Drinking and Smoking

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Drinking and Smoking 

There is drinking and smoking behind all the poverty problems.   

-Brad Kong

Amy Winehouse was a famous English singer and songwriter.   She was only 27 when she died of alcoholism in London, England in 2011; it shows that her net worth was about $4 Million at the time of her death.    Verne Troyer was an American actor and comedian;  he was best known for his role of Mini-Me in the Austin Powers film series.   He died at the age of 49 in Los Angeles, California in 2018; his death was later ruled an alcohol poisoning.  I feel sorry since he died when he was just about to get famous.  

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     Did you know that it takes a lot of harvests to make a little   amount of alcohol?   That is why many Asian countries have had prohibition periods traditionally whenever famine comes.   In a sense, making alcohol is a global waste.    Drinking alcohol can only promote our society to waste more food including grains and fruits.   I don’t think  anyone can be wealthy if he or she is a part of a wasting process:   I believe that is how our fortunes or destinies work.  And this is how the world seems to work:  We need to be a part of a constructive process somehow to be wealthy.                   

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     I believe that money drain starts from drinking alcohol,  smoking cigarettes or frequently both.   There could be other reasons, but these two seem to be the most prevalent, popular and common reasons for poverty.   These two are legal and available in a lot of stores.  I think that it is important to stop draining money first before trying to figure out how to make more.        

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     James Cook was a British explorer and captain in the British Royal Navy in the 18th century.  He has been  particularly well known for his three voyages in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia; in other words, he found a lot of new ocean routes never known before and visited unknown small islands in the Pacific Ocean as the first European.   He visited Hawaii as the first westerner as well in 1778.  

     When the British navy returned to Hawaii in 1779, it shows that the captain and crews had a surprisingly warm welcome-back reception from the natives in the beginning.   Coincidentally, it was a Hawaiian festival period to worship the Polynesian god Lono and they falsely thought James was the god.  The Navy had stayed on the island for a month.   Unfortunately, it turned out that the captain and crews had been drunk all the time, demanded too much alcohol from natives, had fist fights with them occasionally and even harassed some native women severely.   The anger of the Hawaiian natives had grown.   

     One day, both parties had an exceptionally big quarrel over some stuff stolen by Hawaiians from the English boats; the captain James tried to capture the King of Hawaii, Kalaniʻōpuʻu as a hostage to get their stuff back, but failed.   Regretfully, Captain Cook was stabbed to death during that incident on that day; he died in February, 1779 and he was only 50 years old.   The record shows that four more marines were killed during the kidnap incident as well.

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          Honestly, I have always thought that drinking and smoking are the biggest waste of our life: These two will certainly cause and solidify poverty.    What I mean by waste includes time also, not just money.    I occasionally have thought that, ‘I have wasted a great portion of my life, but I have never been drunk at least.’   Sometimes, it costs our life as you can see in the example of the British Navy above.  Is it too much if I think those crews could have been alive on Hawaii if they were not alcohol drinkers?   Let me give you one more example.           

     Yoon is the 13th president of South Korea elected in 2022.   He was a former lawyer and prosecutor, but has one strange record on Wikipedia:  He failed the bar exam 9 times straight; in other words, it took 10 years for him to pass the exam after college, which is extremely unusual.   We all know that passing the bar exam and becoming a lawyer is not easy.   Still, I believe most law students pass it after failing a couple times in Korea (Even Kim Kardashian passed the baby bar exam after failing only three times while taking care of her four kids).   Coincidentally, this president is very well known for his chronic alcoholism;  some people believe that his numerous failures happened due to his heavy drinking habit he started when he was in college.        

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     There is one excerpt from the Talmud:   One Jewish student asked, “Why are our pupils dark in the eyes?”  A famous rabbi answered that, “It means it is better for us to see the dark side of the world first; if we see the bright side first, we can be too optimistic or even arrogant.   We need to be humble to help expand the brighter side.”     I regret doing this, but let me just add one more story from the dark side in this first chapter.       

