Dump him. If he needs you to hide his cigarettes to quit then nags you until you cave and give them back, he has no spine. I’d be saying the same thing if this were a woman.If an addict gives up something for you, you will also be the reason he or she goes back to it.

There was a study back in the late 1930s using prison volunteers [before they discovered that prisoners do not volunteer, but consider it the “good behavior” that gets one our earlier, and in prisons of that time, worth risking death]. Heroin addicts were put on mainlined nicotine and built up to their former heroin amount [requiring careful monitoring as overdose is likely]; then put back on heroin at that level. They showed withdrawal symptoms, indicating that nicotine is more addictive than heroin. I got this info in the late 1940s from a doctor doing research on tobacco addiction [which the Tobacco Institute still claims no such person existed before the 1960s, therefore they could not have know it was addictive before then]..Medical journal papers that far back are difficult to find existing, much less catalogued for easy finding. If anyone knows the citation, please post it.

My wife has been smoke-free 4 years, 6 months, 8 days. The other day, we walked past a couple of smokers, and she said that finally, smelling cigarette smoke doesn’t give her the urge to smoke. God bless the people who invented Chantix!

Really wish she would, then the loser could go live with his Mommie and Daddie like all losers who refuse to grow up.

“Geo”? Pronounced “gee-oh”?

Big baby