 

     Sadly, three ladies in a family committed suicide together in Seoul, Korea in February, 2014:  one mother and two daughters.  This was not a common family tragedy considering all the victims were grown-ups.  Apparently, they burned coal in their small room: Carbon monoxide poisoning.  It showed that the mother was a 60 years old restaurant worker and got laid off a month before this suicide pact.   The two daughters were in their 30s; the elder one was unemployed due to her diabetes; the younger one had a part time job at a graphic novel publisher, but had suffered from her small wage, debt and bad credit.  

     This disaster had been on the news everywhere and shocked the nation for a few months in 2014.   No one understood why this family could not get any support from governments at all.    Eventually, the police concluded that the reason for this misery was financial hardship (poverty).  A lot of investigators and reporters checked the family’s house thoroughly and found one grocery check book written by the mother.  Not many people write all their spending thoroughly by hand like her, so I could see that she had been a honest hard worker.   Still, I found that one item among their grocery receipts grabbed my attention: Soju $4.40 (2014).

     Isn’t it strange that  they spend money on cigarettes ($20), beer ($1.90) and soju ($4.40)?   I thought they were in extreme poverty.  I had been poor before:  In my case, I had to save nickel and dime back then.  I remember I couldn't waste a single cent for a long time.     

     

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     Soju is a cheap but popular alcoholic drink in Korea:  A sort of diluted Vodka (a small bottle is about $10 at Amazon in 2022).  Different from wine or beer, it does not have any taste at all except alcohol; actually, some Americans complained that this drink tastes just like ethanol from a chemistry lab.   I believe it was invented when the country was a ruin after the Korean war in the 1950s.  The war was a tragedy itself, but I also assume that the country did not have much harvest to make a drink properly, either.  Strangely, it is still one of their favorite drinks among Koreans even nowadays.

     Regardless, I suddenly felt different as soon as I saw that item in their purchases.  “Why did they buy alcohol even when they were in extreme desperation?  Did alcohol make them poor?  Or would things have been different if they did not drink alcohol at all?”  I thought that they passed away purely because of money troubles.  But, I felt my focus  changed to be on their alcohol issue.   Was alcohol the reason making them broke from the start, and they could not quit it until the last moment?   After all, soju is not really a food we need to survive at all (most alcohol drinks are not).   The drink does not have any nutritional value as it consists only of water and ethanol.   

     I do not have all the answers for the questions above, but here is one thing I know for sure:  If they did not drink, they would have saved that $4.40 in their pocket; little accumulation still helps when we are desperate.    I do not know how often they had bought it, but it could have been a good amount of money in savings depending on the situation.  Besides, alcohol could be the reason for the tragedy since it is known to cause depression leading to suicides eventually.   

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     I have seen a documentary about Angel Falls in Venezuela before (I actually checked it because of the Disney Pixar animation, UP).   It showed that heavy rainfall drops on top of the fall mountain almost everyday.  I assume that is why the tops of mountains are all flat:  heavy rain beats.     Then, water comes down through the falls continuously and it goes to streams, rivers and all the way to the oceans in the end.     In my opinion, drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes are similar to those rainfalls or headwaters.  These two habits may create some minor problems of water in the beginning (e.g. wasting ten bucks).   But, it can go and connect all the way to falls, streams, rivers or oceans of bigger problems  (e.g. liver failure).  

     Another analogy I would like to take is the human population.   If all the poverty problems are all the eight billion population of humans in 2022, drinking and smoking could be a couple of Australopithecus who existed 4 million years ago.   Just like two ancestors have generated an eight billion population throughout human history, two drinking and smoking problems can cause eight billion problems at last.    Some people may think they are still wealthy despite keeping those habits:  They are just lucky in my opinion.   There are trillions of ways to get rich nowadays; they have made money in spite of having these problems.    Still, they can be poor any time or eventually if they keep those for long; for sure, they could have been wealthier without those two.   

     By the way, what I mean by “lose” includes actual loss.  When I was in college in Korea, I lived in a home stay house in the first semester in 1992.  I still remember that the brother of the landlady complained that he lost $2,000 cash while he was drinking somewhere the other night.   I would have quitted drinking right away if that happened to me:  Simply, losing that much is too unbearable misery for me.   

     People often mistakenly think that there are super complicated reasons for the rich to be poor; there is no such thing.   Anyone can be poor with accumulation of small  losses, and most people in the world are poor in fact.   In a real sense, if we can get rid of drinking and smoking out of our life for good, we can improve our finances instantly and dramatically.  You will see the reason why I start this book with this topic later on.   I personally do not drink or smoke at all though I am not writing this book to preach others.   In this book, we will not talk about some philosophical vague reasons.  We will discuss more actual, practical or visible reasons we can improve without spending an extra money.  

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     I already mentioned that drinking and smoking are the root causes for real world brokeness.  As one Korean lady said on YouTube, all the expensive alcohols will come out of our bodies as urine after all.   I watched a documentary about one fallen celebrity in Korea last year; the man used to be a top singer 20 years ago, but he is poor now in 2021.    It shows that he still wears a $10,000 coat and drinks $200 beers.  I remember one lady commented that, “The expensive clothes will stay at least.  Those expensive beers will only disappear with urine.”   

     You cannot expect to be rich after wasting money on useless, but expensive liquids.  Besides, these can eventually damage our livers or kidneys, so indeed these are beyond useless.    The truth is virtually all types of drinks in the world except water (including soda, juice, energy drinks, coffee and tea) are bad for our teeth and bodies somehow.   I will talk more about this later on, but water is the only liquid I put in my mouth personally.    

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     I just described that drinking and smoking can be the Adam and Eve (the origins) to cause practical problems everyday.  The last dynasty in the Korean peninsula was the Joseon dynasty (1392–1897).   It had several Prohibition eras which were officially recorded and the penalty for the violation was death:  It shows that cutting heads by a machete was actually performed on heavy drinkers in the 16th century.   The official record says that one of the high officials named Yune was decapitated.  

     And, this was the king’s reason for the strict prohibitions: “People are hungry to death as there is no rice left in the country.  No one can eat a bag of rice all at once.  But, people can drink up a big jar of alcohol overnight, which could be made out of a bag of rice.”   What they tried to say was that it takes so many grains to make a small amount of alcohol drinks and these can be consumed too quickly.          

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     The issues of drinking and smoking often start with draining some cash first: Sometimes a chunk of dough.  And the damage continues on with things like making streets dirty, getting headache, getting fined for DUI, fighting, losing teeth, getting concussion, having kidney malfunctions, losing a liver, etc.   Please trust me that I can finish writing 800 pages of the final book only by listing problems caused by these two.    

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      Often, hard working poor think drinking and smoking are essential parts of their lives.  There is a Chinese foot massage place near my home; a middle aged Chinese couple owns the place.   I used to feel sorry whenever I saw them since massaging feet must be a very boring job and I do not believe they charge a lot of money for that.   I saw them closing their business door one night; I noticed that they went straight to the liquor store across the street right after closing.  Strangely, my sympathy disappeared.  Suddenly I felt, “Well, do they have enough money for that?”  When I used to own my video game store, I did not have money to waste on anything: Not even a single cent.   I was able to buy my condo with full cash in 2013, but that was only money I spent on something other than my business.   Technically, I had lost a little bit of money every month all the way through the eight years of the business ownership (except several months). 

     I do not think this couple would understand that drinking could be the reason they got stuck in that job.   I have never tried the place since it always looked deteriorating and old; window decals were wearing off; I feel these people are sinking with their bad habits.

     According to my experience, when owners do not drink or smoke, the store looks fresher even from outside.  I know what my own store looked like.  I still remember my father once said, “Without cigarettes, what joy do I have in my life?” He had been a smoker, but not a drinker.   Ironically, he is more than rich now, but could have been better, too.    I still can give you plenty of examples of downfalls caused by these two habits.  But, let me just finish up this chapter with the one last example from my personal experiences.

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      I was a high school boy in Korea in 1989.  It was about 33 years ago as it is in 2022 now.  At that time, the college entrance exam was highly competitive nationwide and getting private tutoring from college students in the evening after school was popular.   Korea was poorer than it is now back then and tutoring fees were not that expensive.   A lot of college students did the tutoring as a part time job.

 

One day, my mother brought a college student for after-school tutoring.   My mother was not wise since I ended up getting a lot of lessons the whole day instead of studying on my own.  She is not the type of person who moves with her own ideas; she always does what others do blindly.    Anyway, he was attending the mechanical engineering department in Seoul National University; this college has been the most competitive in Korea.  Unfortunately, his lessons were awful and not helpful for raising my grades at all.   More importantly, he had a violent temper and unpleasant character.   Simply, he was not a teacher material to begin with.

 

  But, my parents were greedy and thought it was the best way for my brother and me to get better grades.   I felt like the parents thought my brother and I were the future income for them: My brother and I should get better grades and eventually better jobs, so we can support them with more money later on.   Anyway, that guy was from Busan where is far from Seoul (Seoul is where my parents still live in Korea).   Eventually, except me, all of our family agreed that the guy should stay in our house for his own college study and teach us in the evening.

 

  When I think about it now, that guy was nothing but garbage.   Even though he was only 22, he smoked cigarettes crazily.   One day, my smoker father visited his room, and even he was shocked by how much cigarette smell was stuck in that room.  That guy was more than a mild alcohol drinker, too.

 

Since our home was far from his college even inside the city of Seoul, he skipped his classes a lot.  I remember that guy complained that he got five F’s during a semester since he made a lot of effort to teach us: That was not true.   Simply, he was a terrible student not doing his own job very well:  He failed his college grades because of him.

 

  What shocked me later was that his parents turned out to be extremely wealthy.   My mother's hometown is Busan, so I had a chance to visit the parents’ house of that guy when I visited my grandmother.   I was surprised at the size of the house.   I still remember he complained once in vanity that his parents got $8 Million USD fine from the IRS after a tax audit in Korea.   It was believable to me after I saw their house. 

 

  But, as a result of his poor grades, he could not study abroad in America in spite of apparently big fortune from his parents.   Korea is a wealthy country now, but it is still a small and boring country somehow.  A lot of people are eager to get out of there for many reasons.  But I believe his seriously bad grades were the reason to block him.  

 

  When I checked him last time in 2016, he worked at an English kindergarten in Korea:   This is a shame.    I guess the only job experience he had was tutoring, so he might decide to go for that.   I found out that his mother was a pharmacist when I was at his house.   Apparently, both of his parents studied well.   It is shameful that he could not get out of the country or study abroad at all in spite of all that money.    He was such a loser who wasted entire youth on drinking and particularly heavy smoking after all. 

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     The reason why drinking and smoking are horrible is for their long term effects.  Negative results can come from a long way back.   Spending money for these may be a little bit of a loss today.   But, more importantly, these will bring health issues long later.  As a result, we can end up spending way more during our lifetime.   Besides, it carries the possibility of getting involved with troubles other than medical issues: DUI, car damage, hit and run accident, etc.  Not only do these all cost money, but also these can terminate our careers if not lives.

 

     Even for the super-rich, our bodies are the most important assets; we have one and only bodies after all.   An asset is something that can bring money to us.   If you are a cosmetics model, your face may be your asset.  If you are a wine bar owner, the bar is your asset.    Does it make sense that a bar owner damages his own place, and then complains he cannot make money and struggles?  I believe that wealth building starts with protecting our current assets above all: Especially our bodies which are the one and only priorities.   As Ralph Emerson once said, “the first wealth is health” as a conclusion.

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                                        Summary 

1. If you are serious about getting out of poverty or debt, quit drinking and smoking first.

2. These two can bring us millions of other (often more serious) problems.

3. Not only money, these two can consume a lot of time as well.